Quote Originally Posted by antisocialmunky View Post
As far as I can surmised, it would seem to me that the biggest problem with the small shield was how it was strapped to their shoulder to keep it in position for the phalanx. So assuming you could get that strap off, you wouldn't be THAT bad off. I believe at one of hte battles of the Macedonian War, the phalanx hit rough ground after pushing the Romans back so it broke phlanx, reformed twice as thick and went swords vs the Romans. The big shield is most advantaged if the formation is intact so I supposed if you manage to disorder the Romans, you could probably go hth with the smaller(THE PHALANGITE SHIELD WAS NOT THAT SMALL) shield without that many problems.

Of course this was the elite guard and everything got routed so they were surrounded and slowly killed off.
Roman's scutum covered almost all the body, and it was curved. Phalangites' shields as you say it had to be strapped, and it was smaller and less curved. So it was worse.

Roman formation was ALWAYS intact, and can NEVER be disordered

Seriously, a bigger shield is very useful on formation, but also useful in 1vs1. Romans' training was MUCH harder than phalangites' one, when phalanx (not elite ones, maybe) loose their formation, they were usually doomed, because they were trained to fight in a certain style.