Ancient Greek military personal equipment event of a broken spear, or if close melee combat was necessary. Hoplites mounted on horseback likely used a heavier, curved sword known as the "kopis", meaning "chopper" in the Greek language. Hand-to-hand, light support troops such as the "psiloi" were often armed with ranged weapons. Popular ranged weapons were the bow ("toxa"), javelin ("akontia") and sling ("sfendonai"). While the bow was a relatively uncommon weapon (the wooden stave bow used had a limited range), some troops treated their arrows by thrusting them into rotting corpses, thus creating a crude form of biological weapon. Peltast troops commonly used javelins, and
Takabara Takabara Takabara was a unit in the Persian Achaemenid army. They appear in some references related to the Greco-Persian wars, but little is known about them. According to Greek sources they were a tough type of peltasts. Takabara nevertheless were more garrison warriors than front line fighters as proved against the well-armed Hoplites of Greece where they were easily defeated in hand to hand conflict. They tended to fight with their own native weapons which would have included a crescent-shaped light wickerwork shield and a type of light-axe called the Sagaris as well as light linen cloth and leather. The