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WinBoard has two graphics modes: built-in bitmaps, and font-based piece
rendering. Each piece type has a fixed built-in bitmap, but with font-based
rendering you can assign an arbitrary glyph to it (by assigning the
corresponding font character in with the /pieceToFontCharTable option).
WinBoard has a fixed idea how its various piece types move. 

But since this game for the time being has to be played with legality
testing in WinBoard switched off, you can basically represent the Spartan
pieces by any of the 22 WB piece types you like. The engine is in charge of
determining the move legality, and WB will dutifully move the pieces as
instructed by user or engine, in this mode. There is a downside to this,
though: to store the game in Short Algebraic Notation, WB has to know how
pieces move. If it doesn't, it cannot decide correctly if the otation is
ambiguous. So a move that WB thinks is illegal for the piece will always be
written in long algebraic notation. And if the move is legal, WB has to
figure out if there is another piece of the same type that could also
legally move there, in order to add disambiguation to the SAN. So it could
either add unnecessary, or omit necessary disambiguation. That is,
(un)necessary for the Human reader; WB will always be able to read the file
back unambiguously, exctly because it adds the dismbiguation according to
its own idea of the possible moves. But the bottom line is that you get
much nicer SAN output if the moves the piece can do more or less correspond
to what WB thinks, even if legality testing is off.

For this reason I chose the Elephant for the Lieutenant: WB thinks this
moves as F+A in variant fairy (in some more specific variants known to WB,
such as Shatranj, it is restricted to A). Then only the sideway moves will
be illegal, and be written as long algebraic. Similarly, the piece
represenitng the Captain is thought by WB to move as R+D, and thus very
suitable for Rook-like pieces. The crossed swords is the WB standard
representation of the B+N, which was exactly what we needed, and the
6-pointed star of the R+N (which is close, and was an exact match before
the rule change). The Lances are a wild-card piece, and their moves will
always be written in long algebraic (and any move will be allowed even with
legality testing on). Unfortunately WB has no piece types for Berolina
Pawns: it implements Berolina Chess by redefining the motion of the normal
Pawn type in that variant (I wanted Pawns to look like Pawns even in
Berolina Chess). But you could not play Spartan Chess as Berolina with
legality testing off, because then also the white Pawns would be thought to
move as Berolinas. First I tried using normal black Pawns to represent the
Hoplites, but WB assumes they are FIDE Pawns and capture en passant, so
when they move diagonally to an empty square, white Pawns were disappearing
as a side effect! Thus I had to use something else. Now the Pawn symbol is
significantly less 'fat' than most other pieces, so usising, for
instance, the Ferz (which would at least get most non-captures as legal
moves) looked really ugly. The Lance was the only slim built-in symbol. But
for Hoplites it is of course very applicable, so I took the poor notation
of their moves for granted.

You can change the piece types used by WB in the /pieceToCharTable option
in the Spartan.ini file. If you put, say, the h in another place (replacing
one of the periods) it will use another piece for Hoplites, etc. To see
which symbols are available, you can switch to Mode->Edit Position, and
right-click a King to call up the context menu, and then promote it. When
you do this repeatedy, you will cycle through various pieces. The same when
you demote a Queen.

When you render pieces through a true-type (Chess) font, you can make them
look like anything. But you would have to supply the font.