Ancient Greek warfare and slingers ("sfendonitai") while archers ("toxotai") were rare, mainly from Crete, or mercenary non-Greek tribes (as at the crucial battle of Plataea 479 B.C.) Greek armies gradually downgraded the armor of the hoplites (to linen padded thorax and open helmets) to make the phalanx more flexible and upgraded the javelineers to lightly armored general purpose infantry ("thorakitai" and "thyreophoroi") with javelins and sometimes spears. Eventually, these types effectively complemented the Macedonian style phalanx which prevailed throughout Greece after Alexander the Great. Cavalry had always existed in Greek armies of the classical era but the cost of horses made it far
Ancient Greek verbs three tenses are used, and they distinguish aspect only, not time: The optative mood likewise uses these three tenses, but there is also a future optative, used mainly to report indirectly what would be a future indicative in direct speech. Ancient Greek has no perfect progressive or past perfect progressive. Thus, the meaning "he has been doing" is typically expressed with the present tense, and "he had been doing (earlier)" is expressed with the imperfect tense: For further information on the endings, see Ancient Greek grammar (tables). Dictionaries of Ancient Greek usually give six principal parts for any verb. For