Othismos: Classical vs Crowd Theory Othismos

[PMBardunias]

A third order would be given and all the ranks would push forward only as many steps as the order would have been shouting something like (en (one)- dio (two)).

I don't see this as at all at odds with the crowd-othismos, in fact I wrote in my original article that men may have chanted in the ranks. The famous call for "one more step" may have been quite literally such a call. We know that Spartans sang to each other prior to battle. A chant like "Artemis Agrotera" would work quite well. One job of the rear rankers may have been to lead such a chant as in rowing. I stress the link between chanting, common to impart unison to many types of labor such as "work-songs" on chain gangs and sea shanties, and dancing to promote coordination of movement within the phalanx. Also the crowd advances in discrete steps, starting and stopping, due to the fact that crowd density will decrease as a phalanx advances a pace and repacks after. Only when one side is giving way will you get a rolling advance, and by then you are no longer a "crowd" in terms of the mechanics. It becomes a line of individuals pushing.

The type of overpenetration you describe would be very difficult for a crowd due to the discrete stepwise advance, particularly if shields overlap in the way I describe it. For a single file to end up penetrating the enemy phalanx it would require the promachos to break out from under the aspis to his right, but also each successive man in the file to do so as well. Also, and this may not be obvious, the same thing has to occur on the other side, each man in the file has to break away from the men beside them who are each bearing some of the weight of the push against his shield upon theirs. Frankly, I am not sure it can happen in a proper crowd othismos, much more likely would be that the promachos kills the man before him and if he chose to break ranks to move forward the file would simply not follow him. There would be low pressure on his back because the moment he steps forward a step, even if the file follows, the pressure drops greatly and out of the crowd mechanic that transfers force efficiently. The crowd can generate extreme force, but only over very short distance. A single step forward breaks the pressure.