specifics in Spear fighting combat

[Kineas]

I too cannot access it, but if it follows the english at all, then there is the notion of " each general marshalling his own men." between the formation and the rank depth. This would indicate to me that the order of these generals is customary- or both the order and rank depth.

Why would the "customary" or the "in the manner to which they are accustomed" refer to "General"? Someone help me--show me the word generals? Ekaston means each/every, and clearly (to me) refers to the Greeks. Where's the generals part?

Ekeluese de tous Ellenas (He ordered the Greeks) hos nomos autois (in the manner customary to them) eis Maxen outw taxthenai kai stenai, (to form lines and to stand just as into battle). suntaxai d'Ekaston tous eautou (each having to form for themselves). Etaxthesan sun epi tettarwn. (So they formed lines in four deep.)

I'm fairly humble about my Greek translating abilities, but none of the words like strategos seem to appear in these sentences.

hey favored columns for mobility- its the fastest way to move a body of men in formation. The psychological factor was more an issue in the revolutionary period. In either case, as I said, they deployed from these columns. It is a modern fiction- well as modern as Oman at least- and English bias that regularly has French columns crashing into lines intentionally in the Empirical period. The truth is more sublte, a combination of the French inability to time the deployment properly against an enemy on a reverse slope and the superiority of the 2 man -vs- 3 man line, but this is not the forum for that discussion.

The statement that they favored columns for mobility is something like an assertion, isn't it? I'm a believer in a fairly flexible hoplite who's a marine one summer and a partisan the next, and then fights in a phalanx the third--in the 4th century, mind you--but on the battlefield, I don't see the least indication of a Napoleonic mindset in forming. Rather the opposite--everyone seems to mostly give the other side all the time they need to form. And surely the Diodorus I quoted above added to Xenophion shows that the Theban problem was, in fact, morale? My assertion is that the only reason to form a column deep is for the support of morale. If you try to push with fifty men deep, you'll very quickly see what the limits of the system are. Try it--you'll be convinced. And I'd like to say again that as far as I can see, we have only Xenophon, a very biased source, to suggest that it was the DEPTH of the Thebans that won.
I thought that Brent Nosworthy had pretty much debunked the reverse slope? If you haven't read "Anatomy of Victory" (which he's got a really nice re-write of coming out soon) you should--I think Brent understands the period manuals better than any other historian writing on the subject--in fact, he's the ONLY historian to dump myth and read all the manuals and all the journals and discuss the actual battlefield mechanisms vice re-hashing the Victorian accepted truth.