The Pushing Match

[Geticus]

The guy in the youtube video argues in an academic manner, in the worse sense of the term. History tends to reflect the personality of the historian, and since most modern historians, military historians included, are sedentary, lazy, brainy people who make their living with their tongue, they make all sorts of generalizations based on that weak, lazy, brainy point of view. This includes the cowardly general attitude of the youtuber post, talking about how "dangerous" it would be to initiate the shove. In contrast Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Western Way of War, and one of the main proponents of othismos as "the shove", is a pretty rustic individual, worked for years on a family owned grape farm, is no stranger to stoop agricultural toil and the like, and as such is somewhat closer to the viewpoint of the ancient Greek farmer-citizen-soldier and therefore IMO better qualified to interpret the Greek.

History gives abundant evidence that two opposed masses that both try to preserve forward motion, tend to come into a messy collision. Classical hoplite phalanx othismos was one such messy collision. Medieval push of pike was another. To understand othismos, it is better to 1) read Xenophon, who was co-strategos of the 10,000 mercenary phalanx and who spent his later life in Lacedaimon, had his son educated in the Spartan agoge, and as such was an expert on hoplite warfare throughout Hellas. 2) read the Greek, and know the meaning of the verb otheo/othizein etc. and the significance of middle/passive voice. What does the word "othoumenoi" mean? If you think it means "turning the tide of war" or some such, you suck at Greek. If you don't know any Greek, you won't learn that much and you can just waste time in more superfluous academic discussions.

Suffice it to say that the average Hellenic hoplite was far more vigorous than the average university academic, be he a rustic Boiotian farmer or a full Spartiate hoplite he had far more guts than the eloquent geek in the video. Their armor was heavy, it required strength to wear it, the Corinthian helmets pretty well buried the head in bronze. The ancient Hellenic world view during the classical era was not that far removed from the late Bronze heroic age, public drama commonly focused on late Bronze era/Trojan War era heroes, and there was a brutish element in the core masculine ideal of the time. War is not about being comfortable, it is about pushing past the limits of comfort and breaking your opponent's limits. The Hellenic othismos, like the push of pike during the medieval period, was an example of two sides trying to do just that. Evidence is not comprehensive about just how decisive othismos was vs. puissant spearplay in each battle, I tend to think that spearplay and point-accuracy were more common among the professional soldiery of Sparta, and less so in Thebes where the men were more known for brute endurance born of rustic agricultural toil. Either way the hoplite shoving match is a result of the basic forward motion of Classical Hellenic warfare. Look at what the 10,000 accomplished at the battle in Persia, the Persian royalists won the battle but no one would oppose the Greek mercenary phalanx. Why? Do you think that they had never seen massed spearmen before? Do you think that they had never seen armored infantry? Armored, serried infantry was common in the middle east since the time of the Assyrian Empire. The issue was compound: heavily armored infantry (read highly resistent to missile showers) with massive, aggressive forward momentum. They weren't used to it in the Babylonian/oriental theater of war. The same at the beginning of Xenophon's campaign under Prince Kuros, Kuros revelled in the dreadful sense of forward momentum created by his mercenary Greek phalanx-- to the Asiatics it was an alien way of war, no one was prepared for that kind of pressure just read Anabasis and it should be evident. Also when the Egyptians marched against the Hellenic polis of Kyrene originally they suffered an ignominious defeat, again because their infantry were not prepared for the Greek style of war. Everyone was used to massed infantry, the Egyptians had massed spearmen from time immemorial. Massed armored spearmen alone were not that revolutionary, it was the extreme forward pressure that tested enemy morale to the limits during the high point of classical Greek warfare.

I could go on and on, discussing this issue gets old when it seems to me that so many people who challenge Hanson's notions on othismos 1)don't read much/any Greek, 2) haven't read the Anabasis or the Hellenica, 3) couldn't translate a single sentence of Xenophon.

Sorry to come off a bit rude, but this whole issue has been done before here in other discussions, if people are going to discuss this issue like academics and arguements like "I think this" "that seems dangerous" et al., you get no where. Xenophon was a very experienced strategos, a seasoned warrior, and THE master historian of war during the 4th century, so any discussion like this should cite Xenophon by the passage or its basically merely academic.