Roman phalanx?

**Nelson** · 03-11-2005, 23:58

In addition to the fine rationales given by Quillan and RH, I would add that a shield so large as the scutum was incompatible with very long pikes. Phalangites could only manage a buckler on their left forearms as the sarissa needed two hands.

**Uesugi Kenshin** · 03-12-2005, 02:18

Yeah, the giant tower shield would not have been very practical for pike combat. Although I bet it proved very handy when the legions went up against phalanxes. Mobility has become more and more the best trait to have. It does not matter how strong a unit is if it cannot get into battle with the enemy. Thus cavalry and non-spear infantry became more popular. Being able to hunt down and kill fleeing enemies would be a great bonus as well.

**Shadar** · 03-12-2005, 03:53

The Romans favoured a more flexible and effective approach with their armies. Pretty much, the heavy infantry Roman legionary had an enormous advantage over the hoplites. As Alexander found, and other hoplite commanders before, a phalanx is severely disrupted by uneven ground. Italy is fairly mountainous, and most likely the Romans would have had to fight several battles in uneven terrain against their enemies on their rise to power. As a result of being completely surrounded by enemies, the Romans had to rely greatly on a disciplined and well-trained army to fight off their enemies.

The Roman soldier's equipment helps discover their main purpose - they were designed to destroy phalanxes and barbarians. The short sword of the Roman soldier (can't remember the name..) can be used to PARRY (i.e. deflect the weapons of enemies). The Tower shield of the Romans offered them great protection from the front, and carried above their heads allowed them protection from missile fire - leading to the testudo. By forming the soldiers close range with shields beside another, the Romans could stab BETWEEN the shields using their sword - thus enabling them to deal damage in relative safety - and other weapons would have had difficulty in penetrating this shield wall.

Their pila - heavy javelins - enabled them to exploit the ultimate weakness of shielded infantry - their slowness. By carrying up to 2 pila per soldier, they could deal damage as they were charging the enemy formation. Later innovations made the pila cleverly engineered to make movement for anything hit by a pila unwieldly (meaning that shields would have to be cast aside, or ripped out of a soldier for him to continue fighting).

In other words, they were ultimately created to counter the predominance in hoplite/phalanx warfare that was so predominant in the height of Greek influence in the European world.

Also, their 4 rank system, using the Velites, Hastati, Principes and Triarii enabled them to also exploit the weakness of a phalanx, the inability of the front ranks of the phalanx to retreat and rest without breaking up the formation and thus making them easy kills. The hoplites needed to kill at a distance, but the Roman soldier was both equipped to attack from longer range (the pila) and to attack from short range (with his short sword).

The parrying ability of the short sword would also render the Hoplites literally useless - since spears were unwieldly to quickly maneuvre, and once an enemy is within the "blind spot" directly in front of you, you would stand no chance unless you dropped your spear and took out a secondary weapon, thus weakening the phalanx's wall of spears as a whole.

**conon394** · 03-12-2005, 05:56

Shadar

I assume you are meant to compare just the Legion to the Macedonian Phalanx.
At Zama facing a Phalanx that looks a lot more like a hoplite one, none of these supposed advantages seem to have helped the legions of Scipio.

The more traditional Greek style phalanx did not Have the blind spot you describe, since a Hoplite, could either use his sword (not the tiny weapon of the Macedonian phalanx) or reverse his broken spear add have short 4ft or so thrusting weapon (rather useful in a tight fight).

**Red Harvest** · 03-12-2005, 06:21

Shadar,

Elements of that are certainly true, but the hoplites/phalangites were anything but helpless. They put the mojo on the Roman legions several times when faced frontally. As conon394 said, even at Zama, a decisive victory for Rome, the African phalanx was not getting the worst of it---until the Roman allied Numidian cav returned to strike the phalanx from the rear. This was a well prepared and veteran Roman army under a military genius, not some hurriedly assembled force under a lackluster commander. Also, the Romans took quite a few casualties facing Pyrrhus and lost the first two major encounters. Even at Cynoscephalae the formed phalanx was *winning* vs. the Romans, pushing them back and killing a respectable number. It was the other flank that was unable to reach the ridge and form up that cost the battle. It sounds reasonable to say that the front ranker with the gladius could easily parry a spear thrust...until you realize how many spear points the man had to contend with.

**Shadar** · 03-12-2005, 08:06

My idea was simply that Romans gradually developed their military to fight against the predominant military style of the day - the spearmen phalanx. The strength of the Romans was their discipline and their training, BUT the Romans almost never made the same military mistake twice, the punic wars is a very good example (although sometimes history repeats itself... Crassus and Marcus Antonius' invasion of Parthia for one thing).

I'm mainly drawing from the archaeological evidence i have on hand - and making an inference. I don't think its that bad actually, considering my military history is fairly limited (actual campaigns is a different matter. battlefield fighting? don't know much). I do realise it doesn't apply to everything, but i was somewhat generalising...