New hoplite book

[Old Husker]

Thanks, Paul, for some wonderful clarification! That the Spartans' 'musical' approach to battle could have had a function beyond simply keeping them in step prior to contact is very interesting and makes a lot of sense. Also, the idea that file depths beyond 12-16 might have been effective for othismos, but often might not have been due to coordination problems is intriguing. I wrestled with the issue of 'extreme' formation depth in reconstructing Delium. At that time, I concluded that Pagondas had most likely stacked his Thebans 25 deep only in part to improve his offensive capability (via othismos), but mostly to boost defensive ability. The latter would have come from absorbing enemy othismos before it reached the back of his files while crowding the line of retreat for those more heavily pressured in the first dozen or so ranks (something that seems to have happened among overly deep Greek, Persian and Carthaginian arrays alike on the second day at Thermopylae and during the final battle at Himera). Your observations suggest an attractive alternative view in which Pagondas might indeed have had a primarily offensive focus in filing so deep, but that coordination difficulties almost derailed him. (In fact, the Athenians held him off quite effectively, despite being only 8-deep, and came extremely close to carrying the day on their own right.) If so, the defensive benefits that I noted might have been more inadvertent than planned. It seems that Epaminondas' deep formation at Leuctra worked much the same, as the Spartans (outnumbered about 4-to-1 just like the Athenians at Delium) were also able to hold back the Thebans for quite a while. Unfortunately for them, their left came nowhere near the success that the Athenian 'off' wing (right) achieved at Delium (largely due to their opponents' disipline in avoiding contact). This would mean that Epaminondas didn't so much push his foes from the field by main force as use an unbreakable defense to wear them down until they gave way in exhaustion after losing their king as he fought at the front. - Best regards, Fred