Triple line

[Paullus Scipio]

Henk wrote:-
"thats not what i mean... i mean people getting pierced wounded by Pila will have to drop their stuff or fall over and i would love to see some pikemen try to march with pikes forward while several of them fall over, drop their pikes and fall against others in the rank...

my idea is a pila volley makes the initial distraction after which a swift attack from Roman side cancelles the entire use of the phalanx.. of course, some Romans will be pierced, and wounded, but since the mobility of a Roman Cohort is infinetly larger than that of any Phalanx, I do not believe a Phalanx can hold out for long with an all out assault by mobile Roman troops, ranging from Velites, Triarii to hastati........ "
Actually, Henk that idea is not what happened, and , as we shall see the pila volleys don't seem to have been sufficient to stop the onward push of a tight-packed phalanx.....
Brazelton wrote:-
"Well if it renders the hoplites' shields useless, then yeah, I'd have to say the Romans win."
Also incorrect ! The Romans win, but not for that reason, see below.......
Polybius' account does not survive, but there are two accounts of the battle of Pydna drawn from it that give us a detailed picture of what happened when Phalanx met Legion

From Plutarch's life of Aemilius Paullus, a very interesting detailed account...

"As the attack began, Aemilius came up and found that the Macedonian battalions had already planted the tips of their long spears in the shields of the Romans, who were thus prevented from reaching them with their swords. (the sarissas/pikes thud into the scuta and a shoving match develops..as Aemilius arrives the pila phase is already over and the phalanx, un-fazed, and despite suffering casualties, has closed with the Roman line..) And when he saw that the rest of the Macedonian troops also were drawing their targets/peltai from their shoulders round in front of them, and with long spears set at one level were withstanding his shield-bearing troops, ( i.e. they stand up to pila fire)and saw too the strength of their interlocked shields and the fierceness of their onset, amazement and fear took possession of him, and he felt that he had never seen a sight more fearful; often in after times he used to speak of his emotions at that time and of what he saw.( The Roman General was obviously very impressed by the serried Phalanx) But then, showing to his soldiers a glad and cheerful countenance, he rode past them without helmet or breastplate."

.....as the battle develops...

"The Romans, when they attacked the Macedonian phalanx, were unable to force a passage, and Salvius, the commander of the Pelignians,( an Allied cohort, fighting on the flanks) snatched the standard of his company and hurled it in among the enemy. Then the Pelignians, since among the Italians it is an unnatural and flagrant thing to abandon a standard, rushed on towards the place where it was, and dreadful losses were inflicted and suffered on both sides. For the Romans ( i.e. Peligni) tried to thrust aside the long spears of their enemies with their swords, or to crowd them back with their shields, or to seize and put them by with their very hands; while the Macedonians, holding them firmly advanced with both hands, and piercing those who fell upon them, armour and all, since neither shield nor breastplate could resist the force of the Macedonian long spear ( an exagerration - only 100 or so Romans perish in the whole battle, which lasts an hour - roughly two a minute), hurled headlong back the Pelignians and Marrucinians, who, with no consideration but with animal fury rushed upon the strokes that met them, and a certain death. When the first line had thus been cut to pieces, those arrayed behind them were beaten back; and though there was no flight, still they retired towards the mountain called Olocrus, ( the Roman line is pushed back....but retains its cohesion, and does not break...) so that even Aemilius, as Poseidonius tells us, when he saw it, rent his garments. For this part of his army was retreating, and the rest of the Romans were turning aside from the phalanx, which gave them no access to it, but confronted them as it were with a dense barricade of long spears, and was everywhere unassailable.
But the ground was uneven, and the line of battle so long that shields could not be kept continuously locked together, and Aemilius therefore saw that the Macedonian phalanx was getting many clefts and intervals in it, as is natural when armies are large and the efforts of the combatants are diversified; portions of it were hard pressed, and other portions were dashing forward. ( Pressure along the front is uneven, as is the ground - gaps open in the phalanx front as it presses the Romans back..) Thereupon he came up swiftly, and dividing up his cohorts, ordered them to plunge quickly into the interstices and empty spaces in the enemy's line and thus come to close quarters, not fighting a single battle against them all, but many separate and successive battles. ( i.e. no longer keeping their line intact - a risky ploy) These instructions being given by Aemilius to his officers, and by his officers to the soldiers, as soon as they got between the ranks of the enemy and separated them, they attacked some of them in the flank where their armour did not shield them, and cut off others by falling upon their rear, and the strength and general efficiency of the phalanx was lost when it was thus broken up; and now that the Macedonians engaged man to man or in small detachments, they could only hack with their small daggers against the firm and long shields of the Romans,( their sarissa/pikes became useless in a close-quarter melee..) and oppose light targets/peltae to their swords, which, such was their weight and momentum, penetrated through all their armour to their bodies. ( The Macedonians afterward were dismayed at the horrendous wounds inflicted by the 'gladius hipaniensis)They therefore made a poor resistance and at last were routed. (although a pelte can be equal to a scutum in single combat - see gladiator combat for example- en masse the scuta aginst small pelta is big advantage...)
But the struggle between them was fierce. Here, too, Marcus, the son of Cato and the son-in law of Aemilius, while displaying all possible prowess, lost his sword. Since he was a young man of the most generous education and owed to a great father proofs of great valour, he thought life not worth the living if he abandoned such spoil of his own person to the enemy, and ran along the ranks telling every friend and companion whom he saw of his mishap and begging them for aid. These made a goodly number of brave men, and making their way with one impulse through the rest, they put themselves under his head and fell upon the enemy. With a great struggle, much slaughter, and many wounds, they drove them from the ground, and when they had won a free and empty place, they set themselves to looking for the sword. And when at last it was found hidden among great heaps of armour and fallen bodies, they were filled with exceeding joy, and raising songs of triumph fell yet more impetuously upon those of the enemy who still held together. Finally, the three thousand picked men of the Macedonians,( the King's bodyguard) who remained in order and kept on fighting, were all cut to pieces; and of the rest, who took to flight, the slaughter was great, so that the plain and the lower slopes of the hills were covered with dead bodies, and the waters of the river Leucus were still mingled with blood when the Romans crossed it on the day after the battle. For it is said that over twenty-five thousand of their enemies were slain; while of the Romans there fell, according to Poseidonius, a hundred, according to Nasica, eighty.
And this greatest of all struggles was most speedily decided; for the Romans began fighting at three o'clock in the afternoon, and were victorious within an hour; ( the decision was unusually a short battle, but the pursuit was long, hence the huge slaughter..) the rest of the day they spent in the pursuit, which they kept up for as many as a hundred and twenty furlongs, so that it was already late in the evening when they returned. All the rest were met by their servants with torches and conducted with joyful shouts to their tents, which were ablaze with light and adorned with wreaths of ivy and laurel;......."

Livy, at 44.41, gives a similar account drawn mainly from Polybius' lost passage, but since this post is getting long, I won't quote it in full !

He does make the point; "The most manifest cause of the victory was the fact that there were many scattered engagements which threw the wavering phalanx into disorder ( a little exaggeration by the patriotic Livy!..far from 'wavering' the phalanx is shoving the Roman line back...) and then disrupted it completely. The strength of the phalanx is irresistable when it is close-packed and bristling with extended spears; but if by attacks at different points you force the the troops to swing around their spears, unwieldy as they are by reason of their length and weight, they become entangled in a disorderly mass; and further , the noise and commotion on the flank ( here helped by the fact the Romans deployed elephants) or in the rear throws them into confusion, and then the whole formation collapses. That is what happened in this battle, when the phalanx was forced to meet the Romans who were attacking in small groups, with the Macedonian line broken at many points. The Romans kept infiltrating their files at every place where a gap offered.If they had made a frontal attack with their whole line against an orderly phalanx, the Romans would have impaled themselves on the spears ( by their scuta, as Plutarch tells us they did) and would not have withstood the dense formation; this is what happened to the Peligni ( and the rest of the Roman line, so long as they tried to keep their line intact - they were forced back...) who at the start of the battle incautiously encountered the Peltasts."

Well, pretty plain then...the volleys of pila did not stop the phalanx, who roll on and thrust their pikes into Roman shields, and shove the Roman line back, ( and all are evidently agreed that the Macedonian phalanx is irresistable when like this...this is why Polybius is at such great pains to explain to his greek audience how the Macedonians were defeated twice by the Romans - Pydna and Cynoscephalae).But they get a little disorderly in doing so - only when Paullus allows the line to 'break up' and infiltrate the gaps are the tables turned.