Does anyone else miss the threads where someone advanced an outlandish theory, and then the knowledgeable debated it with an array of detailed evidence that we all learnt from? Well here's my attempt at starting such a thread.
I should say, that this outlandish idea is based, as all the best outlandish ideas are, on almost no knowledge of the subject...
So as I understand it, when Philip of Macedon inherited the throne, he also inherited an army consisting of:
- some exceptionally good cavalry
- some pretty good hoplites
- large amounts of rubbish levy infantry.
His early experience was that however good his cavalry and hoplites were, he couldn't win a battle because the levies would run away if attacked by Mr Blobby.
So his cunning plan was not to make the levies any good, but simply improve them to the point where they could hang around a bit longer and give him a chance to win with his other troops. So he armed them with an exceptionally long spear that made them very difficult to get at.
This didn't mean the levies could actually beat anyone. Face them off against pretty much any heavy infantry and they would eventually lose. But it would take a while, and that made them perfect for pinning the opposition's best troops while Philip got busy with the cavalry and hoplites.
Of course he explained all this to his son, but he didn't make it public. I mean, if everyone else realised that the levies could safely be ignored while the rest of the battle was fought, then they'd become pretty useless again. Alexander continued his policy of bigging up the phalangites, especially as once he moved away from Macedon they actually had some political power under the Macedonian constitution.
Unfortunately, when Alexander died, his successors actually believed the propaganda, and considered the phalangites as some sort of super-weapon. Which was fine when they only had other successors to fight, but came off the rails badly when they encountered the Romans.
So, am I wrong, or am I wrong?
Interesting. I have sometimes wondered how much Philip in his reform of the Macedonian infantry intended to create a super weapon, as opposed to have a force of solid infantry within his budget limitations. However, I'd be interested to see further exposition of the evidence that early phalangites were harmless. They seem to do OK at Chaeronea against citizen hoplites and they certainly don't disgrace themselves in Alexander's battles.
Quote from: Cantabrigian on December 13, 2023, 11:22:00 AMUnfortunately, when Alexander died, his successors actually believed the propaganda, and considered the phalangites as some sort of super-weapon. Which was fine when they only had other successors to fight, but came off the rails badly when they encountered the Romans.
The Romans didn't seem to think phalangites harmless, and as I've pointed out before, none of the big Roman-Successor battles was decided by the legionaries beating the phalangites in a straight fight.
maybe, they started off as peasants armed with a very long stick and developed into something very very remarkable almost by accident
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on December 13, 2023, 12:41:26 PMThe Romans didn't seem to think phalangites harmless
Indeed, even though there may be some grains of truth in the initial founding my impression was that the Romans distinctly disliked the idea of facing them. I would certainly not have wished to do so. I also got the impression from Richard T's book that they were given quite a bit of training and that always makes a difference.
I take it we are still only accepting evidence from history, and my failure to ever manage a win with the Macedonian phalangites is irrelevant
( that's not irrelevant, a relevant is a great big animal with ears and a long trunk)
The idea that any infantry from a kingdom that was sandwiched between the Illyrians and Thracians were useless levy seems basically wrong to me. I suspect they were pretty tough to begin with.
Tough but not well led and used to failure until....
Quote from: Imperial Dave on December 13, 2023, 06:18:47 PMTough but not well led and used to failure until....
Until? They were re-organised and re-armed? Leadership improved? They were finally integrated into a military set-up that exploited their toughness, alongside other arms of service? All or none of the foregoing?
Philip and Alexander etc
To add to the question, isn't there some uncertainty as to whether Phillip and Alexander's phalangites carried really long pikes? Training and discipline seems to have been a bigger part of the package, even allowing them to overawe some enemies with displays of precision marching, which while not bloody was certainly effective so doesn't count as harmless?
Quote from: Imperial Dave on December 13, 2023, 08:59:52 PMPhilip and Alexander etc
Dave, you are the soul of brevity :)
In the spirit of Mike's OP, how do you think Philip and Alexander transformed their levy's performance? Was it by force of personality and vision of empire? Was it by armament and training? And was their intention to create a harmless but rather more durable base around which the arms of decision could operate?
Just reading PHILIP II AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MACEDONIAN STATE by Cynthia Kimball Phillips
One interesting footnote reads
214 Gabriel, Philip II, 64-65. Gabriel demonstrates that this Macedonian pike probably
originated in Homeric times and is related to the Homeric battle spear: "a miniature
fresco from Akrotiri dating from 1450 BCE depicts Mycenaean warriors using long
spears of the sarissa's length in battle" . . . "while later tomb paintings show men hunting
wild boars with long spears." Diodorus 16.3.2 also indicates that both the shields and the
"close order fighting" that characterized Philip's phalangites were in imitation of the
"warriors at Troy." While it is unlikely that the phalanx formation has origins in the
Bronze Age, the shield might.
The sources all say that Philip drilled his phalanx and did forced marches with them. To do this they had to be under arms.
So they had to be supported, fed at least. Given that they were initially 'peasant levies' they could have been cheaper to support. Later they may have been supported by land grants from lands captured and confiscated.
If only we had a published expert here ...
Well, this approach of bringing along hoardes of dross armed with long, pointy sticks and hoping to win the battle is one I intend to try out with my kardakes under Darius.
I suspect it might simply prove that that as well as the toothpick, the boys need to have a bit of fighting spirit. I mean, does anyone really believe that, say, William Wallace's fine fellows were comparable to a bunch of Swiss pikemen?
???
In the absence of a published expert, this article (https://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/download/2541/5897), albeit from 1999, does provide some of the actual evidence we are speculating around.
In the words of the great Ford Prefect
Mostly harmless....
Sadly for Mike, there seems a limited interest in the origins of the Macedonian phalanx and its effectiveness. This is a shame, because even to a non-classicist like me, a quick Google shows that this is an area of competing theories. Where did the long spear idea come from, for example? I hope Mike will return to stir the pot before too long.
A classic arms race for me but probably needs a separate thread like the last time
I wonder if Cantabrigian's original post is missing something. I am a great believer that decisions to change tactics and equipment are made in relation to context at the time and recent experience. Thus Romans dealing with Parthians after Carrhae recruit a higher proportion of archers and slingers, being heavily influenced by the earlier defeat.
Philip was operating in a context in which hoplites may have already been adopting longer spears and were definitely moving to lighter kit. Developments with peltasts had moved their fighting style to being more solidly formed and having more armour and longer spears. It would be fair to say that there was an air of investigation and innovation around Greek infantry methods from before Philip's reign. Similarly He probably gave his noble cavalry longer and stouter spears.
Likely someone can tell us who the Macedonians were fighting in the years before the changes. How did this experience influence the changes he made.
Philip's reforms certainly produced something different. Hoplites ran at their enemies following Marathon ( or was it only Persians they rushed?) Hoplites moving to lighter kit would fit with this. Perhaps Macedon could not manage to produce the level of kit and training needed to resist this and thus adopted a more static defensive as Cantab suggests.
I am no expert but I did read that Philip was trying to encorporate the poorer highland tribal areas into mainstream Macedonia and in point of fact a national army. What is the cheapest way to get a fighting man into the field? Give him a pointy stick. Not experienced and fighting cavalry (Illyrians, Thessalians etc) make sure its a long one
Cheap might be it Dave, Otherwise why not move to or extend a hoplite model. After all, hoplite kit and tactics would have been equal to the enemy Greeks and definitely superior to the expected Persian foe.
I'm not sure on the cheapness angle. If you look at what Philip's phalanx had - helmet, greaves, sarissa, pelta - it's not that different to what a city hoplite had by this stage. Also, he invested in training, unlike the average city. It suggests that he may have had a plan to create an effective infantry, not just to create something more solid out of his levy.
Bret Devereux has a series of articles on the Successor Phalanx (https://acoup.blog/2024/01/19/collections-phalanxs-twilight-legions-triumph-part-ia-heirs-of-alexander/) and the eventual triumph of the Roman Republican Legion just out. These go into great detail and one can infer back to Philip and Alexander's times. He clearly does not share the idea that the military system used by the Successors was inferior to that of Alexander. Many useful references and good material to ponder.
I think there is some truth to this, but I think we have to look at his options. He could have made them all hoplites, why didn't he? Cost is an option, but in the words of Boramir, "one does not simply become a hoplite". The way hoplites of the 4thC fought- long charge into battle from outside of missile range, fighting with very long spears (the equivalent of 12 foot spears given where they were held) and fighting in close, shield on shield- had increasingly shown its weaknesses. Read Xenophon's description of the battle of Thymbarra in his historical fiction, the Cyropaedia. I discuss it here: https://hollow-lakedaimon.blogspot.com/2010/10/mis-understanding-of-xenophons.html
There is a school of thought that Xenophon was writing to either Spartan hippeis to get back on their horses or Athenian hoplites to do the same, but either way, you will see it is a premonition of Phillip's tactics.
The other option he had was the new-fangled "hoplites" of Iphicrates. These were probably just ersatz hoplites made form jumped up peltasts that were armed in the lighter fashion of some spear-bearing Thracians (with some input from Egyptian marines perhaps). Iphicrtaes was faced with a problem. His peltasts could decimate hoplites, but only if the terrain was right or as at Lechaion, he had a contingent of hoplites to threaten his enemies lest they try a formation that would work against light troops, but be suicide against heavies, like orthoi lochoi. Judging from the descriptions we have, he armed them with a 12' spear that could be used in either one or two hands as needed and a lighter, probably rimless shield to facilitate this and make them more nimble (we see this technique done with partizan and rotella by Marozzo). That nimbleness and the ability to keep up with peltasts who formed the true killing arm in his use was the point may be evinced by the care he took to design new boots. These troops would not have been expected to fight in close, so they could get away with lighter shields. One key here is that he doubled the length of the swords, which judging from Theban stelai had become as Xenophon describes, daggers.
So Phillip does a one up on both Xenophon and Iphicrates. Rather than Cyrus's 2 ranks of sparabara, he makes 8-16 ranks of spearmen. Rather than light troops defeating foes by hit and run attacks or encircling them with missile troops, he uses Xenophon's suggestion of heavy cavalry- even heavier due to the longer lance rather than a pair of shorter dual-use spears. Xenophon's spearmen only had to hold for a while, but it seems hoplites really never found a way reliably through a sarissa phalanx from the front. Thus, they could hold out a long time even if they, in their early incarnation, could only stalemate hoplites. To increase their ability to hold but, he lifts a concept from the Illiad and has them stand in a very dense formation. A hoplite cannot fight at a frontage of much less than 60cm (no matter what you may have read), but using the spear two-handed you lead with the shield arm and can stand side-on at 45cm. Once you are no longer trying to use the spear one-handed, you can quickly increase its length, I would say 16' minimum because a 14' spear has less reach than an 8' hoplite spear if held in two hands.
So that is my rant. He created a core of spearmen that were as good as hoplites on defense, better against cavalry, while also being lighter and cheaper. Over time, success would make these as heavy as any hoplite and ironically less nimble.