it was not necessarily uniform throughout the line, but for Lacedaemon eight may be considered normal.[413] The heavy-armed trooper carried a large shield, which covered the entire body, a helmet, and greaves; his offensive weapons were sword and spear.[414] Tyrtaeus mentions also a coat of mail though not as an essential part of the equipment.[415] The metal of their defensive armor was mostly bronze; their swords and spear-points were probably iron, which the mines of Laconia abundantly supplied.[416] Although it is well known that the phalanx was composed of smaller units, the original organization can only be conjectured. It is not unlikely that in the beginning there were tribal regiments,[417] divided into companies of fifty or perhaps a hundred,[418] which were made up of still smaller groups. The military age extended from the twentieth to the sixtieth year.[419] The phalanx was readily adopted by other Greek states, which modified it to suit their several conditions. In Athens and probably elsewhere the army had a tribal organization,[420] but a census was introduced in order to determine who possessed sufficient wealth for service on horseback, in the heavy infantry, and in the light infantry; and when once the census classes were adopted, it was easy to extend them to political uses. In this way the four property classes at Athens, probably instituted about the middle of the seventh century B.C.,[421] became under Solon if not earlier a basis for the distribution of offices and other political privileges. Naturally the Greeks of Sicily and Italy adopted the phalanx, and it is reasonable to suppose that the Romans derived it, through the Etruscans,[422] from one of these neighbors. II. _The Servian Army_ As the heavy troops of the Greek line were all armed alike, the Romans probably at first composed their phalanx in a similar way, without gradations of equipment. The complex system of census groupings in the army as we find it immediately before the institution of the manipular legion could only have resulted from a long development. The statement last made finds justification in the fact that the term classis[423] was originally limited to the first or highest census group, all the rest being “infra classem.”[424] Not only was the organization like that of the Greeks, but the arms, too, were in the main Greek. The soldiers of the classis were equipped with helmet, shield, greaves, spear, and sword; as they wore a cuirass, they used a large round Etruscan buckler[425] instead of the man-covering Dorian shield. They were grouped in centuries,[426] forty of which composed the classis in the fully developed phalanx.[427] The age of service of the juniors, who alone fought in the field, extended from the completed seventeenth to the completed forty-sixth year,[428] whereas the seniors from the forty-seventh to the sixtieth year formed a reserve.