The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[PMBardunias]

But, again, Paul, how would a phalangite be able to carry such a shield and employ its porpax while also wielding a sarissa two-handed? Could such soldiers perhaps have not used the porpax, only slipping their left arm into it after they had dropped their sarissa and were preparing hurriedly to engage in close combat?

The answer to the first question is that they would have to move the porpax off center towards the antilabe in order to allow the wrist to pas through it and extend beyond the rim of the shield. Off center porpaxes are not uncommon even in old-style aspides and such are shown on the reliefs at Ephesus for whatever they are worth. Given the state of preservation of dedicated arms that could be seen by contemporaries, I think they are more accurate than you give credit.

I see no reason to simply attack your notion of using just the wrist strap, bouncing off such ideas seems to me to be what RAT is for, but lets see how it would function. There is a problem with making the antilabe a porpax and using the strap to help support the sarissa's weight. See my diagram below. Because the strap is flexible, it cannot support asymetric loads without changing shape. To a sarissaphoroi this means a sawing across his neck as the side of the shield with the wrist falls, as in the central figure. The only way around this is to use a porpax to shift the force towards the center of the shield or move the attachment points of the strap left to shift the suspension system. This relies on the left hand portion of the shield counterbalancing the force on the right and pivoting on the left strap attachment. The problem is that the man's body limits how acute this angle can get, thus how much you can use to couterblance the sarissa's weight.

Of course this assumes that the strap was used in any way to support the weight of the sarissa. Later pikemen got along just fine without one. The problem here is that if its not helping you hold up the sarissa, its surely hindering you moving freely, so there must be a reason that they still drew their shields in front of them before battle other than as a big hanging pectorale.