The Pushing Match

[Ibrahim]

Ok, first I thought this was an april-fools thread, but apparently the initial posts were older than that.

I'm not sure what you mean with the different names on the grip, there's two ways of holding a spear, one way for thowing it and one way for hand to hand combat. So I really thought this was a non-issue and hence the thread a joke.

I'll call this the M-grip for Missile

and this H-grip for hand-to-hand combat (I'll thus try to refrain from saying melee)

The M-grip enables you to throw the spear, in hand-to-hand however you'd be a dead idiot, pretty quickly. For one it's not possible to thust with the spear using this grip and a spear is a thusting weapon. You can stab, but as that makes the point follow the arch of your hand, stabbing is thus obviously an attack best suited for short weapons.

by your very own logic here, you just showed exactly why spears, if used, would be overarm. afterall, when it is so, it has the appearance of a man about to thrown a javelin-and works the same way too: you're using the momentum of your arm to impact with the greatest force.

and if you think the "M grip" (it's an Argive grip, not M grip; I can find this googling it) is better for swords, then why is it that the Romans ditched it?

Yeah, the reading of 'pushing' has always been an interesting point to me especially in the case of Leuctra where the 50 deep Theban left managed to crush the Spartan right and inflict massive casualties. The interesting bit seems to have been that the Spartans held the initial charge but eventually broke during the course of the fighting so it must have been a slightly drawn out affair. :\

At Coronea, the Spartan right managed to quickly rout the allied left after a mutual charge. Its hard to say what exactly was the nature of hoplite warfare...

I think the 50 rank is less to do with "push", and more to do with psycohology and playing the numbers' game: if the spartans only fought an enemy 8 ranks deep, it's all fine and good. but then rank after rank after rank? that would have worn the Spartans out.

EDIT: this indeed had better be a joke.