Wielding a sarissa overarm

[Justin Swanton]

Did you really just argue that despite there being no evidence to support your theory, if we dismiss the evidence for the more normal position, your theory becomes equally valid?

Not really. I just argued that there is very little source evidence, and none of it conclusive, for the underarm hold*, just as there is very little source evidence, and none of it conclusive**, for the overarm hold. Which leaves you looking at which works better, or more precisely which works better for a pike phalanx in close order, 1½ feet per file.

*Pergamon plaque
**Arrian, Tactica: 12

[Andreas Johansson]

If the plaque isn't conclusive evidence that the underarm hold was used*, I struggle to imagine what would be.

But having just read Tactica 12, I can't see that it says anything at all about how the pike was held. Enlighten me?


* Not necessarily exclusively, of course.

[Justin Swanton]

If the plaque isn't conclusive evidence that the underarm hold was used*, I struggle to imagine what would be.

But having just read Tactica 12, I can't see that it says anything at all about how the pike was held. Enlighten me?


* Not necessarily exclusively, of course.

The plaque shows two front rank phalangites wielding their sarissas underarm to receive a cavalry charge. For the front rank, there is no problem presenting pikes underarm or overarm - they can used them freely in either case. The problem starts with the second rank going backwards. So the plaque is no proof that all ranks in a phalanx held their sarissas underarm which is what is in question.

Regarding Arrian I have Ars Tactica 12 in mind: "Round about they stand back successively so that each hoplite in the front is covered by six sarissas". The word 'covered' in Greek is πεφράχθαι from φράσσω which means 'fence in,' 'hedge round,' conveying the image of the fronk rank phalangite being surrounded by a protective gauntlet of sarissas - from his own file - which is much better conveyed by sarissas held overarm and projecting past his shoulders (on either side), than by a tight bundle of sarissas projecting past him below waist height on his right. Indicative but not conclusive.

[Mark G]

Wow

[RichT]

We went over your interpretation, Justin, of Arrian Tactica 12 last time around. It isn't evidence one way or another. You think it fits better with an overarm hold (this is called 'confirmation bias' - which is an interesting subject in itself and there is lots of evidence of it on this forum ) - nobody else sees it this way - it might mean an overarm hold, it might not, we just can't tell.

So the scores are:

Artistic depictions of underarm: 1
Artistic depictions of overarm: 0

Literary descriptions of underarm: 0
Literary descriptions of overarm: 0
(inasmuch as none of them are explicit)

Practical demonstrations of underarm: 2
Practical demonstrations of overarm: 0
(where Delbruck and Connolly find underarm works fine at one cubit, and Matthew argues against both one cubit and overarm. Actually Delbruck among all his many faults isn't explicit about the hold either, so you could reduce the score to 1:0)

So underarm is comfortably heading the table at the moment. You could turn it around by conducting an experiment that demonstrates that underarm is impossible at one cubit (you would ideally also need to explain why Connolly got it wrong). You can't do this alone - you'd need, by my reckoning, 15 people with sarissas and shields. This would then provide strong evidence that overarm is true ('once you have eliminated the impossible...'). Unless and until you do that, all we can say is that overarm is possible but there's no evidence for it, which doesn't warrant a discussion or an article or a paragraph and barely a sentence, but does still make a decent footnote in history.

[Justin Swanton]

Let's have a teeny look at that score.

Artistic depictions of underarm: 1
Artistic depictions of overarm: 0

Artistic depiction shows only the front rank receiving a cavalry charge. It gives no idea about what the other ranks are doing. But it does clearly show underarm, so I give it a ½.

Practical demonstrations of underarm: 2
Practical demonstrations of overarm: 0
(where Delbruck and Connolly find underarm works fine at one cubit, and Matthew argues against both one cubit and overarm. Actually Delbruck among all his many faults isn't explicit about the hold either, so you could reduce the score to 1:0)

Connolly says that it works fine underarm at 1 cubit but I notice he includes no photos to prove it. Until I see photos,  0:0

So the final score is 0:½. Pretty close I'd say.

But the bottom line is: let someone show me a close order phalanx, shields at least touching each other, that can present pikes under the shields and advance up a river bank (Issus) without the spearheads sticking in the turf and I'll throw away the scoreboard.

[Prufrock]

It's always a lively topic. There was a discussion on boardgamegeek recently in which a strongly opinionated person who had done some society of creative anachronism type role-play fighting thought Polybius was full of it, and Peter Connolly's experiments laughable. Reckoned that anyone who'd been in the thick of it like he had knew it exactly how a phalanx fought, and you didn't need shields for it, unless perhaps you were in the first rank and there were missile types around...

[Justin Swanton]

It's always a lively topic. There was a discussion on boardgamegeek recently in which a strongly opinionated person who had done some society of creative anachronism type role-play fighting thought Polybius was full of it, and Peter Connolly's experiments laughable. Reckoned that anyone who'd been in the thick of it like he had knew it exactly how a phalanx fought, and you didn't need shields for it, unless perhaps you were in the first rank and there were missile types around...

I suppose it's a lively topic because the evidence is so tenuous. Machiavelli in his book on military theory (not The Prince) affirms the Swiss pike phalanx is exactly the same thing as the classical Macedonian one, even though the Swiss pikemen wielded their pikes overarm. Where did we get the idea that phalangites wielded their pikes underarm? Not from the Pergamon plaque which became known only after 1913.

[Erpingham]

I suppose it's a lively topic because the evidence is so tenuous. Machiavelli in his book on military theory (not The Prince) affirms the Swiss pike phalanx is exactly the same thing as the classical Macedonian one, even though the Swiss pikemen wielded their pikes overarm. Where did we get the idea that phalangites wielded their pikes underarm? Not from the Pergamon plaque which became known only after 1913.

We should at this point note that Macchiavelli had even less information on the nature of the Macedonian phalanx than we do.  We should be cautious about using him as an authority on its nature.  Do you have a quote that states that the Swiss used pikes overarm, like the macedonians?  Or are you extrapolating from the fact that generally Macchiavelli held the Swiss used a phalanx like the Greeks, as opposed to the Roman formation?

As to whether Macchiavelli would think of the Swiss using their pikes overarm, I'm not sure.  He wrote in 1519 and his practical experience of watching armies in the field was earlier in the century.  Here are two images of pikemen at Marignano in 1515 from around the time macchiavelli was writing

[RichT]

So you rule out the artistic evidence because it only depicts the front rank - this seems like goalpost moving - we had been talking about how phalangites held their pikes, now you want to just talk about how second and subsequent rank phalangites held their pikes. But OK - most people have concluded that the fact that the front rank held them underarm, and that no literary source hints that subsequent ranks held them differently, is sufficient to make it most likely that second and subsequent ranks held them underarm too. If you want to insist that only direct evidence of a second (or subsequent) ranker will do, then that's up to you, but the score then would have to be 0:0, wouldn't it?

shows only the front rank receiving a cavalry charge

How so? The nearest Roman/Gaul/Pergamene/whatever to the right hand phalangite is clearly on foot.

Connolly says that it works fine underarm at 1 cubit but I notice he includes no photos to prove it. Until I see photos,  0:0

So now you are simply discounting the evidence that doesn't fit your hypothesis. Poor show.

So the final score is 0:½. Pretty close I'd say.

Very close. You can make it 0:0 if you like - the important point is still the 0 in your column. There is no evidence for your hypothesis.

That just leaves you with your last sentence, which is just an argument from personal incredulity ("I cannot imagine how P could be true; therefore P must be false").

But whatever, believe what you like.

[Andreas Johansson]

Regarding Arrian I have Ars Tactica 12 in mind: "Round about they stand back successively so that each hoplite in the front is covered by six sarissas". The word 'covered' in Greek is πεφράχθαι from φράσσω which means 'fence in,' 'hedge round,' conveying the image of the fronk rank phalangite being surrounded by a protective gauntlet of sarissas - from his own file - which is much better conveyed by sarissas held overarm and projecting past his shoulders (on either side), than by a tight bundle of sarissas projecting past him below waist height on his right. Indicative but not conclusive.

You're imagining that different men in the same file hold their sarissai on different sides of the file leader? That seems unnecessarily complicated, since if they all hold it on the same side, he'll still have those of the next file on the other.

I'm not convinced that underarm implies sarissai projecting below waist height - if I were I'd considered that in itself a good argument for overarm - so this seems to me very weakly indicative at best. But thanks for explaining your thinking.

(Speaking of file leaders, Arrian says in the same section that if the file leader falls, the file closer should move forward to take his place. Someone explain to me how that is supposed to work at 18" frontage, in combat!)

[Duncan Head]

Regarding Arrian I have Ars Tactica 12 in mind: "Round about they stand back successively so that each hoplite in the front is covered by six sarissas". The word 'covered' in Greek is πεφράχθαι from φράσσω which means 'fence in,' 'hedge round,' conveying the image of the fronk rank phalangite being surrounded by a protective gauntlet of sarissas - from his own file - which is much better conveyed by sarissas held overarm and projecting past his shoulders (on either side), than by a tight bundle of sarissas projecting past him below waist height on his right. Indicative but not conclusive.

I don't think that any notion of hedging "round" is inherent in φράσσω. Several of the examples in LSJ, for instance, are of "fences of shields", or shield-walls, which imply a line of shields to the front. Arrian need imply nothing more than that a hedge of pikes was presented in front of the front-ranker.

[RichT]

In this case too, phrasso is (not by coincidence) used in Homer, Iliad 13.130f. "fencing spear with spear, and shield with serried shield; buckler pressed on buckler, helm on helm, and man on man" familiar from being quoted by Polybius 18.29 (and elsewhere).

[Justin Swanton]

We should at this point note that Macchiavelli had even less information on the nature of the Macedonian phalanx than we do.  We should be cautious about using him as an authority on its nature.  Do you have a quote that states that the Swiss used pikes overarm, like the macedonians?  Or are you extrapolating from the fact that generally Macchiavelli held the Swiss used a phalanx like the Greeks, as opposed to the Roman formation?

As to whether Macchiavelli would think of the Swiss using their pikes overarm, I'm not sure.  He wrote in 1519 and his practical experience of watching armies in the field was earlier in the century.

To put Machiavelli in context, here is the relevant passage from his Art of War, Book 2:

For attacking, they had cinched on their left side a sword of an arm and a half length, and a dagger on the right side. They carried a spear, which they called Pilus, and which they hurled at the enemy at the start of a battle. These were the important Roman arms, with which they conquered the world. And although some of the ancient writers also gave them, in addition to the aforementioned arms, a shaft in the hand in the manner of a spit, I do not know how a staff can be used by one who holds a shield, for in managing it with two hands it is impeded by the shield, and he cannot do anything worthwhile with one hand because of its heaviness. In addition to this, to combat in the ranks with the staff (as arms) is useless, except in the front rank where there is ample space to deploy the entire staff, which cannot be done in the inner ranks, because the nature of the battalions ((as I will tell you in their organization)) is to press its ranks continually closer together, as this is feared less, even though inconvenient, than for the ranks to spread further apart, where the danger is most apparent. So that all the arms which exceed two arms in length are useless in tight places; for if you have a staff and want to use it with both hands, and handled so that the shield should not annoy you, you cannot attack an enemy with it who is next to you. If you take it in one hand in order to serve yourself of the shield, you cannot pick it up except in the middle, and there remains so much of the staff in the back part, that those who are behind impede you in using it. And that this is true, that the Romans did not have the staff, or, having it, they valued it little, you will read in all the engagements noted by Titus Livius in his history, where you will see that only very rarely is mention made of the shaft, rather he always says that, after hurling the spears, they put their hands on the sword. Therefore I want to leave this staff, and relate how much the Romans used the sword for offense, and for defense, the shield together with the other arms mentioned above. The Greeks did not arm so heavily for defense as did the Romans, but in the offense relied more on this staff than on the sword, and especially the Phalanxes of Macedonia, who carried staffs which they called Sarisse, a good ten arms in length, with which they opened the ranks of the enemy and maintained order in the Phalanxes. And although other writers say they also had a shield, I do not know ((for the reasons given above)) how the Sarisse and the shield could exist together. In addition to this, in the engagement that Paulus Emilius had with Perseus, King of Macedonia, I do not remember mention being made of shields, but only of the Sarisse and the difficulty the Romans had in overcoming them. So that I conjecture that a Macedonian Phalanx was nothing else than a battalion of Swiss is today, who have all their strength and power in their pikes.

So, true, he is no authority on the Macedonian phalanx.

After trawling through every contemporary or near-contemporary image I could find of the battles of the Swiss Confederation, it is clear that a) they didn't use shields, wearing plenty of body armour instead, and b) they held their pikes any old how: overarm, underarm and midarm, though they seem to have generally held them underarm to receive cavalry charges and underarm seems to be the preferred grip. Without a shield in the way they were free to wield their pikes as they saw fit.

[Erpingham]

After trawling through every contemporary or near-contemporary image I could find of the battles of the Swiss Confederation, it is clear that a) they didn't use shields, wearing plenty of body armour instead, and b) they held their pikes any old how: overarm, underarm and midarm, though they seem to have generally held them underarm to receive cavalry charges and underarm seems to be the preferred grip. Without a shield in the way they were free to wield their pikes as they saw fit.

Fair comment.  I will stick with what I said when we last discussed this; the use of pikes was not a settled thing and there does seem to be a change in the predominant approach from underarm to overarm in the period 1500-1520.  It is hard to tell, though, how much pictures of pike fights of the time accurately reflect what happened.  Was it as individualistic, using the pike any which way, as it appears?  If so, should we picture what happens in a Hellenistic pike fight in the same way?

Anyway, we are in danger of digression.  Quoting Machiavelli has, however, shown he said nothing about overarm or underarm pike holds and he was wrong about the shields (probably because he had less information on the subject than us).