Ancient Armies YouTube video: Could an Infantry Line Wheel?

[Sean Manning]

Hi Justin, I think that is a good summary of how things worked in the drilled Greek and Macedonian systems (and how some things which look easy on a wargames table could be much more complicated on the battlefield!) I'm not sure how much is valid for Romans or earlier Greeks. Romans seem to have placed a big emphasis on 'follow the standard' rather than on ranks and files, and they often fought in looser formations so if a few guys had to jog a bit and dodge around each other to form up in a new direction it was not a catastrophe. The average Greek militia probably had to figure out anything more complicated than 'form up and advance' as they went along. There is a bit in Keegan's Face of Battle where a survivor of Waterloo says that in the moment they found a way of doing a movement that was needed, but it did not look like a diagram in a drillbook. But as far as Xenophon's Spartans or Asclepiodotus' Macedonians go, I think its a good overview and that the animations help people understand things which might not be as clear in drawings with arrows.

It also brings up the question of just what Big Al was doing in the opening stages of Gaugamela!