Carthaginian Pikemen?

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

The Ptolemies were none to eager to train non-Macedonians or non-Greeks in their military techniques. Only desperation before Raphia drove them to train a native phalanx, which they subsequently regretted. The Ptolemies would not even loan Carthage money during the Punic wars, because they were afraid of damaging their relation with Rome, why would they train Carthy soldiers? Seeing as Carthage was a potential rival in North Africa. As for Cyrene, essentially as I noted above I don’t think one need assume all Greeks adopted the Macedonia system.

Everything you said here is correct, but you misunderstood me a little. The Ptolemies never trained Carthaginian soldiers, they trained Libyans. "Libya" was a very general term in ancient times...it was most commonly used to refer to all of North Africa from Egypt to Numidia. Libyans were most commonly used as Cavalrymen in the Egyptian army (I believe some were present at Raphia, actually).

Lovxophoroi, firstly, translates into 'lance bearer'.

Secondly, we have Fabius Pictor, who tells us that the Africans were arranged in phalanx-like groups. Now, we also have Xanthippos, who re-trains the Carthaginians to fight in a phalanx formation. He puts them in Macedonian (not Greek) style Phylae, and reorganizes their command in the model of the Successor kingdoms. Carthaginian cavalry of the period is also changed significantly, as much of it becomes shock cavalry not so different from that of the Macedonian model.

Add to this two mentions of 'twelve thousand very long spears, sixteen cubits in length' as part of an armory's inventory in 245 B.C. Carthage, and we can really begin to appreciate that there is definitely a unit of native pikemen. Now, most of our Carthaginians (Liby-Phoenicians) will fight much like Hoplites, but the citizen phalanx will be ordered like it was under Xanthippos, in the Macedonian (pike) style.

Very interesting Uramma...I knew when I made this thread that I could expect an excellent response from you.

I'm actually a recently added member to the Rome: Total Realism team...I was recruited to do unit descriptions and to give advice on how to improve the Pontic and Carthaginian factions for the upcomming RTR 7.0.

Anyways, I have came to suspect that Carthage did use Sarissa-armed troops (in some numbers), but I was having a hard time getting anyone else on the RTR team to believe me at first. In RTR 6.0, the mistake of giving all Carthaginian units 9 foot long spears (like a classical Hoplite) was made. I thought this was unfortunate because, in the game, Carthage will lose many confrontations with the Greeks or the Successor kingdoms just because they have shorter spears (Successor phalangites have 20 foot long sarissas and Greek phalanxes have 12 foot long xystons).

This is of course not historically accurate, and hurts gameplay a lot because Carthage (in RTW) is always drawn into confrontations with the Greeks and also the Ptolemies, who always attack Lepcis Magna when they get control of Siwa in eastern Libya. Instead of fighting an all out war aganist Rome when they take Sicily, they often have much of their resources directed aganist the Ptolemies, who send full stacks of troops to attack Carthaginian territory. Currently I'm trying to find a way to stop this from happening, or at least delay it...it's probably a problem EB should watch out for as well.

http://forums.rometotalrealism.com//...t=0#entry68374
..You can check out this thread if you want, it was my case for giving Carthage Phalangites. As you can see it's not very strong because I had trouble finding reliable sources. But your infomation helps me a lot in being able to prove this....