They made us all walk – a phalanx of senators, staff and press – through several office buildings in search of the safest site to shelter on the Capitol complex. However, the phalanx has not completely disappeared. In some battles between the Roman army and the Hellenistic phalanges, such as Pydna (168 BC), Cynoscephalae (197 BC) and Magnesia (190 BC), the phalanx performed well. He even drove out the Roman infantry. At Cynoscephalae and Magnesia, however, failure to defend the flanks of the phalanx led to defeat. At Pydna, the phalanx lost its cohesion as it pursued the retreating Roman soldiers. This allowed the Romans to penetrate the formation. Then, Roman melee skills proved crucial. The historian Polybius describes the effectiveness of the Roman legion against the phalanx.
He concludes that the Romans refused to fight the phalanx where the phalanx was effective, the Romans offered combat only if a legion could take advantage of the clumsiness and immobility of a phalanx. For example, if Othismos accurately described a game of physical pushing, it would make sense to say that the deeper phalanx would always win a battle, since the physical strength of the individuals would not even compensate for an extra rank on the enemy side. However, there are many examples of flat phalanges stopping an opponent. For example, in Delium in 424 BC. The Athenian left flank, a deep formation of eight men, held a 25-deep Theban formation without immediate collapse. [6] With the physical slippage model, it`s hard to imagine eight men resisting the impact force of 25 opponents for a few seconds, let alone half the battle. hoplite phalanges, which are usually inserted deep into rows of eight or more males; The Macedonian phalanges usually had 16 men deep, sometimes 32 men deep. There are some notable extremes; In the battles of Leuktra and Mantinea, the Theban general Epaminondas placed the left wing of the phalanx deep in a “hammerhead shark” of fifty rows of elite hoplites (see below) and if the depth was less important, the phalanges are recorded only four deep, as in the Battle of Marathon. [20] Each hoplite provided its own equipment. The main hoplite weapon was a spear about 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) long, which was called Dory. Although ratios vary in length, it is now thought to have been seven to nine feet long (~2.1 to 2.7 m).
He was held with one hand, with the other hand holding the shield of the hoplite (aspis). The spearhead usually had a curved leaf shape, while the back of the spear had a sting called sauroter (“lizard killer”), which was used to hold the spear in the ground (hence the name). It was also used as a secondary weapon when the main tree broke or to kill enemies lying on the ground. This was a common problem, especially for soldiers involved in the first clash with the enemy. Despite the snapping of the spear, hoplites could easily switch to Sauroter without much consequence. [10] The rear ranks used the secondary end to shoot down fallen enemies as the phalanx advanced above them. The early history of the phalanx is largely a battle story between the Hoplite armies of competing Greek city-states. The usual result was fairly identical, inflexible formations that pressed against each other until one of them broke. The potential of the phalanx to achieve something more was demonstrated at the Battle of Marathon (490 BC). Faced with the much larger army of Darius I, the Athenians thinned their phalanx and consequently lengthened their foreheads to avoid being flanked. But even a phalanx of reduced depth proved unstoppable for the lightly armed Persian infantry. After defeating the Persian wings, the hoplites rolled inward on the Athenian wings and destroyed the elite force in central Persia, resulting in a crushing victory for Athens.
During the Persian Wars, the hoplite phalanx proved superior to the Persian infantry (e.g. the battles of Thermopylae and Plataea). The theory of the “physical schubspiel” is one in which the battle relies on the bravery of the men in the front, while those in the rear with their shields would keep the pressure on the front ranks and constantly push the entire formation forward to break the enemy formation. This is the most widely used interpretation of ancient sources, so when two phalange formations collided, the battle essentially became a locker game. Historians such as Victor Davis Hanson point out that it is difficult to explain the exceptionally deep phalanx formations unless they were necessary to facilitate the physical thrust represented by this theory, since those behind the first two rows could not participate in the actual javelin. [5] The phalanx generally moved at the pace of the march, although it is possible that it gained speed in the last meters. One of the main reasons for this slow approach was the maintenance of training. Training would become useless if the phalanx was lost as the unit approached the enemy, and could even become detrimental to the advancing unit, which could result in a weaker formation that could break through more easily for an enemy force. If the hoplites of the phalanx were to increase the speed towards the last part of the advance, this would have been done in order to gain momentum in the first collision with the enemy. [4] Herodotus said of the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon: “They were the first Greeks we know of to attack their enemy by running.” Many historians believe that this innovation was triggered by their desire to minimize their losses due to Persian archery. The opposing sides would collide, perhaps cutting many spears from the first row and killing the front part of the enemy army due to the collision that broke the bones.
The Macedonian phalanx could also lose its cohesion, without proper coordination or when moving over rough terrain; This could create spaces between individual blocks/syntagms or prevent a solid front in these subunits, causing other sections of the line to clump together. [22] In this event, as in the battles of Cynoscephalae and Pydna, the phalanx became vulnerable to attacks by more flexible units – such as the Roman legionary centuries, which were able to avoid sarissae and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the Phalangites.