Who would win?

[Anonymous]

"Mass" history books make claoms that usually are not backed up.
Kind regards

Quite. What do you know of the evidence for or against the Spartans using the linothorax in the Persian Wars? I'm prepared to be convinced either way, but I actually believe that there is insufficient evidence for a conclusion to be drawn.

[M.ilionario]

Does their armour make so much difference in the outcome of the battle I've specified? :x

[Felix]

A couple of points:


3) Romans with pila fought with Pyrrhus, fought at Cyanocephalae, and fought at Pydna. In each case, the pila failed to destroy the front of the phalanx. In each case, the Roman swordsmen could not carve a hole into the front of the phalanx. In each case, it was the flanks of the phalanx (and its breaking up in rough ground) that allowed the Romans to recover, and ultimately win the battle.

Fair point, Felix and, if the pilum isn't as effective as it's cracked up to be, the Classical Phalanx would whip the hide off any Roman army, whether the phalangites were Spartans, Macedonians or "effete, degenerate, wine-swilling Athenians".

(Yes, I appreciate that this assertion may be a little over-bold, but I'm trying to match Tarby for provocative chauvinism :twisted: )

Under highly controlled conditions, I think your exaggeration is correct. Of course, the key is that a battle is not won solely at the center of the front line, but can be won at other places on the battlefield; and the Romans won most of the battles.

[Felix]

Lendon's Soldiers and Ghosts references a highly controlled situation of the sort being discussed. The incident occured in the Third Macedonian War, at a siege of ?Atarx? . The Romans breached the wall of the place, and the Macedonian defenders formed a phalanx in the breach - and the Romans could not break the phalanx. No flanks, no way to outmaneuver the phalanx, just head to head fighting (including pila, no doubt). I don't have any further details on the incident, alas.

[hoplite14gr]

Hmm.. I "googled" Atarx and nothing came up.
Felix any chance of finding the name more accuratelly?
Kind regards

[M.ilionario]

Please, please.... get back on topic

[Magnus]

The topic is fine. Like I said before, bringing up historical references to the type of armour used and when is relevant to your original post, so are any references to battles.

Using references is much better than relying on the mythical imagery instilled in our minds through fiction about the spartans.

Pay attention, you may learn something. :wink:

[Robert Vermaat]

I agree with Matt. The Spartan's auperiority in battle is better proven by discussing their equipment than some 'superman' image from internet sources.

[Felix]

Spelling correction: the town is referred to in Lendon as "ATRAX". (page 204)

Livy, book 32, 17 mentions something like this (the name of Atrax is mentioned in 32,15)

"Meanwhile the consul had on his hands a siege which proved to be more tedious and costly than any one anticipated, and the defence was conducted in a way he was quite unprepared for. He took it for granted that all his efforts would be devoted to the demolition of the walls and when once he had opened the way into the city the flight and slaughter of the enemy would follow as they usually do when cities are taken by assault. But after a portion of the wall had been battered down by the rams and the soldiers began to march over the debris into the city they found themselves at the beginning of a fresh task. The Macedonian garrison, a large body of picked men, considered it a special distinction to defend the city by their arms and courage rather than by walls, and they formed in close order, their front resting on a column of unusual depth. As soon as they saw the Romans clambering over the ruins of the wall they drove them back over ground covered with obstacles and ill-adapted for retirement.

The consul was intensely mortified, for he looked upon this humiliating repulse as not only helping to prolong the siege of one solitary city, but also as likely to influence the future course of the war which, in his opinion, depended to a great extent upon unimportant incidents. After clearing the ground where the shattered wall lay in heaps he brought up a movable tower of immense height carrying a large number of men on its numerous stages, and sent on cohort after cohort to break through, if possible, the massed body of Macedonians, which they call the phalanx. But in the narrow space - for the breach in the wall was by no means a wide one - the kind of weapon he used and his style of fighting gave the enemy an advantage. When the serried Macedonian ranks presented their enormously long spears it was like a shield-wall, and when the Romans after fruitlessly hurling their javelins, drew their swords they could not get to close quarters, nor could they hack off the spear-heads; if they did succeed in cutting or breaking any off, the splintered shafts kept their places amongst the points of the uninjured ones and the palisade remained unbroken. Another thing which helped the enemy was the protection of their flanks by that part of the wall which was sound; they had not to attack or retire over a wide stretch of ground, which generally disorders the ranks. An accident which happened to the tower gave them still greater confidence. As it was being moved over ground not thoroughly beaten down, one of the wheels sank in and gave the tower such a list that it seemed to the enemy to be falling over.

[32.18]Though he was making no progress, what vexed the consul most was that he was allowing a comparison to be made between the tactics and weapons of the contending armies; he recognised that there was no near prospect of a successful assault, and no means of wintering so far from the sea in a country utterly wasted by the ravages of war, and under these circumstances he raised the siege."

[Zenodoros]

[I don't think that the predominance of linothorax is a myth... at least not in Sparta. I believe it was used basically everywhere else in Greece, as well as most Greek colonies.

There is a lack of evidence for linothorax, but because of that, I think we should just assume that they did wear bronze over linen. It simply makes more sense to me.

I'd understood that you were not arguing against the predominance of the linothorax in the rest of Greece.

You say that wearing bronze makes more sense to you. Certainly, one would expect it to make more sense from the point of view of resisting penetration (but see the other linothorax posts on that), yet the very fact that the majority of states were opting for the linothorax indicates that this was the option that made most sense to them.

I'm sure your aware of the eternal trade-off that soldiers must make between protection and mobility. We've already agreed, I think, that the majority of Greeks were opting for greater mobility in the Persian Wars and I believe it's generally accepted that the Spartans eventually opted for no body armour in the Peloponnesian Wars. Going for the linothorax prior to this would seem to me a natural transitional stage.

I've been trying to think of a decent reply to this, but I don't think I have the capabilities to debate as well as you do. :?

It would make sense that the Spartans would use linothorax in the Persian Wars, of course. Unfortunately, we're not the people who made up the minds of the Spartans. Yes, they were always at the forefront of equipment and weapons at their peak, but I still think that linothorax was not used, if not very rarely used by them, during the Persian Wars.

Once again, take their statuettes and paintings from the era we have (although I won't deny, they are few fewer in number than those of another polis, despite their artistic "Golden Age" approximately fifty years prior). For almost any other state between 500-479, you'll notice that linothorax is dominant in their paintings, while it isn't for the Spartans. Instead, everything we have has bronze cuirasses, of which the other states (as an exaggerated guess, 99%) had now abandoned using.

Basically, I think that the evidence showing that the Spartans continued to use bronze cuirasses to a degree in this brief era, possibly to a total degree, while the other states didn't, says a lot. A mixture between linothorax and bronze cuirasses wouldn't be a truly effective army, since though both made good protection, they still provided different tactics which would appear muddled in a supposedly 'elite' force. Maybe the Spartans each owned both cuirasses, and would variate depending on the type of battle plan they were expected to go through.

By the way, I do think there may have at least been a transition between bronze, linothorax and then no armour after the Persian Wars, for example the helot revolt.

I hope at least that we can agree that they didn't wear their cloaks into battle. :wink:

[Felix]

Second correction - Atrax was the year before Cyanoscephalae, not Pydna.

Still, this is about as perfect a test case as is likely to exist. The initial Roman assault of the breach failed; so they cleared the ground, and brought up a siege tower. That tower was probably there to supply fire support - the men in it could shoot down on the defenders of the breach; the tower obviously wasn't needed to climb over the breach. Then the Romans send wave after wave of legionaries into the breach, throwing pila and wielding gladii.

The upshot is that the second assault fails. The results are so discouraging that the Romans give up a siege where the walls have already been broken down, and slink away with their tails between their legs. How often did that occur in Roman history? QED

[Caius Fabius]

Who has the best logistics? Who has marched the furthest to the battle? Who has had the best nutrition recently? Who has the cleanest camp, best hygene? Who is defending their homeland?

[Tarbicus]

Still, this is about as perfect a test case as is likely to exist.

Indeed. Provided the Spartans built walls with a small opening across the battlefield before the Romans arrived, every time before they encountered.

Opps. Have I just commented on this thread? hock:

[M.ilionario]

The topic is fine. Like I said before, bringing up historical references to the type of armour used and when is relevant to your original post, so are any references to battles.

Using references is much better than relying on the mythical imagery instilled in our minds through fiction about the spartans.

Pay attention, you may learn something. :wink:

Ok, I will :wink:

[M.ilionario]

Who has the best logistics? Who has marched the furthest to the battle? Who has had the best nutrition recently? Who has the cleanest camp, best hygene? Who is defending their homeland?

Neither of them are defending their homeland... just a battle for supperiority.
About the earlier questions, it's all equal for both armies....