In Classical Greece, skirmishers originally had a low status. For example, Herodotus, in his account of the Battle of Plataea of 479 BC, mentioned that the Spartan Army fielded 35,000 lightly-armed helots to 5,000 hoplites, but there is no mention of them in his account of the fighting. Often, Greek historians ignored them altogether, but Xenophon distinguished them explicitly from the statary troops. It was far cheaper to equip oneself as lightly armed than a fully-armed hoplite. Indeed it was common for the lightly armed to go into battle equipped with stones. The low status of skirmishers reflected the low status of the poorer sections of society that made up skirmishers. Additionally, hit-and-run tactics went against the Greek ideal of heroism. Plato gives the skirmisher a voice to advocate "flight without shame" but only to denounce it as an inversion of decent values.