Hoplite they were tougher and cheaper to make. The linen was thick. By contrast with hoplites, other contemporary infantry (e.g., Persian) tended to wear relatively light armour, use wicker shields, and were armed with shorter spears, javelins, and bows. The most famous are the peltasts, light-armed troops who wore no armour and were armed with a light shield, javelins and a short sword. The Athenian general Iphicrates developed a new type of armour and arms for his mercenary army, which included light linen armour, smaller shields and longer spears, whilst arming his peltasts with larger shields, helmets and a longer spear,
Classification of Thracian Classification of Thracian The linguistic classification of the ancient Thracian language has long been a matter of contention and uncertainty, and there are widely varying hypotheses regarding its position among other Paleo-Balkan languages. It is not contested, however, that the Thracian languages were Indo-European languages which had acquired satem characteristics by the time they are attested. The longer Thracian inscriptions that are known (if they are indeed examples of Thracian sentences and phrases, which has not been determined) are not apparently close to Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, or any other known language, and they have not been satisfactorily deciphered aside from