Are we sure they used it overhand? I mean really sure?

[Watchman]

Underhand spear seems to have served close-order spearmen well enough in their clashes with their peers. If it didn't, they'd obviously have changed techniques. The particular Greek variation of the principle was apparently better suited for the overhand, but personally I'd rather wager the hoplites altered the technique to suit the situation. Underhand ought to serve a fair bit better when you need to convince nasty horsemen to respect your comfort zone for example.

One sort of wonders if the underhand technique wasn't prone to causing certain amounts of "friendly fire" incidents given the tin-can-packed character of hoplite fights though. With the overhand the tip of the spear is at least angled down and the dangerous enough butt ferrule (called sauroter, "lizarder" or "lizard-killer" by what I've read) conversely mainly aims to the sky over your mates' heads. With the underhand it's moving right on level with their midsections or faces, depending on the height one is employing... This ought to have been a particularly pressing concern around the Peloponnesian War, when the hoplites weren't using body armour.

Wasn't one reason the Macedonian pike phalanx was so absolutely dependent on maintaining drill, rank and file the dire need to keep the pikemen from gutting the guys behind them by accident as well ?

A side note I'd make concerning the OP. Unless our man Dayve has been training both techniques fairly dedicatedly the practical test proves very little, as it is rather common for amateurs to find perfectly working techniques and/or weapons they're unfamiliar with 'unworkable' or somehow deficient. One need merely consider the thoroughly mistaken condemnation of Medieval swordfighting as "clumsy brawl with metal clubs" by later fencers - who were used to the in comparision feather-light and whip-fast foils and smallswords...

Ditto for the thing with stirrups. Perfectly competent horsemen were long convinced it would have been absolutely impossible to fight effectively from horseback without the things (historical evidence to the contrary nonwithstanding) mainly because they had been taught to ride with them from the start and were quickly in trouble if deprived of such aids. People who'd learned their riding without stirrups from the beginning would doubtless have laughed themselves sick. I've also seen it mentioned that military cavalry training long actually took lack of stirrups as the starting point, just to make sure the troopers wouldn't be rendered helpless if their feet slipped from the things in battle...

You get the idea.

[paullus]

@Leto: What? How about the hundreds of little terracotta or metal hoplites--every one I've ever seen is holding his spear overhand. Here are two, for your and others' enjoyment:

and 2:

And the most famous vase? How about the Chigi vase? Its probably the most famous hoplite battle vase, though it is about 350+ years too early for EB. One of the only ones to show multiple hoplite ranks instead of individuals--and they're all overhand:


Or we could move on to the Nereid monument, depicting some late-Classical hoplites:


Now, I'm not saying no one every used their spear underhand, because there are obviously other depictions of individual soldiers with underhand spears. I'd be interested in seeing a famous vase with whole ranks of soldiers carrying spears underhand though. I'd say the overhand was almost certainly more common, so its reasonable for us to use it.

Besides, I've tested the spear thing myself. I really like overhand, probably for the same reason we throw out (American) footballs overhand, and baseballs, and javelins overhand. Oh, and if your overhand is lacking, do regular dips. That'll help!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Props to Leto for that last paragraph.

[Anthony]

I've done Irish reenactments of medieval and dark age soldiers. They always used their spears overhand (they state so explicitly during the middle ages, describing it as the 'ancient style' versus the way Normans couched their lances and such). It's a perfectly fine way to fight, especially in a tight formation. Underhand would be much easier to block. Overhand, you can manuever your thrust a bit better around defenses, at least to my experience.

[Watchman]

It'd seem to me the overhand way would also make better use of the arm as a lever - think of an ice-pick downward stab with a dagger for comparision - plus it sort of adds the benefit of gravity to the equation, for whatever that now is worth.

The Irish of them olden days were a bit sui generis mind you. Early Modern English soldiery were still a bit puzzled as to why the Irish cavalry insisted on fighting overarm with light spears without stirrups, and the generally rather antediluvian character of the native warfare...

[Anthony]

It'd seem to me the overhand way would also make better use of the arm as a lever - think of an ice-pick downward stab with a dagger for comparision - plus it sort of adds the benefit of gravity to the equation, for whatever that now is worth.

The Irish of them olden days were a bit sui generis mind you. Early Modern English soldiery were still a bit puzzled as to why the Irish cavalry insisted on fighting overarm with light spears without stirrups, and the generally rather antediluvian character of the native warfare...

They were also puzzled why they rode ponies. Until native Irish 'knights' started drawing Norman cavalry into woods or bogs and tearing them apart with superior mobility in incredibly poor terrain. The English reports of fighting in Ireland were initially all lauding on their own cavalry until it became readily apparent their knights were useless on so much of the awkward terrain there. Even the English lords of Dublin ended up using the natives for their bodyguards (though there were some Irish knights who fought as English ones did, taken out of Ulster, but they weren't used for fighting in Ireland very much).

There character wasn't so out of date initially though, I'd not call it antediluvian, at least until the late-high middle ages; their infantry was pretty capable, the house soldiers at least were pretty well-trained and equipped (though most infantry would have been levies), and the Cambro-Normans got kind of far, then were turned back most places. The initial part of the invasion went well, the middle saw the Normans getting beaten a lot when the shock had worn off, and pared down to the point where England only technically got Dublin, and some Norman lords got settlement grants, but even they had to subvert themselves to native kings, if outside of the Pale, initially. Ireland post-invasion though steadily became more backward due to being cut off from the world, spending most of their time fighting eachother, as opposed to the unification that was occuring when the Normans first invaded (I say Normans, not English, since it was the former king of Leinster who invaded with Norman and Welsh free companies; England's only involvement so far was that Henry paid for them, since he owed Diarmait, said former king, for the use of his navy in campaigns in Wales).

Their army prior to this was hardly stagnate or out-dated, the annals and such all point to them rather rapidly modernizing, and, at a time, they'd have been more modern than most of their neighbors, in that they combined traditional tactics, things they learned fighting the Norse, and still used cavalry regularly (as opposed to the all infantry Saxon and Norse armies near them). Irish warfare actually degenerated a lot by the late middle ages, because it was rarely ever any large engagements by that point (since the kingdoms and royal houses weren't large or powerful enough anymore to raise large armies, and more of the fief-like units in Ireland were independent and not supplying their soldiers to a king), so how to fight in a large engagement was steadily retarded to the point it was remarkably simplistic. Early medieval Gaelic armies were certainly unique, but not really out-dated, they were pretty effective for the time. Even later, Gaelic soldiers were some of the main mercenaries used in the west because they were reliable and well-equipped, and fairly high morale, since they were pretty beauracratic and had all kinds of contracts that provided things similar to life insurance.

Anyway, the overhand style, initially would not have been out-of-date even then. It shows up as well in Saxon England, reliefs of Norman soldiers (footmen, not cavalry, except maybe outrunners, picking off routers), etc. On foot, it's pretty useful, good leverage. If you know how to fight like that, it's pretty easy and utilitarian, and easy to stab about anywhere overhand combined with good footwork.

[Maeran]

Anthony, are there any decent overviews of Irish history?

All I usually find are lots of stuff about the troubles and maybe some dubious collections of Celtic mythology.