specifics in Spear fighting combat

[Marcus_Ulpius_Trajanus]

ekeleuse de tous Hellênas hôs nomos autois eis machên houtô tachthênai kai stênai, suntaxai d' hekaston tous heautou. etachthêsan oun epi tettarôn:

Just to be argumentative, I spent some time translating these lines myself. (Shrug). So the Loeb translator was dead right. Never hurts to check.

Note to other reenactors--all of Xenophon is available at [url:2xb6y1wi]http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Greco-Roman.html[/url]

along with most of the relevant texts in Greek and English. Note that all the words in Greek are interactive, so if you want to waste hours (it's not a waste, actually) you can look at the word definitions even if you don't speak a word of classical greek.

And when, as they proceeded, a part of the phalanx burst out, those who were thus left behind began to run; at the same moment they all set up the sort of war-cry which they raise to Enyalius, and all alike began running. It is also reported that some of them clashed their shields against their spears, thereby frightening the enemy's horses. [19] And before an arrow reached them, the barbarians broke and fled.

This is Xenophon again, with the Perseus translation amended by me because a key word, exekumaine, is used to describe things bursting into motion or waves crashing on a shore, as opposed to "billowing" which is used in other translations.
I'm bringing this up because here, and again in Hellenika, Xenophon describes not an orderly march of the phalanx to meet its opponent, with careful rank closing and then a charge--he describes a 'bursting forth" of some warriors, with the rest running in behind, crashing like a wave. Remember, the start of this thread has to do with whther there's much in the way of single combat. I'm trying to steer back that way...

Does the style of that charge have anything to do with the type of opponent? I mean, the passage sounds like they're chasing off horse archers. Seems to me that running at a horse yelling and waving a pointy stick is good way to startle the animal.