Wielding a sarissa overarm

[Erpingham]

More seriously, if you are going to ground a pike that is 12ft long, to keep the pointy end at 5ft up you'll have to hold it at 25 degrees, at 18ft long its 16 degrees. Assuming you can reach forward 3ft, your knuckles will be about 10 inches off the ground. Not comfortable.

This is a bit of a diversion but the formation uses the first rank in "charge to horse" and the next few ranks at "charge".  So you have the range 5ft-7ft covered.  The man at "charge to horse" has only one hand on his pike - he expects to drop it on impact - and one on his sword hilt, to enable him to fight with it against the halted and/or unhorsed cavalry if push comes to shove.  And yes, it is uncomfortable to hold for any length of time.

[Erpingham]

2) A sarissa (meaning a Macedonian pike) held underarm would have a drooping point, which would get caught up on or in terrain.

This keeps being mentioned but I dont really understand the issue.  Why do you think the pikeman was only able to carry his pike horizontal rather than at an angle?  Also, how low do you think he will be carrying his pike?By his knees?  Waist high?  If this is a key sticking point, a little more explanation of your visualisation of the mechanics might lead us to a solution.

[RichT]

OK, peace and objectivity it is.

Obviously I don't think this. My point is that rather than being told I can't be proven wrong to my satisfaction (I can - remember the kneeling hoplite mercenaries?) and that I set an impossibly high standard of proof (I don't) I would prefer that we stick to the topic. You have been doing this much longer than me, so please bring in the sources. I'm listening.

I and others in this thread and its predecessor have brought in all the sources there are. That's the lot, there ain't no more. If you don't find that evidence good enough to prove one position or another, then good - you have reached the same conclusion as I have - and coincidentally the correct one.

We don't know for sure how Macedonian phalangites held their pikes. Such evidence as there is, taken together, is enough to make most people think that the traditional picture of a low hold is the correct one, but it's not proof. It's possible that they used a high hold - as later pikemen did - but there's no evidence that they did so. We can't prove they did, we can't prove they didn't. Taken together, because there isn't any evidence that they did, most people think they didn't.

Now you want us to disprove your high hold theory. We can't. All we can do (and have done, over twelve pages last time, six so far this time) is point out that there is no evidence that they did, and some evidence they did the other thing.

Then further, you think the high hold is a logical necessity because the low hold is impossible for various practical reasons. Now first of all, the burden of proof is firmly on you to prove that the low hold is impossible - and proof has to involve something more than you just being unable to imagine it. I can imagine it. Lots of people can imagine it. Peter Connolly imagined it, equipped a pike formation with appropriate kit, and implemented it for real. The fact you can't imagine it is neither here nor there. What do you want from us - to help you imagine it? We've brought in various testimony (Pergamon plaque, Connolly's experiment, YouTube videos) but you discount all of them. So I think we've done all we can. You can't imagine the low hold. OK. It doesn't mean the low hold wasn't real (since the set of things that are real and the set of things you can imagine are not the same).

You could advance the discussion materially by repeating Connolly's experiment and proving that it is in fact impossible to use the low hold (note that proving something is impossible requires doing your absolute best to prove that it is possible).

Now I think this aspect of the discusison has more than run its course but there is still good stuff here on Swiss pikes and shield holds and such like so could we clear the stage for them, or else pack it in?

[Justin Swanton]

OK, peace and objectivity it is.

Obviously I don't think this. My point is that rather than being told I can't be proven wrong to my satisfaction (I can - remember the kneeling hoplite mercenaries?) and that I set an impossibly high standard of proof (I don't) I would prefer that we stick to the topic. You have been doing this much longer than me, so please bring in the sources. I'm listening.

I and others in this thread and its predecessor have brought in all the sources there are. That's the lot, there ain't no more. If you don't find that evidence good enough to prove one position or another, then good - you have reached the same conclusion as I have - and coincidentally the correct one.

We don't know for sure how Macedonian phalangites held their pikes. Such evidence as there is, taken together, is enough to make most people think that the traditional picture of a low hold is the correct one, but it's not proof. It's possible that they used a high hold - as later pikemen did - but there's no evidence that they did so. We can't prove they did, we can't prove they didn't. Taken together, because there isn't any evidence that they did, most people think they didn't.

Now you want us to disprove your high hold theory. We can't. All we can do (and have done, over twelve pages last time, six so far this time) is point out that there is no evidence that they did, and some evidence they did the other thing.

Then further, you think the high hold is a logical necessity because the low hold is impossible for various practical reasons. Now first of all, the burden of proof is firmly on you to prove that the low hold is impossible - and proof has to involve something more than you just being unable to imagine it. I can imagine it. Lots of people can imagine it. Peter Connolly imagined it, equipped a pike formation with appropriate kit, and implemented it for real. The fact you can't imagine it is neither here nor there. What do you want from us - to help you imagine it? We've brought in various testimony (Pergamon plaque, Connolly's experiment, YouTube videos) but you discount all of them. So I think we've done all we can. You can't imagine the low hold. OK. It doesn't mean the low hold wasn't real (since the set of things that are real and the set of things you can imagine are not the same).

You could advance the discussion materially by repeating Connolly's experiment and proving that it is in fact impossible to use the low hold (note that proving something is impossible requires doing your absolute best to prove that it is possible).

Now I think this aspect of the discusison has more than run its course but there is still good stuff here on Swiss pikes and shield holds and such like so could we clear the stage for them, or else pack it in?

Just a couple of final points and then I'm happy to call it quits:

The Pergamon plaque: one may affirm that it is problematic. Does it depict intermediate or close order? Are the surviving phalangites actually in phalanx formation? etc. But it does show an underam grip and it is the one piece of archaeological evidence we have on the subject. So it counts as a point for the underarm position.

Peter Connolly: he doesn't go any further than state that his volunteers were able to switch from intermediate to close formation by countermarching one file in between two others. This countermarching could not have been done with shields facing the front as there wasn't the space for them to pass between the stationary files the shields of which were only about one foot apart. Shields would have had to be at the volunteers' sides (or not held at all). When they subsequently lowered their pikes he does not state whether they brought their shields in front or not. So he does not actually bear on the topic of the thread.

The YouTube video: I took screenshots which show the re-enactors advancing in a ragged open order, and one screenshot showing CG figures advancing in close order with pikes projecting over their shields. So no evidence of underarm in close order.

But the bottom line, as you rightly point out, is that we need a bunch of reenactors to try out close order with shields in front and pikes underarm to settle once and for all whether it is possible. Until then it remains a debatable topic and we've pretty much beaten the evidence we have to death. Time for a decent burial.

[aligern]

I am not at all sure that reenactment will prove very much.  Suppose we had a bayonet fighting manual, and set up reenactors to work through the drills. There is an immediate problem that they are going to be much more defensive that real life if they are using steel bayonets, much more aggressive if they are toting rubber substitutes. However, Sarge's advice is to always have one up the spout in a bayonet attack and to shoot the opponent. If thst is not in the manual we completely miss how the veteran soldier would be acting.
Likely the use of pike and sarissa in formation. has a mix of obvious drills and not so obvious I accept that reenacting with kit is going to tell us that some moves  are possible and others quite difficult, but the possibility of holding a pike high versus low is not proof that it was how it was done. Even showing that one way of using the pike was easier would not prove things either way.
Look at the picture of Culloden which shows the Anglo-Hanoverians using the bayonet overarm against the Scots, apparently this is because the drill was a carry-over from how pikes had been used before they were abandoned ( I realise may well be citing previous posts here).  I would happily believe that using a rifle and bayonet overarm is more wearing and less easily used for defence than the 'conventional' underarm bayonet position, but apparently the less obvious position was used in 1745.
Given that the evidence for underarm pike use is good, but very limited and that the comparabda suggest that overarm was the preferred method during the second, three hundred year flowering of the pike , that there is a possibility that both methods were used. If we did not have the Pergamon plaque then the comparative evidence would reign, so there should be room for both interpretations.
Roy

[Dangun]

I am not at all sure that reenactment will prove very much. 

I agree. Reenactment is interesting, but suffers a conjoint problem.

As the complexity of the question increases, it is increasingly difficult to be certain that the reenactment reflects history, and so it is increasingly difficult to use the conclusions of reenactment to make conclusions about history.

All of just Justin's questions about the Pergamon plate were valid, but the questions also reflect how difficult it will be to convince anyone that a complex reenactment = history.

[PMBardunias]

You cannot hold a sarissa with a classical Greek aspis, I have tried, and the rim is in the way.

Were you holding the shield by a porpax, or by an ochane (however you might interpret that)?

I was holding the aspis with my forearm in the porpax. I could hold a sarissa if I hung the aspis on my neck via a strap and slipped my wrist through the antilabe, but then the shield is a nuisance more than a benefit as it flops around. You can hold a spear in the left hand with no problem with an aspis, but it has to be vertical, in the same plane as your body.  You cannot hold it horizontally because of the rim.


There is another possibility, that I will throw out for the sake of discussion because it is something that  would never have occurred to me had i not seen it.  A friend of mine who makes the best aspides I have used showed me one day that he can use a spear two handed by slipping the porpax up past his elbow joint and resting it just above rather than just below the elbow. I laughed this off- silly noobs and their theories- until I found a vase image showing the same thing. Probably just chance and a bad vase artist, but worth a moments consideration because it changes everything if an ochane was a strap that fit above, not below the elbow.  You can do anything you wish with your arms at that point.

[PMBardunias]

I am not at all sure that reenactment will prove very much.

Reenactment is the only way we will move forward with many of the questions that are now at an impasse in the literature. Unfortunately it is only as good as the questions we reenact and the way we interpret the results.  This is also true for any scientific process.

At its best, reenactment, or more fashionably, experimental archaeology, can show what a human body can and cannot do.  If someone were to object that humans are somehow fundamentally different today, they would have to support that with data because there is no such evidence. If reenactors were unable to hold a musket and bayonette overhand to strike, it would make me question the artist in the image you mention.  That they can do it, tells us very little of course in this case because they can obviously also hold them low and it leaves either option just as likely. Science is all about falsification in the sense laid out by Karl Popper.  Where showing that a human can do something, rather than can't comes into play when authors claim something cannot be done. In my own work on othismos the main arguments against pushing for years were things like "men would get crushed" or "12 ranks could never have stood up to 50".  Both of these assertions I have proven false by having men not die while being crushed and described the way force tapers off after 12-16 in file. Not to worry though, I also showed that the biggest argument from the pro-othismos side, that the charge lent momentum to the push, is also mistaken and that men cannot push with their shoulder in the bowl of the aspis facing sideways.  Ironically shutting down each of these arguments, simply leaves us where we started, though with less mistaken notions, because I can in no way prove that any Greek ever pushed, only describe the most efficient way if they did.  So it is still very much a matter of faith (not being a historian and having to build a career on such theories, I have the luxury of accepting this reality).

What holds true for humans also holds true for weapons, armor, etc. If the recreations are accurate, then the responses will be as well.

[Dangun]

If the recreations are accurate...

And how do we determine the accuracy without referring to the same source we are trying to clarify?

[RichT]

I was holding the aspis with my forearm in the porpax. I could hold a sarissa if I hung the aspis on my neck via a strap and slipped my wrist through the antilabe, but then the shield is a nuisance more than a benefit as it flops around. You can hold a spear in the left hand with no problem with an aspis, but it has to be vertical, in the same plane as your body.  You cannot hold it horizontally because of the rim.


There is another possibility, that I will throw out for the sake of discussion because it is something that  would never have occurred to me had i not seen it.  A friend of mine who makes the best aspides I have used showed me one day that he can use a spear two handed by slipping the porpax up past his elbow joint and resting it just above rather than just below the elbow. I laughed this off- silly noobs and their theories- until I found a vase image showing the same thing. Probably just chance and a bad vase artist, but worth a moments consideration because it changes everything if an ochane was a strap that fit above, not below the elbow.  You can do anything you wish with your arms at that point.

Very useful, thanks. I agree that a strap (meaning a neck strap) would be no help, but I don't think an ochane is a strap.

Do you have any illustrations of this high handle technique? It sounds to me as if this is a possible interpretation of the ochane. How about the Alexander Sarcophagus figures with left hands free - like the man on the right of this image:

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-turkey-istanbul-interior-of-alexander-sarcophagus-58280202.html

with his cloak unfortunately in the way! But is this like the position you describe?

[Erpingham]

If the recreations are accurate...

And how do we determine the accuracy without referring to the same source we are trying to clarify?

Paul is referring to "weapons, armor etc."  So, we must refer to our evidence to produce an accurate copy to test.  Where we have a surviving example, we have an objective source (the subjective bit being discussing how typical an example it is).  If we have bits of a surviving example, it becomes more interpretational.  In the case of our phalangites kit, we only have bits (shield faces but no handles, various heads, possible butt spikes, a mysterious tube) so we start with a less than objective test set anyway.

[Dangun]

Paul is referring to "weapons, armor etc."  So, we must refer to our evidence to produce an accurate copy to test.

A piece of equipment is easier.  Its the action and coordination that's harder. Most of the scenarios we are discussing are coordinated movements across units in periods of stress.

At the very most a reenactment shows what is possible, not what was.

[RichT]

This is the 'value of reenactment' thread rehashed - no need. In this case, the hypothesis is "it is impossible for second and subsequent ranks to hold a sarissa in a low hold with a shield facing (mostly) forward while in close (one cubit) order". The impossibility or otherwise of this can be proven (or at least very strongly indicated) by reenactment.

I don't think the precise dimensions of the kit matter greatly in this case, though a good experiment would try various options. The obvious starting point would be the easiest, ie 60 cm shields.

(Edited to more tightly specify the hypothesis)

[PMBardunias]

If the recreations are accurate...

And how do we determine the accuracy without referring to the same source we are trying to clarify?

By reduction. Not every element is unknown.  So if I want to understand how a hoplite could use his sword when standing in a line of overlapping shields for example. I start with an accurate sword, fairly easy to do given the surviving examples, and men in line with accurate shields, also not so difficult given that for our purposes here it is the shape, not the construction that matter.  Then you use the sword against a target, discovering all the strikes you can deliver given the limitations on your range of motion. Figure out things like: can you strike under the shields? can you strike forehand and backhand without decapitating the men beside you?

Once you have figured out what you, a human, can do, go back and compare this to vase imagery and text.  You will not suprisingly learn that variations on what is called the "Harmodios blow" from its use in vase imagery of Harmodios, work best. 

It is important to note that what you are really doing is providing context for the analysis of text and images.  I will give you an example of context.  While watching two opposing lines of reenactors coming together, a possible explanation for the image on the Chigi olope struck me.  One problem with the image is that those who want to see the two ranks as indicative of reserves moving up or some other event remote in time from the clash of the front ranks, note that the front rank has stopped and the second rank is running.  But when you actually see two units come together to fight this is exactly what it looks like in the moment of engagement. The ranks pull apart in the charge, you have to to run effectively. So when the first ranks meet, the second are in fact still running. Interestingly as well, to a viewer looking directly as the clashing lines from the side, the follow-up ranks look longer because of a trick of perspective. And they are in the image.  Is this correct? Who knows?  But it is different, and it comes from context provided by actually seeing it done.

It is important to note that this adding of context is being done all the time already, via assumptions made and analogy with other cultures.  The number of really crap assumptions that have been widely accepted by those who have a limited knowledge of physics could fill the forum.  The same holds true for analogies, even when authors are not truly aware they are making them, such as "Archaic hoplites fought just like classical hoplites".  It is no less an analogy than the opposing "Archaic hoplites fought like unshielded and mostly naked stone-aged cultures".

[PMBardunias]

Very useful, thanks. I agree that a strap (meaning a neck strap) would be no help, but I don't think an ochane is a strap.

Do you have any illustrations of this high handle technique? It sounds to me as if this is a possible interpretation of the ochane. How about the Alexander Sarcophagus figures with left hands free - like the man on the right of this image with his cloak unfortunately in the way! But is this like the position you describe?

That is what it would look like, but I think, as is the case with all images I have seen of this (at least 2) that it is an artist's mistake.  Were I a grad student though, I would run with it   But I would not expect to find images of this, since we have no images of sarissaphoroi and hoplites do not really benefit from it.  It is long after my era, but didn't Belisaurius's cavalry have shields on the upper arm?  I think I have seen that.