Phalanx vs Roman cohort

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bsl RE:Phalanx vs Roman cohort- CJH 4/23/2006 12:51:56 AM

The description of the legions given applied to ... IIRC...the middle Republican era. May have been before the Marian reform. Things changed, a *lot* over the years. It's easy to miss just how long an era Rome existed, even limiting our view to the Western Empire. From the early historical days - forget the founding of the city, and let's stick to the days of the fall of the monarchy - to the end at Ravenna, we're looking at the best part of a milennia. We begin with a small, unimportant town which adopted military techniques from both the Greeks and the Etrurians and march through an increasingly important city, which came to rule a large region, then erupted across the entire Mediterranean, then Western Europe, became an Empire, and went through several stages before it finally collapsed. We begin with a city militia organized like that of an number of Greek cities, procede through a conversion from phalanx to legion, through a period of professionalization. And, so on. Virtually nothing anyone has said about an particular aspect of Roman military organization applies universally. Some aspects changed over time. Others varied by circumstances. For instance, the description of age classes in legionary organization was a characteristic of the middle Republican era. By Caesar's day, that was changing. About fighting technique: First, given a chance, you'd turn your shield up to meet a descending swordstroke. A shield would better turn a blade on it's face than on it's edge, since the stroke would not have any single point on which to concentrate it's force. Another variation would be to step forward and take the intiative, by bringing the shield edge up, either meeting the sword before it could gain full force in it's stroke, or, better, slamming it into the chin of the attacker. Either way, it was a two-step, with the move by the shield followed with a thrust by the sword. If the attacker's sword arm is engaged, aggressively, he's got problems trying to bring his own shield, if he has one, into play to meet the return thrust. He winds up having to move in two directions at the same time. Not easy, without practice. Second, again, consider the problems trying to swing a long blade inside a mass of men. Engagments among forces with little training tended to break apart into one-on-one fights. Men would unconsciously move a little apart, to give themselves room. This is a melee. But, the essence of the fighting technique of trained formations was to stay together, in formation. Tactical cohesion. If one side, legion or phalanx, maintained it's cohesion, and the other didn't, what resulted tended to be that the side which either could not maintain a formation or did not have one wound up pressed into a mass of flesh, increasingly unable to find room to wield weapons, or, eventually, to move. This was the point at which real slaughter ensued. The German and Celtic infantry rarely had much in the way of organized formations. They generally charged and fought in a melee. But, if they charged a legion and the legion held together, you have men trying to swing long blades, usually side to side. But, they lacked room to do so, because of the press of their own fellows. They'd have to try to hack down, which exposed them to stabs from the shorter Roman blades. Anyone who's fenced knows that wide moves leave you open to shorter attacks. What the Roman organization did was to rob the barbarian opponents of the way they were used to fighting. To beat legions, they needed special circumstances, such as really large imbalance in numbers. Some kind of shock tactic to rob the legions of their unit cohesion. Or, some way to get at the legions before they could properly form up. (This latter was what happened to Varus in the Teutoberger Wald, when his legions were ambushed when in column.)

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CJH RE:Phalanx vs Roman cohort- carl 4/28/2006 7:55:48 AM

I happened to look at Livy?s book ?Rome and the Mediterranean? and read back over the description of the battle of Pydna. Due to a faulty memory, I was wrong about some things. Actually, the battle was at Pydna and not Pidna. And triari is actually spelled triarii. And the battle occurred differently from what I thought I remember reading. The battle started by accident when a Roman baggage animal wandered into a stream between the two opposing army?s camps with Roman soldiers chasing it. A fight ensued over it drawing in more and more soldiers from both sides until the commanders brought both armies out for battle. There were two legions facing two divisions of phalanx with Macedonian ?peltasts?or targeteers in the legions? rear. The consul brought up his elephants and squadrons of allies which drove back the Macedonian left wing. The Roman center legion attacked the ?White Shields? phalanx division opposite it (the other division was the ?Bronze Shields?) and broke it up. Livy writes the cause was many scattered engagements which first threw the phalanx into disorder and then disrupted it completely. Livy writes that if an enemy can, by attacks at different points, force the phalanx troops to swing their spears around they get entangled. Noise and commotion on the flanks or in the rear throws them into confusion and the whole formation collapses. The Romans attacked in small groups infiltrating the phalanx through gaps that opened up. The battle ended with a slaughter of 20,000 and the capture of 11,000. The Romans lost ?not more than a hundred?.

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CJH I Was Wrong - RE:Phalanx vs Roman cohort- carl 4/28/2006 7:57:30 AM

See my previous post.

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CJH RE:Phalanx vs Roman cohort- CJH 5/6/2006 4:17:20 PM

Yes, my description was mainly from the third century BC. That was the era of the 2 Punic wars.

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paul1970 1/30/2007 11:56:35 AM

the biggest problem with comparing the the two styles of fighting is troop quality.

the clash of phalanx versus legions occured when the pike using infantry were not of the best quality nor experience and so they lost. a couple of the clashes were close run things until the Romans broke up the phalanx formations and could get stuck into the flanks, that is when all the damage is done and most casualties caused as the enemy runs away.

now what would Philip's or Alexanders foot companions have been able to do is a good question as they were well trained, experienced and operated in various formations as the campaign required...

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CJH 3/25/2007 9:17:18 PM

Could you be more specific about what you mean by a phalanx?

Reading the accounts written by Livy and by Polybius, the Romans prided themselves on being able to improvise and adapt.

Their adopted sword was supposed to have come from Spain. The Romans were at first terrified when facing Carthaginian war elephants but they ended up using war elephants themselves including in Greece.

Romans orignally had no use for ships. They scrapped the ships they got when capturing the city of Antium (Anzio). The Romans took the rams from the galleys they broke up and set them up in the forum as a backdrop for the place where the chief magistrates presided. We got the term "rostrum", used for a speaker's platform, from this since rostrum means beak and rostra was the Romans' term for rams on galleys.

However, Rome built a naval fleet of galleys from scratch for the First Punic War. They lost the first fleet in a storm. They built a second fleet and lost that in battle. An empty Roman treasury prevented them from building a third at first. Then, Roman citizens came forward and set up syndicates to pool resources and a third fleet was then built and manned with private money. That fleet surprised the Carthaginians and essentially won the 24 year long First Punic War.

In the First Punic War, the traditional method for sea fighting was in ramming an enemy ship with a war galley. The Romans invented a new method that they used with success. They came up with a "Raven" which was a swiveling gang plank with grapnel hooks on the end. The Romans would get close too the enemy ship and then drop the gang plank onto its gunwales. Then Roman marine infantry would pile onto the deck of the enemy ship and overwhelm its crew.

I believe that Roman success on the battlefield was due to their relying first on human intelligence, strength and courage rather than on clever methodologies.

One other thing. Rome conquered the Greeks when it conquered the kingdom of Macedonia. Macedonia was ruled by an autocrat. Rome was a republic and it seems there is no country more formidable and dangerous than a fully aroused republic (commonwealth). Polybius' writings on Roman military discipline present a picture of extreme severity. This was probably only possible in a community of will such as a republic.

Livy's history includes an acount of a military commander who had his own son beheaded in front of the assembled troops on the eve of a battle. This was because the son had impulsively sought out and killed an enemy soldier in single combat (The commander's orders had forbidden this).

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CJH 3/26/2007 2:12:58 PM

Another thought -

Armed forces in ancient times which had a fair balance between cavalry and infantry seemd to have been successful. Alexander's army made use of both cavalry and pikemen formations. The force that Hannibal commanded at the battle of Cannae was said by Polybius to have demonstrated the superiority of such a balanced force over one constituted mainly of infantry.

Except for the force Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus led in Africa, the Romans never tryed to give cavalry a major role. Of course the terrain of Italy, Provence and Greece is particularly uneven. Yet, subsequent history there, including that of the campaigns of Belisarius and of Attila saw the employment of armies which were almost entirely composed of cavalry.

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bono 8/13/2007 7:33:35 AM

Let me just start off by asking you which generation of macedonian army you allude to? The Alexander army or the posterior ones? If you're talking about the posterior ones which where not only unworthy of Alexander's army but insufficient as well-I can agree with you-cos the macedonians had gotten spoiled and careless with the training and development for they had the legacy of Alexander the great to lean upon. Stupid commanders and cowardice also played a huge role in the battle of Pydna, if that's what you're referring to.

The omittance to adapt in that battle and foresee as well as ascertain oneself about the formation and tactics of the roman armies was unforgivable. And by the way, the bulk of macedonian cavalry had yet to engage the roman flank., but fled instead...!! And by the way, don't put too much stock in the roman army either, 'cos you saw what happend against Hannibal, and you know how the romans endeavoured, blood , sweat and tears against the barbarians too, of several tribes, and we're talking ill equipped and inferior warriors.. And you know what happened when Marc Antony tried to conquer parts of asia with his superbly trained legions. Disaster happened. And the romans couldn't stand off against the more than skilled partheanan calvary either.

But Alexander could and did. And let's not forget about the huge reverence and respect the romans held for the macedonians, virtually every roman commander and emperor was obsessed with Alexander the great. And as for the eastern warrior which the macedonians fought and which you seem to belittle, let me remind you of the quality of Darus' elite troops and cavalry and not least the huge amounts of his armies that poured into tens of thousands upon the hard-fighing and exceptional macedonian infantry, I'm talking real men here, real galvanoized warriors with an iron will (by the way, from whom do you think the romans modeled their discipline on?)

Alexander fought many tribes, many people and many armies. He faced elephants for the first time, yet his men fought bravely and victoriously against the indians, and the indians are NOT to be marginalized! Not to mention all the horrid and difficult terraines and fields they operated upon, or all the spectacular sieges they accomplished, or the extremely proficient horsepeople in the far north-east part of the macedonian empire - akin to the mongols, now we are talking horseskills! And how can you say that the macedonian cavalry was good but limited (did you mean Alexanders or the later generations?) There's not a roman cavalry that could messure up againstAlexanders cavalry! And by the way you mentioned something about not having stirrups... so? Let me tell you, that didn't infringe on the capacicty of Alexanders companions in the least. I myself have ridden on a horse without stirrups in galop, so I know what I'm talking about. Believe me, they knew what they were doing back then. And again many seem to forget about the most important quality of Alexander the great when comparing with the romans - namely his military genius, the ice in his blood and his nerves ot titanium! He could adapt to the enemy whilst in the heat of the battle, he could rearrange his troops as he saw fit, he could with one sweep of the eye, look at the enemy army and go "OK, this is what we're gonna have to do against the men, our former tactics will have to be replaced at this point... He possessed a gift that only comes around once in history, just like Da Vinci and Mozart.... and by the way Alexander did his greatest feats at 25 years old, imagine what he could have been capable had he lived much longer just like Caesar, Hannibal etc.

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g8tor28 11/29/2007 1:11:28 AM

Although, I agree that the companion cavalry of Alexander's army was probably the finest that has ever seen combat in the world. Without cavalry in the Greek army, the phalanx is completely vulnerable to be flanked or attacked from the rear. The mobility of the legion is the key element that provides it the tactical advantage over the phalanx. The roman legions were able to dominate the field with swift, highly trained heavy infantry, along with small units of light cavalry. On the other hand, the Greeks required a larger amount of cavalry to defend the flanks of their vulnerable infantry. The real strength of the Greek army lies in its cavalry, at least those of Alexanders time. Without the cavalry, the phalanx cannot function in the open field, like that of the Roman legions. In Alexander's greatest battles against the persians it was his companion cavalry that led the Greeks to victory over the overwhelming sizes of Dairus's army. His ability to exploit a gap in the enemies battle line with cavalry won the battle of Gaugamela and Issus. The phalanx does work well in cohesion with cavalry in these battles, but they were not effective enough to win the battle by themselves. Clearly, in a one-on-one batttle, the Phalanx would sucumb to the well trained, disciplined, and mobility of the Roman legion.

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