Othismos tests

[PMBardunias]

There may be light at the end of the othismos tunnel. I am working with a few historians, one of which was a student of Van Wees, to come to some plausible middle ground. I have been both denounced by the Orthodox for showing that a charge adds nothing to Othismos, but rather makes it weaker, and by Heretics for resurrecting othismos in a more reasonable form. Perhaps this means I am moving in the right direction.

What I wanted to post here for discussion is the results of some testing we did in 2015 when I attended a gathering of hoplite reenactors at Marathon in Greece. For the first time we were able to test the force generated by files of men in accurate panoply. We affixed a force meter to a tree and had hoplites push against it in various configurations pushing the way men do in a dense crowd. This is mostly leaning forward on the back of the man in front with your aspis covering your chest and belly. Only the rear ranks have enough freedom of movement to really get low and push. The rim rests on the upper chest and left shoulder and on the left thigh. A file of just 6 men, flanked by a pair of files to simulate being within a taxis engaged in othismos, produced 368 kg (811 lbs) of force when measured against a force meter affixed to a tree. A high level of force could be maintained for a long period of time by leaning forward like dominoes.

So did this prove that hoplites engaged in othismos? "Woo hoo, we are all done!"  Nope.  It did not.  It only showed what could be done. But it did render untenable many of the most pernicious objections to othismos:

1) Hoplites cannot generate great force by pushing in files because (X). There are many flavors of X, but the data clearly show that even small files can generate large mass.

2) If they generated high levels of force, the men would be crushed and unable to breathe. We were able to prove that the men survived the press due to the shape of the aspis, which protected the diaphragm region from compression. No hoplite was injured.

3) Shields could not take the pressure. The sound of creaking shields filled the air, but no shield was damaged.

4)  If othismos were a literal pushing match, then very deep phalanxes, like the Thebans at Leuktra, should have bowled over thinner lines. A separate test, where as many as 15 hoplites were added one by one to the pushing in file, demonstrated why this did not occur.  An interesting feature of such a push is that the force plateaus as more men join the file. As you add men to file, the amount of force each new man adds to the aggregate decreases, thus the total force goes up by only a small amount.  After 12-16 men, each new hoplite only adds a few kgs to the total.  Although these deep ranks do not add pushing force, they do resist being pushed backwards.  The result is a ratcheting advance, with the deep ranks requiring much more effort to push back.

5) It says they fought and pushed! You can't use weapons in othismos. In fact you can. When done properly you are free to use your right arm for a vicious, close range fight. It helps that the head of your foe helps shield you from strikes of his friends. You would want to quickly bind up your foe's blade.

6) From the other side. Men pushed side-on with their shoulders in the shield, afterall, that is why it is hollow. We tried this. I had a group of men I had not taught to push in a crowd-like manner and let them have a go.  They were younger and stronger than most of the rest of us and they produced far less pressure.

Perhaps there are others, so I welcome any questions.

[Justin Swanton]

We're discussing this elsewhere, but has anyone tried doing othismos with sizeable units, i.e. several files wide? I take the point that othismos isn't precisely file vs file since opposing files would not exactly line up, however enough files would line up for one to be able to shove the other file back into its formation - and then get cut to pieces by the enemy files adjacent to the file pushed back.

I'm thinking that in cases like this the file leader would have some control over the pushing, telling his men to ease up if his file was pushing ahead of its neighbours and getting into dangerous waters.

The alternative is that shields overlapped sufficiently for one shield to be always pushing against two others, locking files together and making othismos a rank as well as file phenomenon. Like this:

[PMBardunias]

We're discussing this elsewhere, but has anyone tried doing othismos with sizeable units, i.e. several files wide? I take the point that othismos isn't precisely file vs file since opposing files would not exactly line up, however enough files would line up for one to be able to shove the other file back into its formation - and then get cut to pieces by the enemy files adjacent to the file pushed back.

I'm thinking that in cases like this the file leader would have some control over the pushing, telling his men to ease up if his file was pushing ahead of its neighbours and getting into dangerous waters.

I agree that penetrating a phalanx the way you describe would be suicidal.  This is one reason why I do not think othismos was a local phenomenon and designed to penetrate an enemy unit.  It also was not a battle line wide unit, even if the whole line attempted it at once.  It is a clash of taxeis, with the goal of pushing back the taxis in front of yours until their cohesion breaks due to exhaustion or the perception that they are losing the clash. It is pretty clear that the Greeks saw their job on the battlefield as mainly to defeat whatever unit lined up opposite them in the parataxeis. The number of times we see Spartan or other groups engaged in cyclosis or other tactics that show they are aware of how they can influence the rest of the battle by rolling up the line pale in comparison to the time that victorious units simply chase their opposites off the field and remove themselves from battle.

We did test some of this.  For example, we had three files push forward. Initially this was done to stabilize the central file laterally, because in a real phalanx, they were limited in how they could move sideways. But it showed that both the stabilized central file could focus the force ahead more efficiently and that the two other files interlock with it and add force.

[Imperial Dave]

so refreshing to hear your experiences Paul and for me entirely logical

[RichT]

Yes interesting and thanks for posting. I have some questions/observations:

Did you only push against a tree, or did you try it against another file of men? I can see that health and safety might have some objections to that, but I suspect the dynamics of pushing a tree might be a bit different from those of pushing men.

Fighting while pushing - is there anything a man in the front few ranks can do to avoid being stabbed in the face? "You would want to quickly bind up your foe's blade" - sorry, not sure what that means. If so stabbed and dead or dying in the file, how does this affect the dynamics of pushing? A man in such a state could I suppose still lean, but the direction of his lean would be somewhat undefined, and he could not participate actively. Would he be held up, dead but supported by those around him (like some of these othismos threads)?

Deep phalanxes - "Although these deep ranks do not add pushing force, they do resist being pushed backwards." - how does that work? If it is not becuase they are adding force, then how, and if not, then is the fact that those in front are pushing relevant to the braking effect? (I hope that question is clear - I'll try to rephrase it if not). This is an interesting result though as it would undermine the argument that very deep formations imply a literal scrum.

"Men pushed side-on with their shoulders in the shield" - I'm interested in the dynamics of that since I'm convinced by your argument that pushing requires a flat on ('crowd') position - if not side on and any pressure at all is generated, does this not tend to flatten the combatants laterally?

Your first three points I think prove their points sufficiently (ie that it's not impossible that hoplites could push) - the question then becomes whether they would want to, or actually did. Have you tried the experiment with other types of shield/armour, or this a purely classical hoplite thing?

[PMBardunias]

Did you only push against a tree, or did you try it against another file of men? I can see that health and safety might have some objections to that, but I suspect the dynamics of pushing a tree might be a bit different from those of pushing men.

We did push with groups of men against other groups of men, but the problem was our force meter.  The sensor is a metal block, about 2"x1"x 4". It had to be held by hand with the 4" axis between the opposing aspides.  This failed a few times, cutting my hand fairly well.  Wiring it to a tree made it much more stable, though in every test, data recording stopped when the sensor collapsed sideways- taking some tree with it. So we could push men against men, but not record the force.  One observation that came out of that can be seen in Justin's diagram above.  You actually end up fighting the guy a little to your right. But as to your question, the dynamics are the same, equal and opposite force is actually a requirement for othismos to occur. If the enemy retreat even a pace or so, your own men unpack and you have to close up on the new position. It quite literally is a case of "one more step".  Which is also why the enemy cannot simply jump back and make you all fall over.  Their files have to unpack from the rear, and there is a gradual lessening of force as they do. So before the front rank can step back, you are no longer in othismos.
A note on the word othismos.  I believe it has generally been misunderstood.  It does not mean "pushing", it is a noun.  This means it is a state of being, not an action.  We make nouns of verbs all the time.  To crowd is a verb, a crowd is a noun. To press is a verb, a press is a noun. It is a state in which pressing is occurring.  This is why we see it used in many contexts.  Just like press: I can press against you or a bunch of us can be in a press. I can press you for information. Or we can ever debate freedom of the press. None of that precludes a press at heart being a state where pressing occurs.

My guys were pretty gung ho to try anything, but yes, safety was a problem. I honestly did not know what would happen. As long as we were in one file I knew I could kick out the front aspis if need be to release pressure, but when we moved to 3 files, I got worried. Luckily most of them were in leather, linen or bronze plate, so they would have been fairly well protected if an aspis failed.

"Fighting while pushing - is there anything a man in the front few ranks can do to avoid being stabbed in the face? "You would want to quickly bind up your foe's blade" - sorry, not sure what that means."

You both have one free hand, so have to hook his arm or catch his weapon blade to blade.  You are essentially arm wrestling while pushing. The man behind you is trying to get to him as well, while the man behind him is defending him. The strikes that work in this type of battle are all delivered from above, which makes sense of the growth in popularity of the pilos, which best deflects strikes from above due to its conical shape. The khopis and to a lesser extend the xiphos are point heavy and can be used close-in like a hatchet, with all the power coming from the wrist rotation. The best weapon for this though is surely whatever Xenophon calls an enchiridion (dagger) in his description of the second phase of Coronea in Agiselaus. We have some great vase images of swords being brought down into the joint of the shoulder and neck in the classic gladiator coup de gras strike, perfect for this. Your best defense is that it is hard to hit you and not your foe's head, so his allies cannot easily strike at you.

"If so stabbed and dead or dying in the file, how does this affect the dynamics of pushing? A man in such a state could I suppose still lean, but the direction of his lean would be somewhat undefined, and he could not participate actively. Would he be held up, dead but supported by those around him (like some of these othismos threads)?"

Yes, the dead cannot fall. Such a thing was described at a much later date by Procopius.

Deep phalanxes - "Although these deep ranks do not add pushing force, they do resist being pushed backwards." - how does that work? If it is not becuase they are adding force, then how, and if not, then is the fact that those in front are pushing relevant to the braking effect? (I hope that question is clear - I'll try to rephrase it if not). This is an interesting result though as it would undermine the argument that very deep formations imply a literal scrum.

Think of Sisyphus. The reason that the ranks past 16 or so add little force is because it is difficult to coordinate the pushing past that depth. Much of the force is dissipated before it can be transferred to the front.  But when you push the unit's own front ranks back into a mass, you force them into order.  It may be easier to imagine that 16 ranks are standing in front of a wall.  As long as they are pushing in one direction, the drop in force with distance I described occurs. But if I crush that taxis into a wall, the resistance of the wall is transferred through the lines to my front rank. Unless my guys push over the wall, they cannot push back the enemy unit.
This is where Sisyphus comes in.  Pushing back a deep mass is like pushing up an increasing incline, like a ramp.  As you force the ranks back, they pick up additional ranks and force them into coordination.

"Men pushed side-on with their shoulders in the shield" - I'm interested in the dynamics of that since I'm convinced by your argument that pushing requires a flat on ('crowd') position - if not side on and any pressure at all is generated, does this not tend to flatten the combatants laterally?"

Not quite sure what you mean, but because the pressure comes from behind you, you cannot long hold yourself away from the shield, and it gets crushed to lay across your chest. This came as a surprise to many of the guys who tried to stay in a ¾ or oblique stance. Now you might say, but what about completely side-on. Theoretically this could work, but in reality it is like me trying to hold the oblong sensor between shields.  Even small lateral grinding movements will cause you to collapse off your long axis to your flatter axis. We actually had one guy doing this get spun backwards and ended up with his butt in the bowl of his aspis.  Needless to say, not good.

Your first three points I think prove their points sufficiently (ie that it's not impossible that hoplites could push) - the question then becomes whether they would want to, or actually did. Have you tried the experiment with other types of shield/armour, or this a purely classical hoplite thing?

I am always careful to make no claim that I am sure they did this, but there are some reasons why they might. There is exactly one "rule" of hoplite combat that is not just wishful thinking for agonistic combat. Hoplite armies won battles by holding the dead bodies and the ground they fell upon at the end of combat. This may have its origins in a time when the bodies of rich leaders were covered in expensive armor, as in the Illiad, or when men were bound by oath to protect leaders and bring them home for proper burial. It could then have morphed into a matter of civic pride as it has today. Nemo Resideo is still the motto of the US Marines. However it happened, holding ground was more important than attrition. Given such a ground rule, othismos makes perfect sense.

Then there are happy coincidences. The ancestor of the Argive aspis was some sort of round wicker shield. It would have needed depth for strength in a way that a flat wooden shield would not. See Minoan figure 8 shields. When the shield was remade in wood, if the depth were maintained, this would have performed the anti-asphyxiation function of the later aspis and allowed men to stay in such presses longer. Presses such as this are not uncommon in battle- Zama jumps to mind. But without a way to not get crushed to death, the ability to really generate force is curtailed as you would kill your own front ranks, and more importantly, they will push back at you and ruin othismos.

A hemi-cylindrical scutum will protect you if held diagonal from upper left to lower right, but not as well. I would like someone with a really good scutum to lay it across their front as though they were in a tube. Theoretically the curve would protect you while your shoulders engage both sides of the cylinder, but I do not know how easy they are to squash flat. The one shield that I have seen from another culture that could function well in a press, perhaps not coincidentally, is the lenticular Saxon shield. The problem with these is the boss, which really precludes efficient packing.

[PMBardunias]

so refreshing to hear your experiences Paul and for me entirely logical

Thanks!

In another thread, you guys were discussing why archaic hoplites gave up their throwing spears. I believe early hoplites carried two spears in the same fashion as later Saxon or Viking warriors who formed shield-walls. Like them, they threw one of these, perhaps from the line, perhaps in small sallies spalling off from the line, and retained the other for close combat. Behind them in line were light troops that made up the rear ranks of the taxis who threw and shot over their heads. Unless one side broke from the missile duel, the battles ended in a general advance to combat. These early hoplites may have formed in only 3 or 4 ranks backed by light troops, but under conditions that favored shock combat they could form deeper, let's say 8 ranks, to raise their strength (and if pushing was ever involved or even threatened in this early battles, this becomes more useful).  If you are light trooper behind 8 ranks of men at 3' spacing, you are at least 24 feet behind the front line. That is half a spear throw or about a third to a fourth of a javelin throw. More likely you are even further back.

One could see a scenario tied to simple economics where an increase in the number of men who could afford panoply put proportionally more men in the hoplite ranks than previously. We would then see men who are able to better withstand incoming missiles standing in front of missile troops with seriously curtailed ranges and accuracy. This could have pushed the balance in favor of moving quickly to shock combat and foregoing a missile phase. There is no reason to expect this was a single trasition without reversals. Any time large numbers of hoplites got together, like during the Lelantine war, hoplites may have needed to form deep rather than wide just because of the dimensions of the battlefield and limitations on command and control. Once battles were begun with a general advance, something that used to happen only after a missile phase, the archaic shield-wall became the classical phalanx and lost its rear ranks of light troops.

One thing that may fall out from this, is that the famed Spartan slow advance rather than charge may be a hold over from an earlier period when everyone waded into missile range and slugged it out with thrown weapons. The 7 helots per Spartiate would form these rear ranks nicely. By the time they too had moved on to obligate shock tactics, the benefit of having the discipline to enter combat in good order (Thucydides tells us all armies loose their order in the charge) would be reaped.

This transition need not have happened everywhere in the Greek world. It seems that the throwing of missles survived in Magna Grecia (which makes me wonder about the evolution of Roman tactics). If they were still attempting to engage in missile duels in Ionia with Persian Sparabara, whose formation was designed almost exclusively for this, then it might help explain the success of the mainland Greeks and their failure.

This is of course all my opinion, but I hope that those better informed than myself will consider evidence through the lens of this framework.

[Jim Webster]

I'm thinking that in cases like this the file leader would have some control over the pushing, telling his men to ease up if his file was pushing ahead of its neighbours and getting into dangerous waters.

I'm not sure how much control the chap at the front is going to have. There are going to be all sorts of men shouting, groaning, screaming and whathaveyou
Also the file leader is the one who is desperately trying to stay alive because he's the one within blade reach of the maximum number of enemy
It has struck me that it could be the file closer who could achieve most. He has the best chance of seeing what is going on and could probably be heard by a couple of men in his file, or at the very least could tap some of them on the helmet with his spear.
But with every file closer trying to keep order, I think shouting would be redundant except in cases where they all started shouting the same thing. This in itself encourages me to think of the taxeis as the 'unit' rather than a file

[Erpingham]

You will need to excuse as usual my lack of the details of hoplite warfare but too points occur to me from the above.

One is Paul's point about control is actually crucial to whatever goes on and is one reason why "scrum-othismos" won't work.  The file leader and file closer must control the pressure the line exerts and the file leaders need to act in concert.  Slamming your leading man into the opposite leading man and pushing against his corpse seems unlikely to succeed.  Better he controls the situation and uses his fighting skills, as Paul describes. 

The second is to what degree "othismos" - a state of being - is uniquely hoplite and how much it is an artefact of combat.  We may speculate hoplite kit gave them advantages while doing it but the long list of uses of the word only contain one hoplite-on-hoplite clash.  usually hoplites are fighting someone else or no hoplites are involved.

Finally, as I suggested elsewhere in light of our excursion into non-ancient territory on heavy infantry formations, it is worth looking for comparative purposes at how Byzantine infantry did their othismos.  Similar equipment to classical hoplites - big shield, long spear (though shield had a different design with a boss).

[Imperial Dave]

thanks for the thoughts on loss of throwing spears Paul, also makes sense to me. I can see me losing a lot of time reading all the threads that you have reinvigorated! 

[RichT]

We did push with groups of men against other groups of men

OK thanks, that does clarify things. I may have the physics wrong, but my assumption would be that the force on the front man in one formation would be that of the seven men pushing his back PLUS the eight men pushing his front - in other words, roughly double the force measured by the tree. So you would then be under-estimating the force felt by the front rank by 100%. But I may well have the physics wrong - equal and opposite reaction and all that - so that the tree does apply the same amount of force as eight men. If so that seems counterintuitive to me, but so much in physics does!

If the enemy retreat even a pace or so, your own men unpack and you have to close up on the new position.

That's interesting - wouldn't that mean that such pushing would be a short lived and unstable state, since it is easily unpacked?

A note on the word othismos. I believe it has generally been misunderstood.

Indeed. I've written (in Slingshot) a fair amount on the word - if you are interested I can mail you a couple of articles.

I think 'press' is a good analogy - the word is used to describe close hard fought melees, but in that context does not (necessarily) carry its literal meaning - and doesn't (necessarily) NOT carry such meaning - but the word itself is a poor guide. 'Push of pike' is similar.

Fighting while pushing

OK understand - but you are assuming this would all be with swords/daggers - I would assume most men would still have their spears (why not?), and the reach of a spear would be several ranks back in such a packed formation.

Yes, the dead cannot fall.

OK. But how would this affect the dynamics of pushing? Surely it would remove any possibility of coordination or control, plus the likelihood of a dead man popping out sideways, if not braced from the sides too? Sorry, I understand you might not have tested this for obvious safety reasons, but it seems a problem.

Not quite sure what you mean, but because the pressure comes from behind you, you cannot long hold yourself away from the shield, and it gets crushed to lay across your chest.

Thanks yes that is what I meant, and what I understood - so given any realistic amount of pressure any oblique stance would collapse to a front on stance? That is what I'd assume and the problem I generally have with many statements of the 'orthodox' view (eg Schwarz, Luginbill).

On whether all this was actually done even if it theoretically could be - well, that is indeed the question (and one which there may be no point discussing, since like phalanxes, people seem unwilling ever to give any ground on this question). It is a limitation of the experimental approach - just as Sealed Knot 'pushes of pike', conducted as a 'push of war' with pikes held vertically, show that such a thing is possible, they do nothing to convince (me at least) that this was ever actually done on the battlefield. For scrum othismos, there is also the question of why this style of fighting, if it was effective, was never adopted in any other period of history (or was it - a single clear out of period example of pushing would be worth its weight in gold).

(And cross posted with Anthony saying much the same things... great minds...

[Erpingham]

(And cross posted with Anthony saying much the same things... great minds...

It's usually the version with fools in when applied to me

[willb]

You both have one free hand, so have to hook his arm or catch his weapon blade to blade.  You are essentially arm wrestling while pushing. The man behind you is trying to get to him as well, while the man behind him is defending him. The strikes that work in this type of battle are all delivered from above, which makes sense of the growth in popularity of the pilos, which best deflects strikes from above due to its conical shape. The khopis and to a lesser extend the xiphos are point heavy and can be used close-in like a hatchet, with all the power coming from the wrist rotation. The best weapon for this though is surely whatever Xenophon calls an enchiridion (dagger) in his description of the second phase of Coronea in Agiselaus. We have some great vase images of swords being brought down into the joint of the shoulder and neck in the classic gladiator coup de gras strike, perfect for this. Your best defense is that it is hard to hit you and not your foe's head, so his allies cannot easily strike at you.

It is interesting that your tests use the spears in an overarm position.   A while back there was a discussion about a  book where the author was advocating holding the spear in couched position at the arm pit as he stated doing so would generate more force. 

[Imperial Dave]

You both have one free hand, so have to hook his arm or catch his weapon blade to blade.  You are essentially arm wrestling while pushing. The man behind you is trying to get to him as well, while the man behind him is defending him. The strikes that work in this type of battle are all delivered from above, which makes sense of the growth in popularity of the pilos, which best deflects strikes from above due to its conical shape. The khopis and to a lesser extend the xiphos are point heavy and can be used close-in like a hatchet, with all the power coming from the wrist rotation. The best weapon for this though is surely whatever Xenophon calls an enchiridion (dagger) in his description of the second phase of Coronea in Agiselaus. We have some great vase images of swords being brought down into the joint of the shoulder and neck in the classic gladiator coup de gras strike, perfect for this. Your best defense is that it is hard to hit you and not your foe's head, so his allies cannot easily strike at you.

It is interesting that your tests use the spears in an overarm position.   A while back there was a discussion about a  book where the author was advocating holding the spear in couched position at the arm pit as he stated doing so would generate more force.

interesting point......how was the transition from spear use to side arm use enacted and when. 2nd rank overarm whilst shoving is in play also?

[PMBardunias]

interesting point......how was the transition from spear use to side arm use enacted and when. 2nd rank overarm whilst shoving is in play also?

I think the driving force to enter othismos was either being outmatched by your opponent, fatigue, or having your spear break (which happened often).  If you are facing a spearman who will kill you, you cannot easily fall back out of range, so the best bet is to close to within the reach of a 8' dory with about 5-6' of reach. We know for a fact that some men in battle ended up fighting shield on shield.  At this range a dory is useless, and the spearman must drop his spear and go to the sword if his opponent does.  One could imagine how this might propagate down the line like a zipper.  However it happened, I think it was only after this occurred that the rear ranks moved up to physically support the front. No one was ever thrust from behind into spears.