Hoplitai too weak ?

[Celtic_Punk]

hit the nail on the head with that post.

[ARCHIPPOS]

anyway this is not a hellens VS romans discussion at all... i have just remembered that germans supposedly fielded pike units as well (described by Caesar and Tacitus???) ... so you see pike phallanxes were not an exclusive Greek feature

so a pike phallanx (sarisoforoi) standing ground and secured from the flanks proved almost impregnable... this however was avery defensive role... when the marching/pushing forward started things turned risky... the morphology could easily disrupt the phalanx cohesion and against a more mobile enemy (like the romans) who could exploit such gaps things could end in catastrophy...but what good is any formation in battle if it can only assume a purely static role???

all this talk is purely on tactics... i'm not so certain that even if the phalanxes managed to beat the legions repeatedly , Roman expansion to the east would be have been effectively contained... sooner or later those Latium SOB everybody loves to hate would have returned with some bigger armies

[Watchman]

anyway this is not a hellens VS romans discussion at all... i have just remembered that germans supposedly fielded pike units as well (described by Caesar and Tacitus???) ... so you see pike phallanxes were not an exclusive Greek feature

What Caesar describes sounds more like Ye Goode Olde standard-issue shieldwall you know. Do recall that "phalanx" in the generic sense means nothing more than infantry fighting in close order, and old Julius was also using the closest relevant descriptor he knew (and could expect his audience to recognise). Ditto for the "phalanx" of the Helveti. The Germanics did apparently make some use of spears long above and beyond the usual size range of infantry longspears, possibly even two-handed in a manner not unlike the long spears the "Iphikratean" peltast-hoplites used, but even then the character and purpose of such formations was quite different from the Hellenistic pike block.

...but what good is any formation in battle if it can only assume a purely static role???

Well given that the main role of the pikemen was to pin the enemy in place and hold the center steady, with the cavalry taking care of the main offensive activity...

[Flavius_Belisarius]

Would have been a hoplitai phalanx able to defeat a legion when the hoplitais would have got enough support by cavalry etc. to prevent that the legionarys surround and outmaneuver them ?

[Watchman]

Good luck at it with pilum-skewered shields. Probably not, but I figure it really depends on terrain - hoplites suck in rough ground, legionary maniples much less so (this being the whole reason why the Romans ditched the former for the latter after all) so at least on level the hoplites would have better odds.

[Mikhail Mengsk]

If the Hoplites could have more support, why the Legions couldn't have more support too? XD

If you consider only (example) 1000 hoplitai vs 1000 Legionnaires, i think the latter would win, thaks to their Pila and their gladius-and-scutum combo.

[Flavius_Belisarius]

All rigth, and who would probably win if for example 1000 hoplites would fight against 1000 Phalagnits on flat terrain without surrounding etc.