[split] Phalanx warfare: use of the spear

[JaM]

back to the overarm grip, Paul, i spend a lot of time trying to test your grip, but must say, it is completely unusable to hold the spear like that while striking a target.. your little finger would be under way too much stress from such thrusting, which gets painful quite fast. Therefore that posture, is definitely not something you would want to practice in combat, where you actually want to hit somebody, which means, actual findings made by Chris Matthew in his book still stands - overarm thrust with spear held in the back, cannot achieve same level of reach than high underarm thrust.

Anyway of course it doesn't mean that they would not use spears overarm in combat, but i would tend to believe front rank would use spear underarm for initial clash to get the most of the spear length, then they would move to overarm, as both lines get closer.

Now probably most important question is from what time heavy sauroter started to appear, and what was its development in regards to spear length.. that could tell quite a lot about their actual tactic development..