specifics in Spear fighting combat

[Paullus Scipio]

Giannis wrote:-

PS.Your last post was so long that if needed to respond in the same way I should write an article

:lol: :lol:
...sorry about that, but unfortunately, when I come to the thread, I find that all you 'Western Hemishere' types have made many, many posts overnight while I slept....it is more difficult to 'catch up', and harder to write long posts than read them.
I'll try to keep this short....

tell me a reason why this should have refered to the open order.

....that would require an article to set all the reasons. For now, just consider it a possibility, and approach the subject with an open mind, and read your original sources, not modern writers. Clue: the ancient drill manuals tell us that 'open order' is the normal order and hence has no special name...

So if they switched to close order afterwards,we should be informed of it.

...that is rash assumption. The ancient Greek writers are all from the Hoplite classes and their works are largely meant to be read by their peers, and Xenophon was a professional General. As Kineas points out they choose their words carefully, usually referring to what is significant, and certainly not wasting words and insulting their audience's intelligence by describing what all knew.
This lack of description of 'basics' is of course frustrating for the modern reader lacking even basic Hoplite drill.....

As for your impression that there was not point of adding men to the ranks, then you must of cource consider the Thebans in Delion,and more so in Leuctra and Mantineia(and elsewhere) some idiots who didn't knoe their job and didn't have to extend their battle line,even though they were victorious in all those occasions.

... I was speaking of the general case, not the particular. Epaminondas' column tactics were 'new' and done for precisely the same reason as French Column tactics of the Napoleonic Wars. (Kineas' post will give you a hint) I suggest you study Military History, the psychology of warfare, and the Principles of War in all their variations; then you will understand that 'linear' versus 'column' tactics have recurred throughout History in naval as well as Land warfare, and the reasons why sometimes one, sometimes the other, prevail.

Or you think that in the text from Aristophanes that Christian posted above,the Athenians were staying n front of the gates all day and night in 17 ranks deep in open order,so in close order they would become...8.5?!

....You cannot be serious! :lol: :lol:
Aristophanes is a comic writer ! You don't seriously believe they stood in front of the gates for 24 hours in close order, do you?...(try it some time! BTW if they did, then it had to be in open order, so as to sit or lie down to sleep))...It is a boast...an exaggerated joke! As is the "17 ranks"...everyone would laugh, knowing 17 was an impossible number, ( as you have recognised) so the speaker is ignorant of matters military, a fool, or a boaster, or all. :lol: :lol:
'nuff said.....this post grows too long :wink: :wink: