specifics in Spear fighting combat

[PMBardunias]

The statement that they favored columns for mobility is something like an assertion, isn't it?

Everything I write is an assertion, take it for what its worth.

I'm a believer in a fairly flexible hoplite who's a marine one summer and a partisan the next, and then fights in a phalanx the third--in the 4th century, mind you--but on the battlefield, I don't see the least indication of a Napoleonic mindset in forming. Rather the opposite--everyone seems to mostly give the other side all the time they need to form.

This is not true, case in point, Epaminondas at Mantinea. Ironic since the Spartans had used this ruse against the Argive long before.

And surely the Diodorus I quoted above added to Xenophion shows that the Theban problem was, in fact, morale? My assertion is that the only reason to form a column deep is for the support of morale.

If we look at the evolution of the Theban deep phalanx, we will see that it first appears with Pagondas at Delium. We are told that he formed the deep phalanx for mobility, not morale, in order to break through the Athenian phalanx and disengage. What happens is that they break the Athenians. In terms of morale, any sense of safetly gained by being in the 18 ranks is far outweighed by the fact that your flanks are so exposed to envelopment.

If you try to push with fifty men deep, you'll very quickly see what the limits of the system are. Try it--you'll be convinced.

I can see Paullus shaking his head. Suffice it to say that you can in fact push quite well in 50 ranks. The current understanding of how hoplites pushed, side-on, with their shoulders, is not realistic and clouds this issue.

I thought that Brent Nosworthy had pretty much debunked the reverse slope? If you haven't read "Anatomy of Victory"

I will have to get a copy. Have you read :

A Reappraisal of Column versus Line in the Peninsular War
James R. Arnold
The Journal of Military History, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 535-552