Iphicratean Thureophoroi

[Paullus Scipio]

Paul B wrote:
[color=blue][i]“Not so at all. In models of this crowd phenomenon, as little as 4 people packed behind you are enough to render you imobilized and at maximun crowd densityâ€

[PMBardunias]

I'm very leary of engaging in anything like argument with either of you, but I can tell you that my thigh will fail long before my aspis. I can stand on my aspis, rock back and forth on the rim, play "king of the castle' on it, etc. I can rest the center of it on a sharp rock and balance on it. I can put the edge up on a saw horse and balance on it...

Try all of that with your thigh, it can do that and more. I can jump up and down on your thigh all day it it won't "fail" (I'm not even sure what a thigh failure would look like). We are not talking about snapping a femur, we are talking about crushing it since the weight is at a single point.

You suggest that the men should stand up straight, using the aspis for breathing room--I suggest that you ask a tug-of-war team to do that, and pit them against another team using their thighs to pull.

This is a good example of one of the problems I have getting my notion across. There is little intuitive understanding of how to push in a phalanx because it is so different from almost everything else we have experienced. When you are pulling in a tug-o-war, the most important thing is that the rope does not stretch- a tug with an elastic band would be comical. When we reverse it to pushing we also need to make sure that the men are as compressed as they can be to transfer force. If they were standing any way but belly to back, then as force increased then men would be pushed until they collapsed to a belly to back position. When that collapse occured all the built up force they had would be dissapaited. Since not everyone would collapse at the same time or all a once, force would be continually bled away as men collapsed until the final density is achieved. What this means is that only at this maximum density is the full force of rear ranks pushing being transferred through the ranks.

Frederick the Great said that you could tell militia at a great distance because they packed too tight, lost their order, and could never be recovered. This is my experience--once the ranks "pack up" you have to re-sort the whole formation. They become a mob. And... that means that the Spartans, for instance, couldn't change direction against the Thebans.

I think this is the exception that proves the rule- only the Spartans could pull off such maneuvers, maybe because they were the only greeks who could fight "no matter who happened to be beside them at the time." But remember most of the famous spartan maneuvering happened when they were not in othismos. You are also assuming that they lose their order, this need not be the case, since they are not a random mob even in othismos, but ordered files of men pushing along a shared direction, belly to back.

In my mind, balance plays a role, too. Once the men are "square on" to the enemy, men lose their balance in heartbeats--as you see over and over in those Russian videos. If they held their off-angle stances, they'd be harder to push over.

Being pushed over is not a problem in full othismos since even corpses cannot fall due to the density of bodies. Also, all but the front two ranks have a specially designed tool in the sauroter to act like a ski-pole and keep them from falling sideways.

Also, no matter how tight you pack your files front to back, you'll never achieve the same consistency side to side--so men will "squirt out" or simply be pushed over.

Not true, this is like asking why bricks in a wall don't "squirt" out sideways.

Finally, the men being pushed forward--the front rankers--can't move their heads and are now meat for the opposing spearmen. Look, those helmets are no real protection.

Front rank men have nothing to fear from spears since they are within the length of the opposing phalanx's shafts. As to protection from other weapons, this needs to be examined. How two men with limited mobility fight and defend is a subject that must be played out.

Or, with nothing but some desperate flailing, I can hit that helmet five or ten times while I get pushed backwards. When we tested this idea with files five deep against a single opponent, the single opponent ALWAYS killed all five men facing him. It may well NOT have been a fair test of othismos--but it did suggest that any form of pushing would simply serve to rob the front rank of the footwork they need to survive.

And yet an Plataea we are told that the Persians attacked individually and in small groups against a phalanx and perished to a man. If a single foe approched a phalanx, and if what you say is true about the phalangite needing to have more room to fight or they will die, there is always the option to take a step forward out of line. Phalanxes are formed to fight other phalanxes and grouped men. In fact, I may not have said this in a while, but othismos CANNOT occur if the enemy decides not to allow it and is able to scramble back. It can only occur if the foe decides, or is forced to by lack of mobility, try to resist the oncoming hoplites.

Also, you'll note in the Russian videos that the flanks bleed out to individual fights in seconds--literally heartbeats--which is what ALWAYS happens at the edge of a linear fight--the flanks bleed outwards into duels, until (seen from overhead) what started as a pair of blocks ends up as something shaped like a double headed axe seen from above, with the "linear" part eventually breaking down altogether. I've done quite a few of these in the SCA (years ago) and even three or four deep, the edge bleeding very quickly defeats the central organization.

Yep that is exactly what happens if there is room. Didn't you ever wonder why light infantry guard the flank of a phalanx? This is also why it is important to have officers stationed on the flank with the discipline to resist moving out of formation. At crowd densities lateral movement is impossible, you are locked in like a brinck in a wall as I said, so this is not a problem during othismos.

Please don't mistake me--I am not suggesting that there was no pushing--merely that the pushing was part of the overall scheme of melee, and on a much more local and limited basis than I think you support.

The type of limited pushing and shield bashing you describe, and I know Paul espouses, is a common feature of clashes of formed men. I am calling this "proto-othismos" since surely this is what true othismos at crowd density developed from.

I'll try this on Sunday--I stand eight men deep as you suggest. And I'll have one hoplite push back. I'll bet he can knock the whole file down. Perhaps not--I'll take pictures!

I will take that bet! Now I need to think of some indigenous Canadian food I want you to pay up with.

Make sure the men are packed belly to back and leaning into the foe. Also the single man must push as hard as he can, in any way he can, but remember that othismos only occurs against resistance, so every time he bounces off and gives more than a pace, then 8 men will have to repack to the right density. A file in othismos density can only shuffle forward a step at a time. In the real setting no phalanx could face a single man, or men that could rapidly move back, in othismos.

To bring us back on topic, I think this is why Iphicratids were thought to have a chance against hoplites. They must have used their elevated mobility to keep their foes in doratismos and not try to resist their advance in a way that would lead to othismos.

[PMBardunias]

I do not dispute that in deep formations, crowding can take place, and people immobilised as I said earlier, but you are hypothesising something much more than this…an irresistible force generated by packed men, as occurs in ‘crowd forces’, lifting people off their feet, and crushing the opposition in their path; forces of the same order as those occurring in crowd disasters, only deliberately carried out.

Not neccessarily. I am merely saying that in othismos crowd forces exist that are strong enough to put so much pressure on a man with a flat shield and no protection for the diaphragm, that he cannot breathe. This is not all that much force. Children are regularly killed this way bu having another child sit on their back. Remember it is not just the pressure, but the fact that it is unrelenting. If I stand my 250+ pounds on your middle back as you lay face down you could probably breathe, for a while, but for how long? 10 mins? 15 mins before fatigue got to you? This is essentially how Pythons kill you by the way.

Can such enormous forces that throw people around be generated? Surely the 62 ranks of men at Leuktra could generate this.

Taking, say, a ‘model’ army of 8,000 say, we have a linear formation around 1.000 yards long and each just 8 yards deep…I don’t see such a long thin formation being in a position to efficiently ‘push’ another, or even act in a very unified way, especially as most phalanxes were made up of 'amateurs', who seldom if ever trained together as a phalanx.

The length of the line is irrelevent. Pushing occurs from the rear to the front rank. It is done through files, lateral support is uneeded and in fact too much lateral pressure will interfere with othismos since the men since if it exceeded the pressure from the rear men would be pressed to turn to face laterally. One file from one side could engage in othismos with one file from the other if they wished- especially with a sauroter tipped spear to help them balance laterally. If you could somehow make the whole phalanx line push at once, this would be counterproductive, since the goal is not to push the whole line back uniformly, but to push back portions of it and force them out of formation.

It is a myth to think of the phalanx as a single line anyway and not as a string of beads consisting of individual units. There is no example I know of where a line broke by partial units (as in "The Spartans broke and three files of Tegeans with them"). Within unit cohesion is much greater than between- even if the units are shoulder to shoulder, which I doubt.

As we have discussed elsewhere, the important thing was simply to have a formation deep enough not to be easily ruptured, but shallow enough to fight efficiently, and above all, long enough not to be out flanked…..hardly a formation optimised for a ‘pushing match’.

Were this true then we should not see such wild variation in depth and Pagondas and Epaminondas would be morons. You have so many variables buried in your statement. "Ruptured" how? ruptured by single men attacking it or ruptured by a phalanx of 12 men pushing it? "Fight effectively"? Depends on how they fought- romans are shallower than macedonians. You can't set the depth without the tactics and if the tactic is othismos, then even 50 seem possible. "Long enough not to be outflanked" is an interesting one, for whe know what the Greeks thought this should be, no more than 16 ranks by treaty. Of course it should be noted that the Thebans formed deeper anyway. There is a trade-off between penetration and flank protection and different generals side different ways. A number of formed ranks is the perfect setting for a pushing match- as those Russian reenactors have learned. Why else would they do it?

The subject of the Phalanx as ‘rugby scrum’ has been hypothesised elsewhere, by a number of ‘armchair' theorists with no practical experience of soldiers en masse, or drill, or fighting and I and many others do not believe that it was so, for a number of reasons. Your hypothesis is rather an extreme form of this school of thinking, and ultimately can only be put to the test by a large scale re-enactment – experimental history, if you will.

Actually my theory is a far milder form of it. The "scrummers" see pushing as the aim of hoplite combat and immediately and intentionally entered into. It is not. It is a byproduct of any clash of formed men. many cultures, and those russians, attempt to push back their foes. Often this would have resulted from men in the rear pushing forward to get at the enemy. In these cultures, the pushing match does not last long if there is no immediate success, because men cannot survive it. As they feel squashed, then are as likely to push back as forward and the cohesion breaks down.

Perhaps uniquely in history Greeks with the aspis could stay in this longer, long enough to make it a decisive factor in battle. Maybe this arose from their penchant for fighting over a plot of ground- the site of a fallen leader, a preordained battlefield. It is easy to see this in the game that Pausanias tells us Spartan boys played where one side attempted to push the other off the edge of a small island battlefield and into the water.

I don’t deny that ’crowd forces’ occasionally, (but rarely, according to our sources) as I referred to, occurred under certain circumstances, but the ones we hear of are invariably in very large, deep formations….If the sources are to be believed, it was certainly not the ‘norm’ in Hoplite warfare. As to Othismos, I believe it occurred generally after a hand to hand combat, usually when one side was on the point of having it’s line ruptured anyway…

You are conflating two things here: how often hoplites entered othismos and how often "crowd forces" occur in othismos. Othismos was only one phase of hoplite battle, here is where I break with the scrummers, and need not occur in every battle. It always occured after hand to hand combat because the ranks must pack and this takes time. It may well have occured once the enemy had been softened up and was about to break. One trigger for entering into it might have been when enough men in the front ranks lost or broke their spears for example.

…Huh? Are we not talking of one phalanx against another, rather than ‘assymetric’ warfare between Hoplites and others? ( see yr remarks on two phalanxes pushing against one another above….)

Hoplites need not face other hoplites for this to occur, but any force that will resist their advance physically. For example a whole lot of Medes in a narrow pass pushed forward by men with whips. The tactic surely developed against hoplites though.

a long thin line a thousand yards long would not be of equal strength and weight all along it’s length, even if they were all linked! Instead, I would envisage the lines writhing and surging along their length as they clash, surging apart as men fighting quickly tire, and then resuming , repeatedly, much like the modern ‘riots’ which are as close as we see nowadays to hand-to-hand combat, complete with all the tactics of ‘Ancient’ warfare – missile barrages, leaders taking forward sub-groups determined to break through, etc and yes, even pushing matches…but significantly not along the whole ‘front’. …………until one Greek phalanx breaks/the line loses cohesion, for some reason – outflanked, morale fails, Leader killed etc

Exactly, now you understand how I envision phalanx combat. I would make one small addition though: "Instead, I would envisage the lines writhing and surging along their length as they clash, some sections moving on to Othismos from doratismos, surging apart as men fighting quickly tire, and then resuming , repeatedly"

[quote]“The large crowds simply set the stage for sub-units of crowd to crush each other unintentionally.â€

[Pericles of Rhodes]

The Hoplite has no domed shield to protect his back ! He is surely in danger of being crushed/asphyxiated in such a situation, because to breathe, a person's ribcage must be free to expand in all directions equally, not just to the front.....

This is very important to get clear. You do not need protection from the back. Your spine is better protection that any shield could be. You do not expand in all directions when you breathe- this is why it is easier to breathe when laying on your back than on your belly. In addition the broad, flattened face of the aspis spreads the force broadly across your back. In the front all of the force rests on two points of contact with the shield. I have experimented extensively with this and the aspis concept is about as good as you can get for protecting the diaphragm.

I must admit that when I was thinking about Paul's Aspis theory the issue of the Hoplite behind did seem to be a flaw in the argument; especially when you look at how illustrations in Connolly and Warry depict Phalanx formations (i.e. one hoplite directly behind the other). If Phalanxes were used like this the hoplite's domed shield behind would probably crush the Hoplite standing in the row in front or, if standing square on, would bend his spine with the pressure! Think of two shallow rimmed bowls being stacked together but with a Hoplite's back being crushed in between!

However I don't think that would necessarily be the case. If you organise your lines so that your hoplites are all standing side on (left thigh and shoulder facing forward), as is usual in shield walls, and then have the Hoplites in the second line stand in between (and behind) the two hoplites in front of them then the bowl of the second rank's Aspises would be in between two hoplites in front and the flat rims of the Aspis on their backs (so as to prevent the spine vs. two bowls effect)! Obviously the other ranks would do the same alternating, like rank one and two. It would also have the added benefit of the hoplites in the second rank being in the space between the two Hoplites in front of him so they could stab at the same time as the front rank. It could also strengthen the formation in the same way as rows bricks overlap the previous row in a wall; there would always be a hoplite bracing the line at any given point.

I hope that helped rather than hindered your interesting discussion.

All the best,

[PMBardunias]

If Phalanxes were used like this the hoplite's domed shield behind would probably crush the Hoplite standing in the row in front or, if standing square on, would bend his spine with the pressure! Think of two shallow rimmed bowls being stacked together but with a Hoplite's back being crushed in between!

I can see the concern, but this will not occur. The reasons for this also go a long way to explaining the form of the aspis. If they were shallow bowls you would be right, but they are not. They are closer to a box than a dome. The center of the face is highly flattened, surely less that the nautural curve of the spine, while the "shoulders" near the rim are very steep. The effect is that the aspis is essentially a ring of wood, with the "shoulder" section bearing most of the weight.

What we have is men with weight on their front being supported on upper chest and shoulder and thighs, while the weight on their back is somewhat diffuse, but falls most heavily in a band corresponding to the rim of the shield going across their upper back and the backs of their thighs.

However I don't think that would necessarily be the case. If you organise your lines so that your hoplites are all standing side on (left thigh and shoulder facing forward), as is usual in shield walls,

Saddly there are always trade-offs and the side on stance simply does not allow maximal pushing force to be transmitted to the enemy. If they pushed, and I am opened to discussion on if they did at all, but if they pushed and pushing was to be maximized, it must occur as I wrote.

I hope that helped rather than hindered your interesting discussion

Nothing but rudeness hinders discussion. My goal is nto so much that you agree with me, though that would be nice, but that you understand the true mechanics of the situation. Much has been passed off as "hoplite mechanics" that is unsupported by the actual physics involved. This is not suprising since our education system leaves history majors with little in the way of physics courses. I will say that all of the engineers I have shared my ideas about the aspis with all give me a "oh yea, of course that's how it worked."