Formation depths

[nikgaukroger]

Flicking through an old edition of Ancient Warfare reading about the battle of Bagradas I noticed that it was suggested that the Carthaginian militia would have formed up 16 men deep.

This made me wonder what evidence we have for the depths of formations of the armies Rome faced. It struck me that the only ones we might know with any certainty are that pikemen would usually be 16 ranks, 32 at Magnesia, but is there any information about others?

Any thoughts?

[Ghostmojo]

The presence of the Spartan adventurer/condottiere Xanthippos might have had something to do with that, and I guess it would have been far from typical. Whether his 'reforms' and training stuck after his departure is a moot point.

We don't know if they would have been armed as pikemen. I suspect not. The Spartans didn't go pike until Kleomenes III some 30 years later (but X might have been more of a visionary than K3). X was certainly responsible for organsing them in phalanx fashion.

[Paullus Scipio]

Ghostmojo wrote:

X was certainly responsible for organsing them in phalanx fashion.

I don't think this can be true, Howard. Mago's army in Sicily in 341 BC deployed a Greek mercenary phalanx,and the Carthaginians at Crimisos (339 BC) deployed 10,000 white-shielded Hoplites in a phalanx ('Oplitais Leukaspioi') who advance slowly and in good order ( Plutarch; Timoleon XXVII.3)

Furthermore, as soon as Xanthippus is appointed in command in 255 BC prior to Bagradas he leads "... the army out and drawing it up in good order before the city and even beginning to manouevre some portions of it correctly and give the word of command in the orthodox military terms.... ( Polybius I.32)

Evidently the Carthaginian army was already trained and drilled as a Greek-style phalanx , especially as they could operate in conjunction with the newly arrived Greek mercenaries, for Polybius describes the army later as a single phalanx : "...he sent the elephants forward and drew them up in a single line in front of the whole force, placing the Carthaginian phalanx at a suitable distance behind them..." ( the mercenaries formed the right wing of the phalanx).

As Polybius makes clear, Xanthippus did not reform the army or drill it in 'new'tactics, but rather picked a tactical plan which made the most of the elephants and the Carthaginian phalanx, supported by superior cavalry, by picking a flat battlefield.

[PMBardunias]

Flicking through an old edition of Ancient Warfare reading about the battle of Bagradas I noticed that it was suggested that the Carthaginian militia would have formed up 16 men deep.

I hope you enjoyed that article, its one of mine. We are not told how they formed. I've been away from thinking on Carthage for a while, but if I recall there was some earlier testimony that they formed 10 deep. Judging from the names of officers 10 may have been the early greek rank system as well. A look at Greek rank depths will show that they are all over the place, but usually multiples of 4 or 6. See Pritchett's book (http://books.google.com/books?id=z1kbyWN...ce&f=false)

In this instance we are told that Xanthippus drilled them in the "proper terms" etc., so I believe he would have ordered them in the common hoplite rank depths that are multiples of 4. Because they were a semi-competant levy, he would have chosen to add depth, and so formed them in 16 like the less skilled Syracusans facing Athenians. He could have gone further and ordered them in 24, but if he had, I think it would have been noted.

Remember that this levy would have been spearmen, not sarissaphoroi. They probably were not even hoplites, with aspis and dory, but rather with a shorter spear and a shield from the near-eastern tradition, though I admit they may have adopted hoplite panoply.

I am less happy with my treatment of the Cavalry formation, but with so little to go on it was a guess based on the going practices.

[Ghostmojo]

Ghostmojo wrote:

X was certainly responsible for organising them in phalanx fashion.

I don't think this can be true, Howard...

Thank you for pulling me up over what was a shorthand answer Paul. What I probably should have said was reorganising them into the particular battle-plan he wished to utilise. Prior to their altercations with the Romans, the Carthaginians had a long history of varied collisions with Greek arms and certainly had modelled their forces upon the most successful of their adversaries. The mercenary nature of their later armies probably reinforced this tendency, and one wonders how much of a military culture still really existed at Carthage by this time, other than an aristocratic officer corps/strata elite.

I certainly didn't mean that the hoplite/phalanx organisation was new to them. I thought perhaps their units might have just fallen into disarray after the initial reversals against the Romans and that X instilled some backbone, fibre and structure back into them.