04-14-2009, 09:01 AM
No time for a full exposition but if the rear eleven ranks are spectators what are the rear twenty ranks of Thebans, on your reckoning, doing?
The manuals are all well and good but they are written with a view to the 'perfect' phalanx by philospers not soldiers - there are no 'syntagmai' in Polybios but 'speirai' nor do I recall any epigraphic evidence for most of the officers mentioned; though there is little enough for the ones in the 'historical' sources!
There are other reasons for having officers at more frequent intervals in the file; the one mentioned by Xenophon being the speedy transmission of orders.
Polybios' closing criticism of Kallisthenes is also made a nonsense by your system, to whit he says he should have described the correct evolutions as from a double or even quadruple phalanx but if the battle line is eight deep then this is just what has been described! Some cheer for your view may be had, though in that, although he is thinking of a depth of sixteen surely he is also thinking of looser spaced men filling the formation from the rear; though I wonder if they don't march behind the file space they will fill a la Roman Republican quincunx. Alexander approached Granicus in a double phalanx and this may well be further indication of drill approaching your idea,though I would think the phalanx formed properly much sooner than you suggest. Despite Polybios' protests at Issos it marched 30 stades (according to Curtius) formed up (en machen in Arrian forgotten the Latin, doh!). Polybios amongst his many gaffs when regaling Kallisthenes accepts with no demur his description of the terrain (I don't think Polybios ever went to Syria in his travels) the difficulties of which were exagerated for propaganda purposes; for despite Polybios' averring that no phalanx could make the march it is quite clear that Alexander's did.
The manuals are all well and good but they are written with a view to the 'perfect' phalanx by philospers not soldiers - there are no 'syntagmai' in Polybios but 'speirai' nor do I recall any epigraphic evidence for most of the officers mentioned; though there is little enough for the ones in the 'historical' sources!
There are other reasons for having officers at more frequent intervals in the file; the one mentioned by Xenophon being the speedy transmission of orders.
Polybios' closing criticism of Kallisthenes is also made a nonsense by your system, to whit he says he should have described the correct evolutions as from a double or even quadruple phalanx but if the battle line is eight deep then this is just what has been described! Some cheer for your view may be had, though in that, although he is thinking of a depth of sixteen surely he is also thinking of looser spaced men filling the formation from the rear; though I wonder if they don't march behind the file space they will fill a la Roman Republican quincunx. Alexander approached Granicus in a double phalanx and this may well be further indication of drill approaching your idea,though I would think the phalanx formed properly much sooner than you suggest. Despite Polybios' protests at Issos it marched 30 stades (according to Curtius) formed up (en machen in Arrian forgotten the Latin, doh!). Polybios amongst his many gaffs when regaling Kallisthenes accepts with no demur his description of the terrain (I don't think Polybios ever went to Syria in his travels) the difficulties of which were exagerated for propaganda purposes; for despite Polybios' averring that no phalanx could make the march it is quite clear that Alexander's did.
