This fourth day sporting event sounds funny and evidently did so even way back when. The name refers to the idea that the participants raced as hoplites, the heavily armed infantry soldier of the armies of the Greeks. The contestants wore some of the soldier's heavy bronze infantry armor, but like the other competitors, they were basically naked. The picture shows greaves and a helmet, as well as a shield. Special standardized-weight, 1 meter wide shields were stored for the event. Since the victor was required to have his shield, if the unwieldy object fell, the runners had to pick them back up, and lose time.
The first year of the event was 520 B.C.
[5.8.10] The race for men in armour was approved at the sixty-fifth Festival, to provide, I suppose, military training; the first winner of the race with shields was Damaretus of Heraea.
Pausanias (geographer; 2nd century A.D.) Translated by W. H. S. Jones
The fifth day was reserved for the closing ceremonies and awards.
The order of events was not fixed once and for all. Especially as events were added and removed, there was variation. Here is what Pausanias has to say about the order of events in his day, the second century A.D.:
[5.9.3] The order of the games in our own day, which places the sacrifices to the god for the pentathlum and chariot-races second, and those for the other competitions first, was fixed at the seventy-seventh Festival. Previously the contests for men and for horses were held on the same day. But at the Festival I mentioned the pancratiasts prolonged their contests till night-fall, because they were not summoned to the arena soon enough. The cause of the delay was partly the chariot-race, but still more the pentathlum. Callias of Athens was champion of the pancratiasts on this occasion, but never afterwards was the pancratium to be interfered with by the pentathlum or the chariots.
