Wielding a sarissa overarm

[Dangun]

Seventeenth century manuals show pike receiving cavalry with the pike grounded in front of the right foot, the left leg forward and bent.  The pike is held by the left hand with an underarm grip and is at an angle of 35-45 degrees.

Geometrically that sounds very odd...
At 45degrees and grounded, a 2.6m long pike would have raised its pointy end to above the height of most human opponents (1.8m).

[Mick Hession]

Seventeenth century manuals show pike receiving cavalry with the pike grounded in front of the right foot, the left leg forward and bent.  The pike is held by the left hand with an underarm grip and is at an angle of 35-45 degrees.

Geometrically that sounds very odd...
At 45degrees and grounded, a 2.6m long pike would have raised its pointy end to above the height of most human opponents (1.8m).

Not if the human is sitting on a horse.

Cheers
Mick

[Duncan Head]

Concerning sarissas - bear in mind that not every sarissa is necessarily a pike (cf Strabo's throwable sarissa), and not every use of a sarissa (eg by Thracians) is a Macedonian phalanx. 'Sarissa' seems to be a dialect word for various spears (as well as being used by Macedonians for their pike).

See for example Noguera Borel's article (in French), bringing up among other things the grammarian Aelius Herodianus' entries for sarisa as "a small javelin", "a large javelin", and even "an arrow". He concludes sarisa means "any shafted weapon".

I lean rather towards the view that maybe Aelius Herodianus doesn't know what he's talking about...

[RichT]

See for example Noguera Borel's article (in French), bringing up among other things the grammarian Aelius Herodianus' entries for sarisa as "a small javelin", "a large javelin", and even "an arrow". He concludes sarisa means "any shafted weapon".

I lean rather towards the view that maybe Aelius Herodianus doesn't know what he's talking about...

yes I expect you are right! But there are non-phalanx uses of sarissa that make sense if it means 'spear (long, probably), rather than 'pike (5-7 metres)' - eg the banquet guard at the killing of Cleitus, the Aitolians with their gas bombs etc.

[Justin Swanton]

I'd like to carry on with the discussion as it is interesting and several points have been raised that I haven't considered before, and I've had to change my mind on a couple of other points (yes! true!).*

To make it clear, I have no problem being proven wrong, and I would much rather be proven wrong than not be proven wrong and be wrong. So saying that "experience tells us that no amount of persuasion will convince the proposer of said argument that the argument is faulty" is a bit of a reach IMHO. The proposer is listening. 

My problem with the Macedonian/Successor phalanx (just to be clear - the phalanx that used sarissas understood as those long pole things with spearheads on the end that you don't throw but poke at people) is that with an underarm grip I can't get it to work. The phalanx deployed in close order, files 45cm wide. The phalangites had shields 60cm or more wide. Those shields - like hoplite shields - were meant to protect the phalangites, so, yes, they held them across the front of their bodies and they overlapped each other, just like the shields of the Macedonian phalanx's direct ancestor. Aemilius was impressed by the "strength of their shields-together", heck, it was "shields together". To say otherwise is to force the text. I don't mind doubting a source but not just because it contradicts a favourite theory. The sarissas then if held underarm have to fit under the shields, which means they will be far too low. They'll point slightly downwards and since sarissa shafts tend to bend, the downwards angle will be accentuated. They will stick in slightest terrain obstacle or gentle slope and stop the phalanx dead in its tracks.

If anyone can tell what I'm missing I'd be delighted.

Re the polevault grip, I've tried it with a broomstick and it works fine. You can hold a pike vertically, tilt it to 45 degrees, and lower it facing forwards in an overarm hold, all without changing your grip. "Lowering": bring a pike from a vertical position to an overarm horizontal position and it is lower by a good few feet.


*the phalangites in the Pergamon plaque are necessarily in an anti-cavalry stance; Machiavelli is worth quoting; φράσσω necessarily has the connotation of 'around'

[Erpingham]

Am I right in thinking that the overarm grip only developed in the 16th C? It is interesting if so that pikemen (unshielded) went several centuries without it.

The classic Dutch drill overarm pike stance (Charge your pike in ECW drill) seems later 16th century.  Its ancestry is medieval though.  I have been taking the opportunity to consider this as a serendipitous exercise.  Take for example this image from a 1409 copy of the Flos Duellatorum (Pisani Dossi MS)


The student is clearly using the same basic stance, with the hands in the same position.

It wasn't the only high lance position



And this well known Dolstein image, from the early 16th century.



My working hypothesis is that, with pike warfare in formation developing , various known high stances were tried and eventually the most suitable for drill purposes became standardised. 

[Erpingham]

Seventeenth century manuals show pike receiving cavalry with the pike grounded in front of the right foot, the left leg forward and bent.  The pike is held by the left hand with an underarm grip and is at an angle of 35-45 degrees.

Geometrically that sounds very odd...
At 45degrees and grounded, a 2.6m long pike would have raised its pointy end to above the height of most human opponents (1.8m).

You are actually aiming at much less than 45 degrees.  Take a protractor to deGheyn's drill illustrations and you get get a 25 degree angle for the pike.  Somebody good at trig can work out the height of the tip if the pike is 18 ft long.

[Justin Swanton]

Seventeenth century manuals show pike receiving cavalry with the pike grounded in front of the right foot, the left leg forward and bent.  The pike is held by the left hand with an underarm grip and is at an angle of 35-45 degrees.

Geometrically that sounds very odd...
At 45degrees and grounded, a 2.6m long pike would have raised its pointy end to above the height of most human opponents (1.8m).

You are actually aiming at much less than 45 degrees.  Take a protractor to deGheyn's drill illustrations and you get get a 25 degree angle for the pike.  Somebody good at trig can work out the height of the tip if the pike is 18 ft long.

7' 8"

[Mark G]

Perhaps someone better at physics could work out the strength needed to wield that thing with your bad hand while holding a sword in your right...

I'm pretty sure by the 30YW pikes we're down to 12feet which is a hell of a lot less than 18 feet from the Macedonian days, and offers quite distinct options not previously available.

Consider also, the different army deployment from a successor army with pikemen forming a largely straight line across 2/3rds of the army, and the Swiss with 3 entirely independent Kiel's running z(rinning)at the enemy
'Not the same thing at all

Never mind mixed pike and shot units from later

[Prufrock]

I'd like to carry on with the discussion as it is interesting and several points have been raised that I haven't considered before...

Unless I'm remembering incorrectly (my Slingshots are in storage, so I may be) Richard has had thoughtful and deeply and conscientiously considered material published in our own house journal on the matter of how the phalanx operated, including discussion of the evidence around intervals.

Justin wrote:
My problem with the Macedonian/Successor phalanx (just to be clear - the phalanx that used sarissas understood as those long pole things with spearheads on the end that you don't throw but poke at people) is that with an underarm grip I can't get it to work. The phalanx deployed in close order, files 45cm wide. The phalangites had shields 60cm or more wide. Those shields - like hoplite shields - were meant to protect the phalangites, so, yes, they held them across the front of their bodies and they overlapped each other, just like the shields of the Macedonian phalanx's direct ancestor. Aemilius was impressed by the "strength of their shields-together", heck, it was "shields together". To say otherwise is to force the text. I don't mind doubting a source but not just because it contradicts a favourite theory. The sarissas then if held underarm have to fit under the shields, which means they will be far too low. They'll point slightly downwards and since sarissa shafts tend to bend, the downwards angle will be accentuated. They will stick in slightest terrain obstacle or gentle slope and stop the phalanx dead in its tracks.

If anyone can tell what I'm missing I'd be delighted.

And all of this is where you are wrong. You require source fidelity when it suits you, but ignore that requirement when it doesn't. How can you compare the Renaissance version of the phalanx with the Classical version without considering butt spike counterweights, as just one example? How can you ignore Polybius in one instance and then use him as evidence in another?

Basically, at this stage, the theory is a non starter.

[Patrick Waterson]

How can you compare the Renaissance version of the phalanx with the Classical version without considering butt spike counterweights, as just one example?

By following the lead of other Society members.

Obviously the different construction of the Macedonian pike needs to be considered.  But we might as well examine the subject from all angles, including Phil Steele's proposed grip, and see if anything emerges.

And if one has direct or indirect evidence against the use of an overarm grip by Macedonians, that too would be a useful contribution.

[PMBardunias]

The underhand/overhand argument here seems to be unrelated the infamous argument in hoplites.  Here you seem to be concerned solely with the height of the strike- at the shoulder or at the waist.  In this you are really arguing whether sarissaphoroi had to use the shoulder strap to support the left hand. If not, then the question is somewhat frivolous because a man could easily do either by simply raising or lowering the left hand.  If the argument is about hand placement- hand OVER the shaft vs hand UNDER the shaft- then again there is not much to argue because as you can see below men can hold either high or low with either.

The real difference is in where the pelta is relative to the spear shaft.  In hand-over-shaft, the pelta is to the right of the shaft, while in Hand under shaft the pelta is to the left as is usually depicted, and the arm may be supported by the shoulder strap.

Now, I see no reason to think the current depiction is incorrect, but someone brought up the Pergamum bronze which is our only example of what might be sarissaphoroi (though there spears are no longer than dorys and their pelta as big as aspides).  This depiction clearly shows the shields to the right of the shaft which is completely consistent with what is being proposed and evidence against the current depictions.  That said, I think this is probably simple artistic license, but it is no clear support for the standard view.

[Justin Swanton]

Aaron mentions Richard (by whom I'm presuming he means Rïchard Nelson) and that does raise an interesting point. Richard wrote an article on Sellasia in Slingshot 42 where he takes the position that Antigonus fought the Spartans in intermediate and then close order, compacting his phalanx after the initial attack against the Spartans ended in a draw:

A recall was sounded on the bugle for the light-armed troops of both sides, who were on the ground between the two armies: and the phalanxes shouting their war cries, and with spears couched, charged each other. Then a fierce struggle arose: the Macedonians sometimes slowly giving ground and yielding to the superior courage of the soldiers of Sparta, and at another time the Lacedaemonians being forced to give way before the overpowering weight of the Macedonian phalanx. At length Antigonus ordered a charge in close order and in double phalanx; the enormous weight of this peculiar formation proved sufficient to finally dislodge the Lacedaemonians from their strongholds, and they fled in disorder and suffering severely as they went. - Histories: 2.69

In intermediate order there is up to a foot of space between the shields of adjacent files, which leaves plenty of room for sarissas to be presented underarm (as reenactors demonstrate). Close order with sunaspismos was not the only battle formation of a phalanx nor even the default one, but may, as the passage from Polybios suggests, have been reserved only for times of special need such as Sellasia or Pydna.

One can argue then that the Pergamon plaque shows phalangites in intermediate order (Antiochus may have felt he had a sure win and used the default arrangement) and in this order the phalangites would have used their pikes as they saw fit.

[RichT]

Paul - I think your first diagram (pergy_grip.png) doesn't quite make sense, since the shield can't be to the right of the shaft (as it is, it's true, depicted in the PP) - this would require that the man's hand be on the left edge of his shield, and I can't work out any way of holding a shield on the left arm that would result in this. Have you tried it/do you have further clarification of how it could work?

It's true that a low hold can be turned into a high hold just by raising the arms - but then a shield on the left arm would cover the bearer's face, and expose his vitals, wouldn't it? Which seems suboptimal from a combat point of view.

The high holds that Anthony's pictures depict are interesting, though the spears are very short - is that an artistic thing too?

"the shoulder strap" - for which there's no evidence
"the pelta" - why pelta?
"as big as aspides" - what's wrong with that?
"spears are no longer than dorys" - depictions of sarissas to correct scale length are, for obvious reasons, rare. The front wall figures of Agios Athanasios are the nearest I can think of, and they are only c. 3.5 m
Just muddying the waters here, please just ignore all these matters - can of worms country.

Justin - nobody is going to be able to prove you wrong to your satisfaction, not least because you set an impossibly high standard of proof. That does not however mean you are right. Can you understand that?

[Edit] Incidentally this clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kQwMbJpBTs - is, though maddeningly badly filmed, quite interesting. At around 1:44 the ranks are shown each holding their sarissa slightly higher, still underarm (well, for the guy in the mask helmet, it's borderline if this is low hold or high hold). I think this reconstruction looks quite convincing (aside from the little dude in the front rank, but maybe he's very brave). Who's convinced it might have worked this way? I just wish the History channel would provide this sort of funding for some proper research.

[PMBardunias]

Paul - I think your first diagram (pergy_grip.png) doesn't quite make sense, since the shield can't be to the right of the shaft (as it is, it's true, depicted in the PP) - this would require that the man's hand be on the left edge of his shield, and I can't work out any way of holding a shield on the left arm that would result in this. Have you tried it/do you have further clarification of how it could work?

It's true that a low hold can be turned into a high hold just by raising the arms - but then a shield on the left arm would cover the bearer's face, and expose his vitals, wouldn't it? Which seems suboptimal from a combat point of view.

The high holds that Anthony's pictures depict are interesting, though the spears are very short - is that an artistic thing too?

"the shoulder strap" - for which there's no evidence
"the pelta" - why pelta?
"as big as aspides" - what's wrong with that?
"spears are no longer than dorys" - depictions of sarissas to correct scale length are, for obvious reasons, rare. The front wall figures of Agios Athanasios are the nearest I can think of, and they are only c. 3.5 m
Just muddying the waters here, please just ignore all these matters - can of worms country.

The hold I depicted is in fact the way Marozzo (some interpretations), the renaissance master, tells us to hold the partisan in two hands.  Watch from about minute 20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGX0LWcFyKQ

It can only be done with a small, pelta, that is "not too deep".  You cannot hold a sarissa with a classical Greek aspis, I have tried, and the rim is in the way.  The only way it can be done is in the fashion Marozzo describes, but the shield is too big to make it work in anything but a static pose.

If we discount the strap, and that reading of Polybios, then there really is no argument, because surely sarissaphoroi did anything they wanted.