Hoplitai too weak ?

[Phalanx300]

Shorter sword ? What shorter sword ? The last I read up on that, only the Spartans used meaningfully shorter blades (and were occasionally explicitly mocked by other Greeks about that); the standard sidearms AFAIK were the xiphos and the machaira/kopis, all around 50-60cm lenght range...
That's not terribly short.

Standard Greek sword was about 50-60, Spartans initially used this version as well but over time settled for smaller and smaller swords, eventually getting at around 30-40cm.

Sorry, was talking about Spartans. Always tend to let for me obvious information gone since I never like to write whole essays about stuff but just like to keep it simple.