They were as good as any other....myth!

[Polinik]

And yet the Spartans were regularly getting beaten in wrestling, as at Thebes, and pankration to the point that they stopped competing in events that required them to submit to others shamefully.

Regularly? Which centuries are you referring to? Certainly not those times when they ruled Olympia for 44 years in wrestling. And I hope evidence in this brave and maybe too confident statement of yours does not lie in the painfully incomplete lists of victors in competitions including Olympic games.What reference is there to this,just name it,I will trust your words.

Giving orders and taking them so as to move men in the field is by all ancient accounts far more difficult that hoplomachia.

No one compared the two.But neither take 20+ years to master.Especially when you start at +-7y.o. Both of them together on the other hand do take 20+ years. There has to be a reason for agoge being so long.

Not sure where you are going with this because the vast majority of doctors never perform brain surgery.

Ok I will rephrase. Following are „individual fighting skills“ many of you say are useless.
When in phalanx,do you need to have stamina to be able to swing spear on several men without tiring or being pulled down by their body weight on your spear? Do you need technique to aim for exposed parts and hit them with accuracy? Does your left hand need be strong enough to lift shield for yourself and your brother on the left,and do it for as long as it takes? Do you have to have strong legs and back,so enemy or two of them will not push you and therefore brake the line? Do you have to have guts,skill and body to survive when wounded,grounded or left weaponless in fight,to disarm or kill the enemy in same situations without any or with improvised weapons?..Do you have to be aware not to be surprised with some spear tip? Do you also have to be mentally strong and disciplined not to brake and forget you duty in this hellish environment(personally I think this was the point of agoge)?
-You answer is yes...And what are all this than „individual fighting skills“? And how can they be useless or neglected on purpose by any army? What tactics can win when othismos starts if arms and legs are week,and if it takes 10 swings of a spear to hit a right spot,and if broken spear means certain death...? If you are weaker/less brave or worse in technique than the opponent you will die,multiply this by 8,10,20 and you will have a broken line and eventually a broken phalanx...

But then you write this, in which you describe a "hollywood" version of a Spartiate!

How it is Holywood version when I say only men who trained in warfare long and hard could chalenge the other who trained long and hard.
It does not matter what they do,or where do they come from but what training did they went trough...You explained this yourself „Unless that shoemaker spends a few days a week in a gymnasium training as in individual combatant and springs for sessions with Hoplomachoi. His training to fight AS AN INDIVIDUAL may well exceed that of a Spartiate...“
SO, UNLESS HE RECEIVED THE SAME AMOUNT OF TRAINING he can not challenge anyone who did...Spartiate,Theban shoemaker or Corinthian farmer,of Argive hoplite or any other who trained systematically and completely- „well trained Greeks“ are „those who received a training,and a lot of it“ .And not all Greeks trained the same.

The thing is we know all Spartan citizen received organized training,and about other people from other cities and their number we can speculate. So we can not generalize and say „Spartiate was the same as any other...“,because it would mean that he was the same as the one who barely trained,or did not train at all.

What the farmer lacks is the one thing we know that the Spartan system provides- a superior ability to fight together in groups.

Agree.I still support the fact that group fighting won the wars,and was prime goal of Spartan army training.I just can not let the individual skill part being left behind.

Nice discussion by the way.

All best