Remind me again how this was supposed to stop arrows?

Helmets and shields, user. Helmets and shields. Also, for the most part, the formation was not as dense as that depiction. Usually, they were half as dense as that, with every other file actually being at the end of the adjacent file, and only marched up to form that formation when they needed to repel a cavalry charge. Each file would be 16 men deep, and there'd be a little more than a man's breadth between the files on average. This makes the phalanx actually very mobile, especially when combined with the heavy drilling and physical conditioning of the men. The fact that their pikes were shorter than the later pikes used after the Wars of the Diadochi caused a pike length arms race certainly helped. I posit that the Macedonian Phalanx as seen under Philip and Alexander was far more capable of operations in broken terrain than is commonly thought of them, especially in relation to the later Roman style.

Problem with the shields was that the Sarrissa was a two handed pike. You couldn't properly use a shield.

Most of his opponents didn't realize this weakness and treated them like Greek Hoplites. Other times, Alexander would use his own skirmishers and there was always the option of chasing down the archers with the Macedonian cavalry.

Macedonian phalanx is overrated as fuck by vidya and nu-historians, if you actually delve into ancient military history (meaning beyond Wikipedia) during the time it was used you'll see how limited that formation was

The idea was if the back ranks waved their sarissa's side to side it would knock arrows out of the air. Dunno how effective it was. But 25 spears all waving back and forth might to a reasonable job at stopping at least some.

T. History fag who read it in a book.

It doesn't. When someone dies, the others fill the gap. This is why troop moral is so important

See this guy. Not 100 percent effective but better than nothing. Sarissas in particular would be long enough to pull this off.

Fuk meant this guy.

>Alright Corporal Aeschylus, the boffins have come up with a near foolproof, I say foolproof method of protecting you from arrows without a shield! What I want your men to do is wave your spears back and forth when the enemy releases, and this will, right, this will knock the enemy arrows right out of the air! Also as per usual we'll be killing a goat in the middle of the arrow storm so that Zeus will blow the arrows away. Happy? Get on with it then.

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However, they had shields nonetheless, and of reasonable size as well. Considering that their opponents included the Persian Sparabara and the Indian massed archers and they weren't immediately put out of a job, we can determine that the existing defensive measures were more than effective enough against enemy archers within reason. We can even say that the body armor they wore was probably not even the driving factor there, as Alexander tried to get rid of it before/during his Indian campaign before his soldiers pretty much mutinied over that fact. However, it must be said that soldiers tend not to have an objective view on such things, and that the morale given by having it might outweigh its physical effects.

That is commonly held to be made up bullshit.

It would kinda work against javelins but it's very, very iffy.

Don't even try to use it against arrows.

>Fighting an opposing force that has the training and leadership to successfully execute complex tactics
literally how often did this happen in a time where most couldn't read?

That's just it. The only concerns were professional militaries, and those were rather rare. Rome being the notable exception. It must be said that while the Polybian Legion was not made of professional soldiers, at many periods in its existence it might as well have been, as the soldiers had all been extremely battle hardened by constant warfare.

You don't need to know how to read in order to develop a strategy

>Bows contemporary with the classical-era phalanx are pretty wimpy.
Scythians/Sakas already had powerful compound bows

Macedonian Tactics: Slingers or Archers would screen for them obviously. If enemy infantry or cavalry advances, slingers, javelin-bros, and archers slip through the ranks and launch projectiles from behind the phalanx. Also, light cav probably roaming around looking to catch out and butcher unprotected archers. Heavy cav is saved for the hammer and anvil finale.

All the time? Greek were fighting other Greeks constantly, and occasionally Persians or Italians. Peer engagements were common.

Note that while the phalanx was the core of classic Greek armies it wasn't the only part. Skirmishers with bows, slings or light spears would harass the enemy, fight other skirmishers and run away from the battle. At this point in history all cavalry was light cavalry and did what you'd expect, scouting, launching opportunistic attacks and running after skirmishers so they run away from the battle.

This but those groups were tribal and cared more about looting and rape than operational success. Getting them to stick around for a campaign when the money and pussy runs out would be hard. Also not paid and drilled professional soldiers like guys in Alexander’s corps.

Arrow hits pole, loses kinetic energy. Not harmless but certainly a lot less lethal at that point. They also had a small shield attached to their left arm with a helmet and a cuirass, most areas were protected enough it would have been fairly harmless by the time gravity is dropping it.
Typical heavy infantry with shields only really had been fielded once till they get destroyed by slingers/archers and cavalry. After that armies started to take a more combined arms approach as a matter of course. You have to kind of keep in mind a couple of these pikes were enough to stop a multi horse pulled chariot by modifying their formation, an arrow is kind of a weak threat compared to getting trampled by horses and a chariot.
This is also a good point, pikes then were more tuned to fighting other pike formations under the left overs from alaxanders generals and they typically just hired mercenaries or were working with a tyrant that already had an army trained in a different function.
They still had typical heavy infantry of the time along with skirmishers to fill in spots.

A significant numver of arrows would get deflected by the hundreds of spears in the air and fall harmlessly on helmets.

fair point

Definitely, the Greek allies would have supplied plenty of hoplites. I think they would have made poor skirmishers since they were encased in like 70lbs of bronze. Hoplites are way more maneuverable though than a Macedonian cuck in a phalanx that can only move forward or get massacred. I can’t remember how hoplites were used. Probably best to put them on the flanks where the phalanx is most exposed. Imagine being in the Persian infantry facing these guys. You are in cloth and holding a shitty machete and a wicker shield. Half the time you lose the shield to block a javelin from impaling you. You are too much of an incel to lob the javelin back at the enemy, who is totally yoked and has trained since birth to kill. Pure execution.

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Hello fellow Europa Barbarorum player

I doubt most of them trained from birth to do it, typically hoplites were sort of like Americas national guard. They probably have a job on the side and do soldier stuff when it's called for. That's how they could afford having the weapons and armor to begin with and go do it during the off season between farm planting and harvest. Most armies were made up from labor from other jobs. The warrior thing from birth is such a fucking silly meme. So 1-4 somewhere they start to learn how to walk, that's 4 years. 4-14ish they're fragile as fuck and it's more about instilling values and conditioning. 14-20 they're about big enough to do something lethal.
I grew up fighting since around the time I could walk and it's just a coincidence I have a job doing that sort of thing. I bleed like everyone else. Really probably would have been better at it too without most of the fighting shit having a better system in place that turns people into fighters when they're more capable of it rather than fuck your life and well being the entire time.
Most of those guys had weak shields and what not because they also had bows and quivers, that was a failure of their commanders not having an overall strategy about moving their formations and directing them correctly. If anything it's sort of a bureaucracy problem that disincentives people to take the initiative when numbers get too large and leads to big failures that look like they should be easy wins.

You don't understand! Polybius says it's true! Common sense? We don't need that. Polybius couldn't have been bullshitting us, just accept what he says on face value.

Most of what you just said is wrong. Why the fuck are you talking when you clearly don't know a thing about the subject at hand?

No, hoplites did not carry 70 lbs of equipment, nor was it mostly bronze. No, the Makedonian style phalanx was actually a very maneuverable formation, whereas the Greek phalanx had some problems with maneuvering because they had nowhere near the same level of training, plus they stood in far closer order than the phalangites. The Greek phalanx therefore was truly much more of a forwards facing mentality, whereas Makedonian phalanxes you could actually maneuver in battle, with countermarches being common. Look at Guagamela. In the middle of the battle, in an incredibly hard fought ordeal in the middle, Alexander was able to get a number of his pike formations disengaged while the fighting was going on and shifted them over to the far right to support his winning cavalry charge. Then, he was able to wheel them all around and go and assist his beleaguered left flank. No Greek phalanx could disengage and then countermarch in good order. They weren't trained to do it. They weren't organized to do it. They didn't have the signals capacity to do it.

Furthermore, the vast majority of hoplites were almost completely untrained. For the vast majority of Greek history, it was thought that the only real qualification one needed to be a good warrior was to be a good athlete and be courageous. They did not drill. They did not practice in weaponry. They were part time soldiers, members of the upper class who could afford expensive armor. They were citizen soldiers, called up only at times of war.

Now, there must be something said briefly about the later period. Over time, the Greek hoplites actually ditched most of their armor. By the time of Phillip, combined arms warfare had gotten so prevalent that the Greeks believed that they needed to lighten their hoplites so they could chase off peltasts.

>warrior from birth meme
Yea for the most part you would be right. The meme is only accurate when talking about hoplites in Ancient Sparta and the Sacred Band of Thebes (300 man elite shock unit where everybody was buttbuddies with the guy next to him). Those heavies were full time soldiers and forbidden to do anything else.
Polybius>Livy, Plutarch
Plutarch isn’t even a historian. Decent biographer though

>hoplites did not carry 70 lbs of equipment
I literally guessed and Wikipedia says I’m right. Pretty sure I read that was the average weight in a textbook. Of course, their armor was bronze just google it lol. I don’t known what the total equipment weight would be though.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplite#Body_armour

>phalanx maneuverability
It is mainly a defensive formation, and while Alexander may have had success shifting them at Guagamela, in general they were not easy to redeploy in an engagement. If they are out of formation they are virtually defenseless. You are the first person in history to argue the Macedonian phalanx was flexible in maneuvering.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx#Weaknesses

>Hoplites
Most might not have been full time soldiers like they were in Sparta and Thebes. But to say they were completely untrained is ridiculous. A spear is not an easily wielded weapon and (I know you doubt this) moving in over 70lbs of armor surely would require practice. Spartan, Athenian, and other free city hoplites definitely drilled.

>changes around Philip’s rule
Maybe those adjustments were made idk. I explicitly said I didn’t know how hoplites were used in the Macedonian army in my comment.

Well seeing that the Greeks got their shit kicked in by the Roman Legions, I'd say at least once

The hoplites from ancient sparta is what I was refering to when a heavy infantry only army got entirely slaughtered to a man and armies started taking a combined arms approach. Come back with your shield or on it worked for quite a long while after. Except other armies started being far more successful, even if they were pederasts. I have difficult time believing spartans instilled with values about slaves were faggots too. They were pretty stupid. Basically meat shields. I'd be surprised if most of them could even read or write anything. It's only a tragedy if the upper crust got done in with them.

weren't* bad spelling error. Fairly sure spartans were rapist faggots too.

Bow technology sucked ass back then and archers didn't matter

Read Xenophon. The troops were getting wrecked by archers until they countered with slingers.

>A bunch of pointy sticks in a deadly wall
>Chops off pointy end with a sword.

What now?

Get stabbed by the guy behind the first guy.

It's a combination of Helmets and Shields, Back lines whacking them in the air, cavalry, and skirmishers that protect phalanx. Not one alone can do it. In other words it's really hard to get a volley of arrows into them when you have to watch out for other dudes with arrows or horses coming to kill your ass.

If you really want to fuck a phalanx real good you do what the Romans do and hit them with pilum like javelins. Something that can punch through a shield and weight it down while still being low enough that other pikes can't whack them away.

The Romans started fucking rolling over everybody when they dropped the Greek tactics and adopted/invented the maniple formation, literally a phalanx with joints.

You legitimately don't know anything about what you're talking about. That estimate is notedly bogus. The full panoply usually wasn't 70 pounds. Not even a full suit of medieval armor weighed that much. Far more reasonable projections, such as by Krentz, is roughly 30 lbs. Also, more common than the bronze cuirasses as the linothorax, which is lighter and made up of multiple layers of cloth glued together. It was extremely effective as an armor. By this point, if a hoplite was wearing body armor, they'd be wearing a linothorax unless they were exceptionally rich

>phalanx maneuverability
I'm not the first to argue it. I'm not arguing that they're the most maneuverable formation in the world, but I'm arguing that the professional soldiers in Phillip and Alexander's army were much more mobile than is usually conceived of, especially when compared to the later Roman legions. You could even charge in formation with these instead of just walking forwards. You had actually a lot of room between men, and that is attested to in actual descriptions of how they were ordered. And no, an unmaneuverable formation would not have been able to do what was achieved at Gaugamela. No other army at the time could have pulled off that maneuver either. Compared to everyone else, the very highly drilled professional foot companions were something else entirely. I cannot stress enough how important proper drilling is to maneuverability on the battlefield. Now, can even Alexander's pike formations get disorganized as they're fighting over rough terrain? Absolutely. However, if I had to actually move them on the battlefield, I wouldn't choose anyone else until the Romans show up. It cannot be understated how difficult a disengagement and countermarch is at this time. For the most part, generals could only really throw there men in at pre-arranged signals, and once the lines clashed they could only wait for the outcome.

Cont.

Oympressive

No, they were almost entirely formally untrained in the use of their weapons and especially in drilling. This only changes very late, when a small core of a city'state's military might be made up of semi-professional soldiers, who they'd hire out as mercenaries to others. But if you want proof of the fact they didn't train, how about we take it straight from the source?

>No such group training or competition now exists in any city-state at all, except maybe in a very small way.
Plato, Laws 831b

>... military training is not publicly recognised by the state...
Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.12.5

>“That means that it is a long march for our city to perfection. For when will Athenians show the Lacedaemonian reverence for age, seeing that they despise all their elders, beginning with their own fathers? When will they adopt the Lacedaemonian system of training, seeing that they not only neglect to make themselves fit, but mock at those who take the trouble to do so?
Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.5.15

Additionally, it is commonly maintained throughout much work that the Greeks believed that physical fitness was the most important factor for being a good warrior. They did not practice with their arms, but they believed wrestling was one of the best training measures. Additionally, look at the Olympics. For the most part, these are all exercises which would just provide some general fitness for war rather than any direct contests of battle (other than wrestling). This includes running in armor. See below for another example. The cavalry and ranged troops are practicing, but the hoplites are just exercising.

Cont. because of long quote stealing space.

>After this, when spring was just coming on, he [Note] gathered his whole army at Ephesus; and desiring to train the army, he offered prizes both to the heavy-armed divisions, for the division which should be in the best physical condition, and to the cavalry divisions, for the one which should show the best horsemanship; and he also offered prizes to peltasts and bowmen, for all who should prove themselves best in their respective duties. Thereupon one might have seen all the gymnasia full of men exercising, the hippodrome full of riders, and the javelin-men and bowmen practising.
Xenophon, Hellenika 3.4.16

Also, most would say

Mate, you're basing your sum total of knowledge off of a couple wikipedia paragraphs instead of actually looking into it. Please, do some more research.

They get wrecked by less things than archers by then. 1 on 1, a group of hoplites was worthless against two groups of slingers without any support from anyone else. Are they going to form a circle and hope people run out of rocks? Or get decimated by rocks flanking them. Historically battles only mattered because it reduced part of the population that would fight back banding together. Now is a bit different. The wealthy use to fight those battles, now they are meat shields so they can buy a third home or another yatch.

Excuse me, apparently I forgot to finish my last paragraph:

Also, most would say that the spear is one of the easiest weapons to pick up and use. You might not be as good as some tai-chi master or some bullshit, but they have been known as the best weapon to arm large bodies of untrained men for a reason. While training certainly helps, if you give someone a spear and a shield, they will acquit themselves reasonably well no matter the level of training.

They didn't drop greek tactics. Rome was allies with a particular league of people that used them. They usually got to pick their battles and had allies that supported them if they didn't. Most of italies history is the inhabitants getting slaughtered.

That's not exactly accurate. Rome used phalanxes in the Greek style for a while until they started expanding into the hills so much.

I would like to note that I'm not saying that the Romans had more maneuverable formations, but rather that the phalanx of Philip and Alexander is often seen as so far inferior in that regard because it is lesser. I believe it's an inordinate bias caused by later engagements against lesser forces.

>Most of what you just said is wrong. Why the fuck are you talking when you clearly don't know a thing about the subject at hand?
Shit, the man was right. Great posts.

As the phryric war proved, even Alexander
the great would have had a hard time against the polybian roman formation. It's not the same as fighting light eastern infantry or even other greeks

>them getting murdered en mass and losing every city except for Rome proves otherwise.
>if you form a manipule and throw spears you get to make jokes about africans being spear chuckers. If rome won a tactical victory, then the entire history is about how they had spear chuckers that defied doing the conventional thing despite losing their entire population constantly all the time.

a formation is called for, they're not like warhammer fantasy where they're stuck that way the entire match

Like at the Battle of Pydna? Why do you think of the Roman maniple’s maneuverability?

This is the entire reason the Romans adopted the manipular legion.

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That's entirely wrong. The whole roman phalanx against the lasting generals the battles went so bad they started tearing their own clothes screaming about how hopeless everything was. That wasn't even a phalanx philip or alaxander would use, they got lucky in a tactical situation and now it's somehow strategically better to have your generals doing that?

If we're talking strictly Pyhrric Wars, the Romans never actually really beat Pyrrhus's phalanx unless it was disordered by their own elephants charging back through the ranks. For the most part, it was his allied detachments (which did not fight in Macedonian style) which got ruined. Even then, these were with lesser trained men and using much longer and more cumbersome pikes than Philip and Alexander worked with. With all that being said, what Rome's decisive advantage in the conflicts was was not its strength of arms, although those were indeed great, but their ability to replenish their manpower, which, as is famous, Pyrrhus was not.

Pydna is used as the be all end all example of Macedonian phalanx vs. the Roman Legion. It is certainly useful in some regards, but some take too many lessons from it. As I've said earlier, I definitely view the armies of Philip V and Perseus as lesser than those of Philip I and Alexander, and that their lesser quality and showing in this battle makes people take a more skewed stance on the earlier phalanx's maneuverability than I think is warranted. That being said, the manipular system was developed precisely to counter the issue of fighting in hills, and I believe worked on that extremely well. Of course, I also take the stance that the Romans tended to have a lot looser formations that some tend to think of. I rate their maneuverability as excellent, whereas the phalanx of Alexander as merely good.

Alaxanders formations were beyond excellent because they had people with better mobility spear heading the charge in another direction. His entire empire fell apart when he kept using them as an anvil. If you have half a dozen other people doing the same thing with more mercenaries it more or less does the same thing for a prolonged time. There is a reason why the greeks and mores invaded siciliy with the pheonocians rather than being a unified manipular force that repels everything. The entire time the arabs were expanding the slave trade and conscripting. Their societies had no social mobility and somehow not getting slaughtered was suppose to be an accomplishment.

Can you try that again, in English this time?

Probably not, statistically if it wasn't in the English advantage economically to try to turn their society into a hell hole, everywhere else is speaking Spanish in a hell hole.

I could try in german, most of my family decided to murder germans instead of speaking their tongue. They decided to do things a different way than murder though to begin with so they could speak that way if they fucking felt like it.

Is somebody testing out a chatbot?

Form Turtle.

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