The Pushing Match

[bobbin]

One thing i wonder is: Why was the back end of the hoplite spear even pointy?

A lot of people uses the argument that "you could accidentaly wound or kill the one behind you" against both underhand and overhand uses, but I have never seen a good explanation of why it was even there. Would you be so kind to enlighten me on this?

First i thougt it maybe was to easily change stance between overhand and underhand, but that seems unlikely and impractical to me?

Was it used to somehow stick the spear in the ground to brace against cavalry, but that seems rather impractical and time consuming. Was it used for this?

Or was it maybe so you could just turn the spear around when it broke and use it as a reserve spearhead?

It was pointed for a few reasons, firstly it allowed the soldier to stick it in the ground when he wasn't moving, so he won't have to hold it all the time. I believe this is where it's name "Sauroter" comes from which means "lizard killer". It also served as a back up for if the spearhead broke off, which was almost certain for the soldiers in the first ranks.

It may have been used by the rear ranks to kill injured enemy soldiers as the phalanx went over them, this has been theorised from it's construction, it is a long thin spike made of bronze, which is harder that iron and so perfect for punching through armour. The fact that quite a few of the armour peices found from the period have square shaped holes matching the shape of the Sauroter gives some weight to this theory.

Would the artists involved in the creation of said depictions understand the finer points of combat? One point that is brought up in another video is that even modern media gets many things wrong when it depicts modern combat. He also mentions that he went to a mueseum and counted the number of vases that depicted overarm use as well as the ones that depicted underarm use. Overarm won out but only very slightly.

Yes but this would be similar to depicting modern soldiers holding the gun the wrong way round. Most of the artists would have seen the Hoplites performing their drills and quite a few would have probably even being in battles with them. You have to remember that warfare was a lot more closer to everyday life than it is today.

I'm wondering why, if the two front lines were so close, why they would use spears at all when a smaller, bladed weapon would be much less cumbersome.

Usually the spears would break very quickly so it was very common for those in the front ranks to be fighting with their swords for most the battle.