Quote Originally Posted by antisocialmunky
The fun thing about wood is its ability bend/twist/absorb and diffuse force unlike stone. If an arrow hit a pike, the pike would bend and maybe the arrow would get lodged but it wouldn't snap. I would think that things used to stop horsemen and resist annoying little men trying to hack the tips off could survive a arrow.
Plus the pike-shafts are thin, round, and at most inconvenient angles for achieving the kind of square hit that would allow most projectiles to do much beyond bounce off and leave a scrape. And a projectile trying to play flipper ball amongst serried ranks of pikes is pretty obviously going to run out of energy but fast, and certainly won't be the most dangerous object around for the pikemen.

As for Lechaeum, wasn't that during the period when hoplite armour was pretty much restricted to helmets for improved tactical mobility ? I've gotten the impression body armour for the heavy infantry only again became common some decades later, probably because the hoplites had started feeling really vulnerable to all these darn skirmishers, slingers and archers now running all around the place...