Macedonian cavalry success against close order infantry

[aligern]

It does stretch beyond belief (passing lances).  If the cavalry break in they have to keep going, using the horse to make a path and relying on their momentum to prevent the infantry wounding them. We should remember, of course that it is quite hard to deliver a serious blow when you are being pushed back by a man on a horse as keeping your footing is the main consideration.
If the cavalry do not push on then they must turn back because they are in severe trouble if becalmed amongst infantry who will pull them off the horse.
Justin should remember from his reading of Maurice that cavalry do not exercise pressure uPon each other so it is the pressure of those horses that are against the infantry that counts.
I'd see it as more a maytter of an interaction between the cavalry and the infantry whereby the cavalry are constantly looking for the infantry to quail or for a casualty to cause a disruption in their line. Botherwise they bicker and the cavalry turn away and go back to reform and try again. Its not impossible that hoplites could be surprised and broken by aggressive lancers, but it would be extremely difficult for that to occur with the infantry having wounds to the front because that implies that the cavalry kill their way through resisting infantry and that is very unlikely.
Roy

[Erpingham]

Its not impossible that hoplites could be surprised and broken by aggressive lancers, but it would be extremely difficult for that to occur with the infantry having wounds to the front because that implies that the cavalry kill their way through resisting infantry and that is very unlikely.
Roy

I think we've already had some of this discussion.  Patrick does appear to be the only one who can conceive of a cavalry attack where the wedge leader selects and kills targets with the xyston, rather than drops it when it sticks in an unlucky victim (probably the first if he is using the momentum of the horse to carry him through) and draws his sword.  I had not occurred to me though that this plays into the "all wounds to the front" argument.  Certainly, in a cavalry attack like this, we would expect a mixture of wounds - lance, sword, trample.  But is Plutarch being poetic here? 

[Justin Swanton]

I'm wondering if there isn't the possibility of some kind of file relief in a wedge: front ranker sticks an infantryman with his wedge and stops. Rider behind him flows around and becomes the new front ranker, attacking the next infantry target and being replaced in his turn. A priori it's possible.

FYI here is an image of a 200-man Macedonian ile charging 300 Sacred Band deployed 6 deep. Have I got the wedge right?

It looks as if the cavalry could break through.

[Patrick Waterson]

This is of course set in Alexander's reign and hence may validate Polyaenus' use of pelta as a Macedonian infantry shield without excluding its usage for a Macedonian cavalry shield, as per Plutarch in Alexander 16.

A passage to which I can give very little weight, as it seems to be describing either a fictional shield in an apocryphal incident - since Macedonian cavalry did not generally carry shields in mounted combat - or at best an antique of unknown type and age purloined from a temple. So I don't see it as proven, or indeed likely, that Plutarch used pelte to mean a "Macedonian cavalry shield" (probably a non-existent class at this period).

Now who is being selective?   The point is that whether or not Alexander carried a shield into combat at the Granicus, Plutarch uses pelte to designate this particular (real or hypothetical) Macedonian cavalry shield being used on horseback and he never, not once, in the whole of his life of Alexander uses it specifically for a Macedonian infantry shield.

We're never actually told that the sarissophoroi cavalry carried a sarissa. Their "official" name seems to have been prodromoi, and the alternative designation is a bit of a mystery.

Which the prior use of the sarissa would explain. 

This gets increasingly tenuous. There is no clear, unambiguous example of any cavalry, certainly not of any Companion cavalry, using a weapon called sarissa in Alexander's reign - even you might agree with that formulation.

But this does not preclude the 'tenuous' possibility of Macedonian cavalry using it in Philip's reign.

Therefore, it is vastly more probable that the sarisai in Pelopidas were infantry weapons, in which case the Thebans were frontally engaged by the phalanx, in which case there is no evidence for a charge by cavalry into the front of hoplites at Chaironeia.

The probability seems to rest on the idea that without an unambiguous statement in its favour, a weapons system could not have existed.  If we look at (for example) accounts of Gallic cavalry in action in Caesar's Gallic War, we find no statement that Gallic cavalry used swords.  Is this reason to deny that they did so?  Naturally, absence of specific mention of a weapon is not proof that it was used (this we work out from other clues), but it need not be taken as proof that the weapon was not used.

I think that to make progress on this point we should examine the hypothesis that Alexander (and perforce Philip on the other wing) led sarissa-armed infantry (basically phalangites or, presumably - if we can settle the armament question - hypaspists) against their opponents' hoplites.

I leave anyone to outline the arguments in favour of this option.

Its not impossible that hoplites could be surprised and broken by aggressive lancers, but it would be extremely difficult for that to occur with the infantry having wounds to the front because that implies that the cavalry kill their way through resisting infantry and that is very unlikely.
Roy

I think we've already had some of this discussion.  Patrick does appear to be the only one who can conceive of a cavalry attack where the wedge leader selects and kills targets with the xyston, rather than drops it when it sticks in an unlucky victim (probably the first if he is using the momentum of the horse to carry him through) and draws his sword.  I had not occurred to me though that this plays into the "all wounds to the front" argument.  Certainly, in a cavalry attack like this, we would expect a mixture of wounds - lance, sword, trample.  But is Plutarch being poetic here? 

If one looks for references to the xyston breaking in use during Alexander's lifetime one finds just one - at the Granicus, when fighting against cavalry (Arrian, Anabasis I.15.6).  Two weapons have broken - Alexander's and that of Aretis.  A third Companion, Demaratus, hands Alexander a fresh weapon, which Alexander uses to take the Persian leader Mithridates out of the fight by striking him in the face.  Alexander then fells Rhoesaces with a thrust into his chest through his armour.

We may note in passing that in I.15.7 Alexander strikes down Mithridates with a doru (dorati) and in I.16.8 he slays Rhoesaces with a xyston (xusto) - and this is the same weapon that Demaratus handed to him as a doru.  Arrian notes that the xystois kraneinois (cornel-wood xystons) gave the Macedonians an advantage over their Persian opponents, who were armed with the palta, a small throwing-spear (Xenophon uses an identical designation for this weapon).   If one wished to press a semantic point, one could note that in Arrian I.6 the Macedonian infantry are armed with dorasi (spears) while in I.4 they use sarissas, and conclude that doru is an equivalent term for sarissa and hence the xyston can be termed a sarissa, but such narrow semantic arguments do not add to understanding.

Having noted how the terminology of Arrian varies, we may now return to the matter of broken lances.

In the Alexander Mosaic, broken lances (xyston) are conspicuous by their absence.  Alexander has just skewered a Persian cavalryman, but this is his first, and the weapon does not seem to be breaking.  There are some dead and demising hoplites in the scene, and as indicated earlier the Companions seem to have been the only possible causes of their demise (dead bodies do not usually retire back behind friendly lines).  The inference is that the Companions used a drill or technique that allowed them to deal with infantry without breaking their weapons.

What could this have been?

As mentioned earlier in the thread, Alexander's penchant for aiming at the opponent's face might give us an important clue.  The face and neck of a hoplite opponent would be an excellent target for a Companion,  and would have the advantage of knocking the target down whether or not he got his shield in the way.  Once down, subsequent members of the wedge would have a target on the ground with opportunities for a downward thrust.  The first hoplite to go down would knock into the second, and meanwhile the wedge would be pouring in, adding casualty after casualty like a saw-blade ripping into wood.  The point-man of the wedge could recover quickly enough to hit the third hoplite in the file, the xyston point still being at the right height and in the correct direction, and most of the hoplites would simply not know what had hit them.

The beauty of using the face as target is that few if any xyston shafts need be broken.

There seems to have been an optimum height above ground for using the xyston point: Alexander on the Alexander Mosaic shows it as being level with the waist of a cavalryman (perhaps a cavalryman on a Nisaean steed or similarly largish breed).  This height would equate to the face of a hoplite or the chest of a cavalryman mounted on a pony or small breed of horse.  If this conclusion is correct, then the optimum 'striking height' of the xyston may have been an element in the design of the weapon as it is too useful to be merely coincidental.

One aspect of this system of attack is that it could not work against hoplites in othismos configuration, i.e. with shield-to-back rather than at the usual 3' per man front to rear spacing.  Since othismos seems to have occurred part-way into an infantry fight rather than as a shove at the outset, this is not a problem for the suggested Macedonian cavalry attack routine.

What might be a problem is dealing with all those downed hoplites: it is assumed that the following personnel in the wedge will have their xystons pointing downward and be ready to jab at anyone on the ground and still moving or trying to get up.  Since most downed opponents are likely to be stunned from the xyston impact and subsequent fall, procedure was probably to thrust a hole in anyone not showing a lot of blood just to be on the safe side.

The Companion wedge would thus rely on reach, impact and momentum, moving on to targets that had not recovered from the initial surprise of seeing the lead infantryman go down without being able to affect his attacker.  Cavalrymen using this technique would have to be well trained and practised in order to ensure accurate strikes against face-sized targets - the best and most accurate would thus be used as file leaders with any who were less precise being assigned to rearward positions within the wedge for 'strafing ground targets'.

But is Plutarch being poetic here? 

I would suggest holding him innocent until proven guilty of poeticism. 

[Erpingham]

Lots of points there, Patrick.  I think the lance breaking issue is a bit of a red herring, though.  The real issues are the weapon getting stuck in the target and its difficulty of handling inside a dense infantry formation, which may be waving all manner of weaponry about with which it could tangle.  To keep momentum (which we all agree is important in this speculative reconstruction), I'd suggest dropping the lance and drawing a secondary weapon.  I think cavalry of the period carried a decent sword - a kopis / machaira? - which suggests he was well prepared for such an eventuality.

[Duncan Head]

The probability seems to rest on the idea that without an unambiguous statement in its favour, a weapons system could not have existed.

Nope - merely that if there is no evidence for it, it probably doesn't exist - and it's not safe to assume that it does.

In the Alexander Mosaic, broken lances (xyston) are conspicuous by their absence.

The Companion behind Alexander, the one in the white helmet, carries a spear shorter than Alex's - you can see his spearhead level with Alexander's horse's nose. It may be a broken xyston (in which case the visible "spearhead" may be that originally at the butt). The cavalryman ahead of him, the white helmet-plume set against the dead tree, seems to be using a sword. Perhaps he's broken his xyston?

Neither of these is definite, but I don't know where in the mosaic you would expect to see evidence of broken lances: we don't actually see much of the ground that the cavalry have charged over, which would presumably be where broken bits would lie.

[Jim Webster]

You might hope to see bits of spear sticking out of infantry who'd been killed by the cavalry ;-)

Frankly I don't suppose it was the sort of thing an artist would bother putting in. I'm not sure I've ever noticed detritus on the 'floor' in any ancient painting etc

Jim

[Duncan Head]

The mosaic is precisely the one that does have detritus on the floor, though....

[Mark G]

It would be even worse if it used renaissance perspective, just ask ucello!

[Patrick Waterson]

FYI here is an image of a 200-man Macedonian ile charging 300 Sacred Band deployed 6 deep. Have I got the wedge right?

I think the wedge should be a basic triangle, though that is an interesting interpretation.

[Patrick Waterson]

Lots of points there, Patrick.  I think the lance breaking issue is a bit of a red herring, though.  The real issues are the weapon getting stuck in the target and its difficulty of handling inside a dense infantry formation, which may be waving all manner of weaponry about with which it could tangle.  To keep momentum (which we all agree is important in this speculative reconstruction), I'd suggest dropping the lance and drawing a secondary weapon.  I think cavalry of the period carried a decent sword - a kopis / machaira? - which suggests he was well prepared for such an eventuality.

The xyston itself also had a useful butt-spike, so that one could carry on using it if it did get broken.  At the Granicus, when Alexander was fighting on the riverbank, he had broken his xyston and called for another one - but his next man was also using a broken one.  Another of his Companions, presumably a non-front ranker, passed him a fresh weapon, with which he was immediately able to move out and attack the Persian leader Mithridates.  It is likely the fighting on the riverbank had slowed the wedge, but it is interesting that 'resupply' from a man behind (or behind and to one side) was possible in mid-fight.

You are right about swords being carried and used: Plutarch even tells us that the sword was Alexander's favourite weapon and he had a specially light, strong one as a present from the King of Citium.

The probability seems to rest on the idea that without an unambiguous statement in its favour, a weapons system could not have existed.

Nope - merely that if there is no evidence for it, it probably doesn't exist - and it's not safe to assume that it does.

Which leaves the matter (or the usual perennial problem) of exactly what constitutes evidence, which to an extent turns on what the little grey cells make of it.

In the Alexander Mosaic, broken lances (xyston) are conspicuous by their absence.

The Companion behind Alexander, the one in the white helmet, carries a spear shorter than Alex's - you can see his spearhead level with Alexander's horse's nose. It may be a broken xyston (in which case the visible "spearhead" may be that originally at the butt). The cavalryman ahead of him, the white helmet-plume set against the dead tree, seems to be using a sword. Perhaps he's broken his xyston?

Neither of these is definite, but I don't know where in the mosaic you would expect to see evidence of broken lances: we don't actually see much of the ground that the cavalry have charged over, which would presumably be where broken bits would lie.

Good observations; this suggests that whatever Alex's men have just charged through, leaving a scattering of hoplite bodies in the scenery, it took out a few lances.  It also suggests that whatever they have just charged through did not slow or detain them for long enough to let men in non-leading positions to pass replacement xystons forward.

[Jim Webster]

Good observations; this suggests that whatever Alex's men have just charged through, leaving a scattering of hoplite bodies in the scenery, it took out a few lances.  It also suggests that whatever they have just charged through did not slow or detain them for long enough to let men in non-leading positions to pass replacement xystons forward.

I think at this point it behoves us to remember that it is a work of art, not evidence produced for a coroners court

Jim

[Erpingham]

Good observations; this suggests that whatever Alex's men have just charged through, leaving a scattering of hoplite bodies in the scenery, it took out a few lances.  It also suggests that whatever they have just charged through did not slow or detain them for long enough to let men in non-leading positions to pass replacement xystons forward.

Actually, our evidence of passing weapons forward is someone passes one to the king.  He probably would have given up any other piece of kit or his horse too.  But if a fellow trooper had asked?  And again, this is a work of art, not an illustration in an Osprey campaign book, so the fact that Alexander has a fully intact xyston could be to do with the iconography and composition, rather than an attempt to depict an actual moment.

[Patrick Waterson]

I would say again that Hellenic and Hellenistic artists did try hard to get their details right, as far as we can judge - interpretative art was not really their thing, depiction was.  Had Alex been fighting with a broken xyston at this juncture he would have been portrayed as doing so (and it might have looked more heroic, as might his smiting down a Persian with a sword, but he is not so portrayed so we can conclude he had an intact one).

The idea of art as the inspiration of the artist and history being an optional extra is a comparatively recent phenomenon (apparently Christianity had a lot to do with it - or one can blame the Renaissance and argue over the details in da Vinci's paintings ).

Actually, our evidence of passing weapons forward is someone passes one to the king.  He probably would have given up any other piece of kit or his horse too.  But if a fellow trooper had asked?

He would probably have got one.  Unfortunately we do not know the details of how a wedge formation was organised, but one can conjecture on the basis of logic that the best men would be at the leading edges, and that they would be the ones who would have priority for intact lances - in the mediaeval era each man's lance was his own, and a friend or liege lord might get it but nobody else, whereas in a regular unit one has the option of ordering priorities, especially as the weapons are usually issued by the throne or the state.

Granted we have just the one example: it raises the possibility - even likelihood - that front men could get their lances replaced, though as you indicate it does not render it certain.  I think it a reasonable procedure to have, the question being whether the Macedonians would agree.

[Erpingham]

I would say again that Hellenic and Hellenistic artists did try hard to get their details right, as far as we can judge - interpretative art was not really their thing, depiction was.  Had Alex been fighting with a broken xyston at this juncture he would have been portrayed as doing so

I think we need to agree to disagree on Hellenistic art.  I claim no great knowledge but what I do know seems to suggest idealisation of the human form was standard, for example.  Portraiture of Alexander was very stylized, IIRC.  We are, I think, very short of extant examples of Hellensistic painting, certainly on the scale of the Alexander mosaic.  So it is OK to suggest that the artist had in front of him a description of this exact event in detail (an account now lost to us - art historians seem to debate which battle this is, let alone be able to point to an exact description of the incident depicted) but it is speculation.  Personally, I see a very fine composition rather than a detailed history lesson.  Unless we think Alexander did fight bareheaded, there is one concession to style in his image, so why not more?