Friendly fire (don\'t use your dory underhanded in a phalanx)

[PMBardunias]

Its really annoying that the Renaissance manuals appear just when spear and shield was falling out of fashion.

There are some very detailed Renaissance manuals of fencing with rapier and large round double-grip shield. The shield's grip is not a central porpax and the stabbing sword is of course shorter than a dory, but there are parallels that could prove interesting.

[Robert Vermaat]

First, let me thank you guys for piping in and in fact thank you for the work you guys and Stephanos are doing. I know you spend a lot of time and money on this and don't recieve the credit you deserve in unraveling these questions.

But of course! Thank you!

Two - this grip maximizes the length of the shaft. An overhand grip is only possible roughly in the middle of the shaft, this one allows you (by tucking the end under your armpit) to get the best reach. We use this because we have the complaint by Syrianus in mind that the soldiers found their spears to be too short against cavalry, and this might be part of an answer.

I do love when my predictions are verified. How much of your spear shaft extends back beyond you, or is the end of the spear under your arm?

I think this picture illustrates it better: the spear butt can be even closer held, but the main thing is balancing it with your elbow. You see that my shield cover my body from my ocreae to my shoulder, and when I crouch a bit this cover me from chin to shins.


This one shows how the spear is in fact lower than the top of the shield (the spear should ideally rest on the rim of the shield), while the other shows how the arm protruted with an overhand grip:

Three - It's a matter of protection. Where an overhand grip would expose your arm, this does not, and it allows you to raise your scutum to cover your the lower part of your face. I realize that our LR scuta are larger than your hoplite shields, and that may also account for a difference.

This is probably a bit complex, with the amount of coverage changing during the strike and recovery. It would be nice to have video from the front of warriors doing both to see this. I thought that the overhand grip, allowing the spear to be held higher, would allow the shield to be raised higher as well.

There's no need for that. We can remain covered by our shield at all times and do not need to raise it more.

I'm not sure how much different that would be from your situation, but I think we do not need to be too agile with the spears because our enemies are either heavy cavalry or similarly hiding behind large shields.

Was the driving force behind the adoption of this formation by the later Romans the need to fend off cavalry? I am interested in the evolution of various shield walls, for I think they are functionally far more different than generally accepted.

We do not know that for sure. We have only Syrianus to account for that (cavalry), but somehow there's a development during the 3rd century that ends up like us. Our course it's not new - Arrian proves that it belonged to the Roman battle theories, but the emphasis shifts. It's surely possible that it was the enemy from across the Danube that developed the Roman shield wall, but it might also be civil wars - we always tend to look at an enemy, but overlook what the effects are of similarly equipped forces facing each other. The Romans always loved missiles, so maybe larger shields and a shieldwall were the Roman answer to that Roman threat.

I think the guys in the picture bend the 1st rank will also have a problem with that overhand grip. Especially the ones in ranks 3 and 4 (and I think that you had deeper formations than that, am I right?) will experience problems when the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranks have to level their spears - the end will no doubt get in the face of the men behind them. How do you cover that problem?

We always have to remember that hoplites had a long history, but hoplites by the end of the 5th c, which is the usual default period when discussing hoplites, were using spears that did not balance in the middle, but much closer to the rear. This limited the length of shaft poking behind them and helped to keep rear rankers safe. I notice that your spears need to be held in the middle. Is there a possibilty of such back-weighting in your weapons as well?

No counterweight for us. I've never seen anything like it. But our spears are shorter I think (7 to 9 foot) and may not have needed it and still be of effective length.

Also, there is some evidence that only the first two ranks of hoplites used their spears in combat. This too keeps the formation simpler and safer.

We know the first 4 ranks all had similar spears, 3 using them underarm and the 4th stabbing overhand.

[hoplite14gr]

Paul, thanks from me too.
Read the pdf emailed answer

Agree with Robert that the grip maximazises the length of shaft.

We faced though a problem when we executed "To vathos himisiaze" = halve the depth.
The aim is the rear rankers shield to touch front rankers shoulder.
Lots of weird staff happened with 2 people who used "high underhand".

Robert thanks for pointing the limitation of trying high underhand for rear rankers and I am inclined to agree with you.
I just want to have most likely failed experiment so to speak against that theory with evidence.

2 rank vertical are enough for the phalanx anything in exess we found to be hindrance.

Kind regards

[M. Demetrius]

2 rank vertical are enough for the phalanx

It's good that you have enough guys to be able to make that determination.
More Greeks! More Greeks! More Greeks! More Greeks! More Greeks!

[Sean Manning]

Its really annoying that the Renaissance manuals appear just when spear and shield was falling out of fashion.

There are some very detailed Renaissance manuals of fencing with rapier and large round double-grip shield. The shield's grip is not a central porpax and the stabbing sword is of course shorter than a dory, but there are parallels that could prove interesting.

Yes. The problem for us linguistically feeble North Americans, though, is that for Pietro Monte you need to be fluent in Latin, and for Marozzo and Manciolino you need Italian. None has been fully translated into another language, although they probably will be within the next five years.

A fellow named Manouchehr Khourasani is also working on Iranian fencing manuals which cover spear, sword, axe, mace, dagger, and shield. He's publishing most of his work in Spanish. So many languages, and only so much time to learn them.

[M. Demetrius]

While only slightly off this topic, 2 Samuel 2:23 confirms that the butt end of a spear can be lethal. "But he refused to turn aside. Therefore Abner struck him in the stomach with the butt of his spear, so that the spear came out at his back. And he fell there and died where he was." Ouch.

[PMBardunias]

It is a plea I make often, but this shows why those of you with panoplies and enough men to do so need to try some quantitative experiments. We can say that two ranks are optimal and the third causes disturbance, but if you could show it through a quantitative experiment, then publish it in any form, others could cite you (like me!). I wonder if Jasper would buy such a thing?

Some examples of quantatative experiments:

Line up two ranks of men and stab at some target, perhaps a row of circles on a board, for 1 minute. Do the same with 3 ranks, with the rear ranks stabbing forward but not hitting the target so we don't have to control for their hits. We can easily compare the number of "hits" with both formations. If there is much interference the total should go down.

I'd be curious to see your men use a stick with a sponge with washable paint in place of the sauroter to get a frequency (hits/time) of friendly fire stabs. Try it for different grips.

Some metric for defense, with the front ranks blocking incoming strikes in 2 and 3 ranks.

These are just off the top of my head, there are many more involving movement in formation etc.

If any would like to try such a thing, I'd love to discuss it. The set up has to be done right to make sure that we can run accurate statistics afterwards. If we had multiple groups willing to do it, the data would be really robust.

[hoplite14gr]

David good one.
I went through the original Greek : http://www.biblekeeper.com/Greek-Septua ... muel_2.php
Though the the text was translated from Hebrew in the Hellenistic period it describes very well what happened to any unfortunate who fell down during the phalanx combat.
The experienced fighter (Abner) does not turn his spear but used his butt-spike.

Paul on experimental numbers. We used 6 hoplites (2 pairs 3 ranks) initially. We started getting the idea but we were not satisfied with the feeling of "compactness".
We thing that 9 hoplites (3 pairs 3 ranks) give a better feeling. The rightmost file has freedom of moving the right arm but that the exception.

Basic difference between the phalanx and shield wall is the porpax-antilave that allow the advantage of pushing with the aid of your shoulder.
The roman/medieval shield boss does not make it easy on that.
Try the following: with no equipment push a stack of sacks (i.e. with saw dust) with your fist to fall, then try putting your shoulder - its easier

In Thermopylae 2007 we found that 6 men (spearless) could push 3 men (spearles). Guess that Pagondas and Epameinondas were vindicated.

Professional scholars, especially those in Universities can get aid from the schools of Engineering in establishing models of mechanical factors (mass weight hardness) of matrials and groups of men even get computer models from the IT school and a degree of experimentation with the aid of the Universities athletic clubs.
I feel that history/archeology projects must be combined desipline projects in the 21st century.

I found some experimental suggestions interesting and I will see what can be done

Kind regards

[Sean Manning]

I agree Paul. Because experiments are rarely possible in the humanities, we should take advantage of them when we can.

Even asking a standard set of questions to different groups of hoplite reenactors (and asking for clarification to straighten out technical jargon) would be useful. In 50 years, its much more likely that a published summary will be available than that the RAT archives will be available. And some of the more conservative Classicists might be more willing to read it once its been edited and published on paper!

[PMBardunias]

Even asking a standard set of questions to different groups of hoplite reenactors

This sounds like a good idea, but I've been doing this privately for some time now and I can tell you that if you ask any two reenactors the same question you will get three answers. The problem is that there is no standardization and the answers will always be "this worked for us" and I feel that this is better", without a true systematic comparison of all options with something that is objectively measurable. We should be able to come up with various experiments that will give us something to measure. There are very few studies like this that have been done. The most notable was to test if hoplites could actually run as far as the claims for the charge at Marathon. If a study were done properly, I'm sure we could publish it someplace.

[hoplite14gr]

Why not all of us go to renactment section.
Lest use Paul's questions as a starting set.
Then we all see what feed back we get.
Most re-enactors are not scholars but the will be interested in scholarly questions.
All groups would be happy to get scholarly credibility.

Kind regards

[Paullus Scipio]

Alas, for lost opportunities !

The coming together of many Hoplite re-enactors for the 'Marathon' celebrations would have been the perfect chance to try many 'practical' tests.

Perhaps if the somewhat lower key smaller event now being proposed occurs, there may still be an opportunity...... D

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

I for one will be there,and very willing to try any idea that will be proposed!