05-20-2010, 09:08 PM
Many of us (especially those older folk who were movie buffs back in the summer of 1962) saw a very stirring rendition of a hoplite wedge in the final reel of Rudolph Mate's "The 300 Spartans." It was highly dramatic, but pure Hollywood. Even in the film, for anyone looking close at the longer shots, you could see the short-fronted Spartan wedge being litterally surrounded by the enemy. This was a situation that would have led to a massacre in short order (in some respects a minature version of what Hannibal did to the Romans at Canae, only here you wouldn't even need cavalry to hit the very rear). Shortening one's front (essentially by loading up at center, as opposed to the Theban tactic of thickening a wing) would have immediately led to the enemy rolling around your flanks, the worst of this being an attack on the uhshielded right side of your formation and into the backs of those holding the last/longest rank at the tail/base of your array. In real life, the poor soul at the head of the wedge wouldn't last nearly as long as Richard Egan did in the movie, since the man standing to the left of his facing opponent would have killed him right away without help from the shield of a line-mate standing alongside the point man's right/spear arm.
It's possible that such a tactic could be employed with a Macedonian (pike) phalanx, which would be capable of swinging its long weapons to either side for defense. Likewise, a formation armed with center-grip shields might face to the side as needed to fend off the kind of flank attack this arrangement would inevitably trigger. How practical these possibilites might be is another question. However, for a 'Doric' phalanx composed entirely of traditional hoplites, I don't think that it could possibly work and I'm not aware of any Greeks utilizing a formation like this in the period with which I am most familiar (5th century B.C.), nor have I encountered it yet in my initial research on phalanx battle in the 4th century B.C. The closest thing that I can come up with would be the battle of Mylae II on Sicily in 426 B.C., where it seems likely that a force of perhaps 1,600 hoplites (per Diodorus), but more likely only 1,000 (suggested by two other lines of evidence) formed along too narrow a front. As a result, they appear to have suffered a double envelopment by 1,600 hoplites deployed in a longer line for Athens, which cost the Mylaeans a probable 40% of their spearmen killed before they could reach a nearby refuge (over 60% if both Diodorus' less likely manpower and casualties are used). That even a heavy loser normally paid only 5-10% killed under such circunstances in this era (and no more than 20% or so if suffering an extended cavalry pursuit, something that the victors, lacking horsemen, couldn't mount in this case), shows just how devastating it was to have your flanks turned in the way that a short, wedge formation would invite.
It's possible that such a tactic could be employed with a Macedonian (pike) phalanx, which would be capable of swinging its long weapons to either side for defense. Likewise, a formation armed with center-grip shields might face to the side as needed to fend off the kind of flank attack this arrangement would inevitably trigger. How practical these possibilites might be is another question. However, for a 'Doric' phalanx composed entirely of traditional hoplites, I don't think that it could possibly work and I'm not aware of any Greeks utilizing a formation like this in the period with which I am most familiar (5th century B.C.), nor have I encountered it yet in my initial research on phalanx battle in the 4th century B.C. The closest thing that I can come up with would be the battle of Mylae II on Sicily in 426 B.C., where it seems likely that a force of perhaps 1,600 hoplites (per Diodorus), but more likely only 1,000 (suggested by two other lines of evidence) formed along too narrow a front. As a result, they appear to have suffered a double envelopment by 1,600 hoplites deployed in a longer line for Athens, which cost the Mylaeans a probable 40% of their spearmen killed before they could reach a nearby refuge (over 60% if both Diodorus' less likely manpower and casualties are used). That even a heavy loser normally paid only 5-10% killed under such circunstances in this era (and no more than 20% or so if suffering an extended cavalry pursuit, something that the victors, lacking horsemen, couldn't mount in this case), shows just how devastating it was to have your flanks turned in the way that a short, wedge formation would invite.
It\'s only by appreciating accurate accounts of real combat past and present that we can begin to approach the Greek hoplite\'s hard-won awareness of war\'s potential merits and ultimate limitations.
- Fred Eugene Ray (aka "Old Husker")
- Fred Eugene Ray (aka "Old Husker")
