"Ancient Warfare" in Wikipedia

[O'ETAIPOS]

I have a hard time believing that 50 cavalry of any kind held off that many.
I can believe that only 300 spartans held at thermoplyae (yes i know it was more than just 300 spartans obviously, but i could believe it was only them) because the terrain favoured them so much.

50 cavalry vs 7000 men and a couple hundred cavalry? not a chance, dont care what sources say so.
Maybe 700 vs 50 cavalry....

There's just too many, eventually the bodies would pile up and the horses would become totally exhausted.

Not to mention that many men, they'd eventually bog down the cavalry within a few hours (thats bloody generous) and the horses would have nowhere to run. the riders would be pulled off the horses and killed.

Where I said that there was a battle?

Beotian army was on the march, in long line. Horsemen scattered around them and started attacks and retreats. They were fast enough to make all attempts to catch them futile, and they were able to gang on some Beotians who were too brave and kept pursuing. And if Beotians kept formations, they will never catch single horseman.

There were three options for Beotians -
1) Keep moving in long line, and take losses.

2) Try to swarm Sicilians, as you propose - this will lead to massive chaos as soldiers would need to arm themselves and then attack somehow - this will most probably lead to disintegration of army as fighting force. Horsemen will simply flee to the closest city, some 1/2 an hour run at 20km/h. Beotians will need another day or two to rally troops. During this time they will be extremely vulnerable to any form of attack, even by much smaller, but organised infantry force.

3) Arm troops, form battle line and move at snail's pace in the heat, but keep formation and prevent most of the casualties - this is what Beotians did.

The success of Sicilians was not in massacre of Beotians, but in forcing them to move in fully armed and in battle formation. This stopped their progress. Later attacks were not to kill many opponents, but to keep Beotians in most exhausting and slow movement possible.

This is example of "all other cavalry operations" that Polibius (himself cavalry commander) thought to be most important.

[bovi]

Wouldn't archers among those 7000 soldiers be able to pick off the skirmishers, both during the attack and when the skirmishers were retreating? I'm not saying harassing is negligible, it would definitely slow them down, and archery against swift targets isn't easy. But not taking losses seems weird to me.

[O'ETAIPOS]

First we should ask how many archers, if any, were in that Beotian column.

[Yyrkoon]

The ancient Greeks looked down on archery. It was coward fighting. That's why they had manly hoplites. That's why Paris is such a wuss in the Illiad, he's an archer.

[Gleemonex]

The ancient Greeks looked down on archery. It was coward fighting. That's why they had manly hoplites. That's why Paris is such a wuss in the Illiad, he's an archer.

But they used it anyways, like big fat hypocrites. Even the Spartans condemned their helots to the shame of archery.

-Glee