So I've decided to look it up lately, since it was something that has gradually been building up in the current popular image and depictions of the Hoplites of Sparta and their league, specially in the time frame of the Peloponnesian Wars and later that event, that they, in almost an uniform fashion, wore the Pilos Helmet, and for those not familiar with it, theres the image:
Also, to substantiate what I mean by current popular image (I'm not talking of purely entertainment mediums such as Hollywood), here are examples of how the spartans are seen wearing it uniformly in games such as Rome: Total War and Rome II: Total War, as well as in both iterations of Europa Barbarorum:
I could fish for more examples, but those will suffice for me. If you want to challage my claim that its not the popular image, and that other images or depictions are way more widespread, then its fine, I'm not here necessarily to argue that point, its just that I've seen gradually, across the years, a buildup in the depiction of the spartan armies with widespread use of the Pilos helmet, amongst other "claims of accuracy".
This is just an hypothesis, but it seems to me that this trend started/catalysed specially with the advent of the movie 300 and the popularization of the fictional spartans in that movie, as well as with other media that told us the history of Thermopylae. It seems like the historical community, and the history academia, in a general sense, set foot on not necessarily exploring the truth behind the vastly sparse documentation we have about the gear and tactics of those fighting greeks, but rather decided to conjure up their own image of the spartan to contrast it with the more widespread and pop images and depictions that were around, be them from 300, or from the History Channel, or from any other, with degrees of fatasy varying.
I dont come to evaluate the whole picture of that image, but rather only one of its most iconic aspects: the reiterated depiction of the Lacedaemonians with the previously mentioned helmet.
Part of my skepticism comes from the precious little I've found regarding the subject, and also from the fact that the little I found seems to, quite frankly, prove nothing... Wich makes me wonder if such an image is put foward less with the intent of being "accurate" and more with the purpose of being a sort of contrarian, born of an intellectually arrogant posture of one needing to show that he is right and he knows the "accurate", "correct" and "true" version of things, which even if not true for the grand picture, definitively is true for some people in these forums.
I wouldnt use that premise to criticize or challenge the whole bibliography that EUII links in these forums, specially because I'm not familiar with most of it, but it does concern me the lack of primary historical sources in that list. In the best case scenario its because this community is so well accostumed with the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Caesar, Xenophon, Polybius, Livy and others that, to them, knowing of these works is quasi self evident and they only link what the academia produced because of how it cross references primary sources and reveals more esoteric and less known archeological findings or the like. In the worst case scenario, what is happening to some degree is a severe case of historian circlejerking and conjecture in order to view the whole discipline of History like a "science", with a "correct" or "accurate" way of interpreting/revisioning it and an incorrect one, notwhitstanding the evident lack of information we have about various time periods, which have so many gaps about so many things that historians constatly feel the need to fill with their theorizing, not with accuracy.
But the above is a larger concern I have, and just an anecdote to the objective aim of this post: enquire on what sources and basis does a community like this one used to depict their version of the Lacedaemonians with an uniformed use of the Pilos helmet.
It sounds like a pedantic question, but realizing the nature of the discussion in this place, I hope it shouldnt be. I'm not here necessarily to disprove the depictions, thats why I came presenting my concerns and then asking about it. If I had certainty that it was incorrect I wouldnt write the post like this.
I did look up some information about the helmet, what I found sometimes cited as a source (either in the TW Forums or Wikipedia) was A Brief History of Greek Helmets by Jesse Obert, where he states the following:
"The first widespread adoption of the Pilos Helmet occurred in Sparta at the end of the 5 th century BCE. Apparently, when they adopted the helmet they announced that “they had nothing to hide, no fear or passion in their faces” [...] The Spartans argued that by adopting the PilosHelmet they were exemplifying their bravery. Some scholars argue that this boast put social pressure on other Greek communities essentially forcing them to adopt the Pilos Helmet."
However, the author provides no evidence for any of these claims, he only cites as a reference the work Soldiers and Ghosts, by J. E. Lendon. He also has the disclaimer in his work: "Please note that the papers posted here were not peer-reviewed -- they are non-academic. They were written for the purposes of entertainment and I strongly discourage anyone from citing them in their own research or writing."
So I looked up the passage he cites and attributes to the work Soldiers and Ghosts (page 63-64), and, in whatever I could find of that book and that passage (I shouldnt really cite it here I suppose, but idk), heres what came up:
"The quirks of the city and its folk were on display in the way the city fought. The Spartans particularly prided themselves on, and were admired by other Greeks for, their quality of sophrosyne. They displayed this in their daily life with their famous terse, Laconic style of speech and in battle in the way they advanced to combat. The phalanxes of other states often broke into a shambling run before contact, overwhelmed by the excitement of danger, so ruining the dressing of their ranks. The Spartans, by contrast, advanced to the tune of pipe players, a practice intended “to remove anger from the warriors,” and proceeded at a walk, “without a gap in their lines, and with no confusion in their spirits, calmly and cheerfully,” without “excessive fear or passion.” It makes sense in this context that when Greeks abandoned the all-concealing Corinthian helmet in the fifth century, it was the Spartans who adopted the most revealing helmet of all, the conical pilos (see figure). In the competition of selfcontrol, the pilos announced, the Spartans had nothing to hide, no fear or passion in their faces. And, naturally, stung by the challenge, many hoplites all over Greece adopted the pilos beginning in the late fifth century." (the bold text and other marks were made by me).
The figure mentioned above that he links is the following:
First of all, what is already concerning about the archeological reference he presents is, well... it in no way connects to what he is claiming: it is a depiction of what appears to be a tegean hoplite from the fifth century BC. To just see this and jump to the wild conclusion that this artistic representation of what seems to be a single tegean hoplite is substance for a theory that Sparta in the fifth century adopted widely the pilos helmet and foced the peloponnesian league to conform to it is just varios degrees of speculation and overtheorizing. Specially when we take into consideration that archeology from the fifth century BC has found things that are now present in the Sparta Museum, some in the British School at Athens, that depict soldiers from what we assume was sparta throught the ages, and none of these depictions show lacedaemonians wearing the pilos helmet, but instead some form of corinthian/chalcidian variants:
Also, it seems that to substantiate his claims, the author cites Plutarch (Lyc. 22.3) for the passage concerning how the spartans marched without a gap in their lines and without fear or passion, and Thucydides (1.68.1, 1.84.3) for when he talks about the Spartan virtues and sophrosyne. However, when it comes the Pilos helmet passage, there are no primary sources or any historical reference cited, the author merely links the work P. Dintsis, Hellenistische Helme vol. 1 (Rome, 1986) pp. 57–73, and things like The Cambridge Ancient History« Plates to Volumes V and VI (Cambridge, 1994) pp. 167–94 at 175–8, which I presume merely talk of the helmet itself, not its adoption by the spartans or any army or any of the conjecture I can only assume the author came up with.
And if even there was some vague reference to a text or anything like it, a passage of Xenophon talking of the Pilos in the similar manner he talks of equipment in his On Horsemanship, or anything that would vaguely suggest this theory that Sparta adopted this helmet for their armies and influenced the Peloponnesian League to adopt it, the author simply doesnt provide it... No primary historical source, no concrete archeological evidence, no substantiated reasoning, nothing. Quite frankly, the only thing he seems to be providing is his fan fiction as to why the spartans, who had nothing to hide, adopted a helmet that didnt cover their faces... but even if anyone could substantiate this, there are loads of greek helmets who do not cover the soldier's face, making the hypothesis that the Pilos was the one selected, again, pure conjecture.
Now, maybe I'm just not doing my homework right, and in such a case, I come here to ask of anyone interested in substantiate what I exposed and elucidate to me what I'm missing, and since I dont have access to all historical material out there, neither am I an academic, its hard to me to get a vast bibliography aside from what is avaliable through the classics. As it stands, however, it seems to me that all of this is some kind of academic circlejerking, as I do not recall myself ever reading any historical source that claims or suggests the spartans adopted any kind of helmet for any reason such as the ones above mentioned, and when I look at all of this and reasearch, all I find as a paper citing a historian citing another paper citing another historian etc, etc, etc... but no historical integrity or compelling evidence...
Cheers.