Quote Originally Posted by Cambyses View Post
Exactly. Also quite often troops would not be continuously engaged for hours fighting the same enemy, The enemy would withdraw and attack again. Clearly this kind of fighting was more common in certain cultures than other however.
Since I'm a huge fight fan (I was even a wannabe UFC/MMA fighter from high school until a few years ago), I picture this process (where each side in a pitched battle would basically make an on-the-spot gentleman's agreement to break off and stop fighting in order to take a little time to catch their breath) by remembering pretty much every fistfight I've witnessed (well, those that weren't over realy quick or broken up, anyway), whether from when I was a kid, in high school, college, or those I've seen as an adult. They're usually 2 chest pounding idiots swinging wildly at each other, rolling around on the ground, etc, for a maximum of a minute or two before both are obviously so exhausted they can barely lift their arms up and/or look like they might vomit any second.

At this point, it is not uncommon to see two people, in a fist fight, either agree to call it even, and act all buddy buddy (the level of buddy buddyness is inverse to how drunk they are), or to take a break (which is also something that never stops being hilarious) before they make asses out of themselves again for a few minutes.

Now, imagine that you're a hoplite, legionarius, or any other infantryman in ancient or medieval times--you have 30-50 lbs of armor on, it's pretty hot out, you're holding a large, awkwardly shaped shield that probably weighs 5-10 lbs (and an awkward shape or large volume makes something seem like it's oh, I don't know, about A ZILLION TIMES HEAVIER than it really is!), and you and another guy have been hacking away at each other in vain for a good part of 15-20 minutes. Agreeing to a little truce, or maybe even taking a break AND trying to find a weaker dance partner, seems totally plausible...