Depictions of Underarm Phalanxes

[Macedon]

This is an issue that needs a lot of re enacting to check. Yes, there is always the danger of hurting one of your own but these men surely knew how to do it. Do not forget that the Macedonian sarissa was held underarm and its sauroter was also pointed towards the men behind... Unfortunately, re enacting in deep files is very rare so such "experiments" are difficult to conduct. Maybe they kept some kind of distances when changing grip, maybe they were sufficiently protected by their shields... very hard to say with any degree of certainty.