The Makedonian phalanx -- why such depth?

[Paullus Scipio]

Paralus wrote:

You are suggesting that "next" means some several ranks behind?? Please, spare me. Word games, word games.

...look again at the De Selincourt translation, widely recognised as the best one. There is no "next" nor anything like it. Nor any reference to the double pay being "for valour" and even if there was, since it was the valiant who were selected as leaders it would still not preclude him being a "half-file leader". I have said that your interpretation is a possibility, though I have doubts. After all, if it was intended to retain the prickly array of sarissas, wouldn't we expect to see at least the front five ranks being Macedonian instead ( using your interpretation) of only three ? What then was Alexander's intention, and on the basis of "horses for courses", who was it intended against ? The old Persian array of missile men/archers behind a front-rank wall of spara/mantlets had been devised as optimal against horse archers, but with the spara propped up, was not very mobile. The front rank sparabara deterred cavalry charges because the horses would not crash into it, while foot archers out-ranged horse ones. Alexander had in effect brought this array back, only with the sparabara replaced by a Macedonian sarrissaphoroi for the same purpose - fending off cavalry for which a single row of sarissa was quite sufficient.This new formation was also more mobile than the old Persian one, and could, for example advance on enemy cavalry behing it's row of pikes. It would appear at his death that behind the misleading rumours of a campaign in Arabia, Alexander may have been intending a campaign against the Horse Nomad peoples who surrounded the Persian empire to it's north..... ( the old Macedonian phalanx was not very effective against horse archers for obvious reasons). Arrian himself did something similar in his "Array against the Alans". Equally obviously, none of the 'Successors' adopted this formation optimised against Horse archers because none of them planned a war against them......

Anyway, we digress.

The point of all this is that you began by saying that an objection to the idea that the Phalanx fought in 'half-files' ( and I am not alone in believing this, see e.g. Connolly who posits similarly) was that there were no references to 'half-files' or 'half file leaders' in the Macedonian Phalanx, or something similar.
I believe I have demonstrated that in fact there is undeniable evidence for the 'dimoirites' ( half-file leader by definition) in the Hellenistic manuals, that we can trace this rank back to the army of PtolemyI and it's purely Macedonian phalanx, and even via Arrian to Alexander's.
The fact that Arrian refers to it in connection with a 'new fangled' formation should not distract from the fact that the rank existed in Alexander's army. D