the macedonian saurotor is, in my opinion, a devestating iten, it looks, to me every bit as effective as a late medieval flanged mace, and placed on a pole maybe half the length of a pike, we have a deadly polearm that can crush and pierce with impunity

also, its noteworthy that the roman infantry had their pila which are fairly good at disrupting a formation by creating gaps in the ranks.
now i doubt this on its own would have been enough to cause a macedonian phalanx to crumble since, as weve heard a lot the romans usually won against them when the formation was disordered.

also, while they are small, the macedonian phalanx possessed shields for each man,
and a macedonian pike block, as i understand anyway, didnt contain those 'auxillery' troops a renaissance pike block did


namely, halberdiers, zweihander wielders, halberdiers, not to mention men with muskets and men armed with the arquebus,

i imagine this would make it a lot harder for any one type of infantry to get through. themusketeers wreck havoc, the pikes keep shorter ranged infantry, and cavalry off the musketeers and the halberd and either targeteer/ zweihander wielders who have those much shorter range weapons, can hypothetically help keep men from slicing up a formation from the inside,
since a pikes biggest weakness is that theres a longdistance between the head and the man holding it. and theres this dead zone where the pikeman can neither stab the man who got close, or use his own weapon.

The battle of Pydna highlights several aspects, The Macedonians had additional shoulder shields before reaching their combat range in order to deny the Romans the ability to create heavy losses within pilum range. These strapped on shields had to be disposed off for handling the pikes during the push of pikes against the Romans. The Romans then fled and split into small units that had more mobility and thus speed in order to throw their pila from beyond sarissa range. Then they both got into rough terrain where the sarissa then used was of little utility and the Macedonians had to organize getting rid of the sarissas and fighting with large machairas. Here comes the organizational problem, The Macedonians had two large blocks, as was common for Hellenistic warfare, that must have been cumbersome to handle in comparison to the smaller Roman units, leaving the Romans enough time to send their elephants on a flanking attack and disrupt the formation of one block and then win against a Macedonian pike block without pikes, fighting as targeteers with large messers so to say while losing the same fight against the uninterrupted other Macedonian block. All Hellenistic kingdoms (and the Hellenized Carthage) were capable of losing all in one climatic battle, unlike the Romans who had the economic resources and manpower to keep on fighting after losses like Cannae. So no Macedonian monarchy had much chances to experience fighting against legions and hone their skills to counter them. The homeland Macedonians and Epirotes that had the chance several times despite their limited manpower and wealth and did remarkably well under these conditions.
Some differences between the phalanxes in the Early and Late Hellenistic Age seems to be the lack of the weaponized sauroter and the sarissa that can be disassembled into two weapons in the late times. The javelin option is done away with, but would likely have been ineffective as the War against Nabis showed because the Romans were equipped to handle even heavier javelins like their pila. The armour of the phalangites seems to become increasingly thick and expensive while the blocks of phalangites massively increase in size and depth, reducing approach speed in ordered formation. And last but not least, the sarissa gets much longer in the later times, further reducing the ability to advance at speed while it is capable to pierce the scutum according to the account on Pydna (perhaps the less thick parts of that shield). Our Greeks sources also have a bias to not mention light armed troops and focus on the heavy infantry, so the phalaxes were to a limited degree supported by light troops, but these, expect for a few Cretan specialists played little role because they were non-Greek/Macedonian and thus people that had to be kept subjugated without much military ability. Both the Persian and Egyptian phalanx seems to have been abortive experiments. In order to win the push of pikes and the cavalry duels in the rather unimaginative wars of the diadochii it seems to have been considered better to have as much Greeks as possible as heavy infantry and to leave light infantry roles to barbarians with communication and cooperation problems with the Greeks. Cavalry, including heavy cavalry, was used from Barbarians, but they were a limited group, a nobility that was easier to fraternize with in a kingdom than with lots of subjects considering themselves equal to a Greek or even Macedonian.
So a faster pike phalanx with shorter spears and less depth could in my opinion stand a chance if they had armour like the one employed at Pydna. But Livy in my opinion is quite right that Rome could field more resources, including leaders than any of their opponents. In my opinion this has to do with the political and social system. The Hellenistic kingdoms had a king and Carthage a small nobility and no plebs upstart generals (no matter how much Livy badmouthes them these guys also served in subordinate leadership roles and were thus a most important part of a leaders clout).

I stumbled across some claims that in the eastern part of the Roman Empire some legions facing the Parthians and Persians are claimed to have operated as phalanxes with the sarissa. It's my idea that in theory you could create a pike by fastening the ends of the two pila (or a spear and a pilum) carried together and this construction could resemble the item used by the phalanxes of the early Hellenistic Age. I don't know if this was the solution, but I liked the idea and I most certainly would have tried it on a makeshift bases if I was a member of the legions there (and the real legionaries were certainly much smarter than me at that) and have tried to convince my legate of the utility of everybody having such an item to modify the pila as required. Just my 2 cents.

That was my opinion with lost of words, mostly from what I derived from looking at written sources. So if anyone has some suggestions I'd be glad to hear their opinion.

also to asdd a THIRD voic into the fray i think it would be approprate to also highlight the tactics and organisation of the byzantine pikemen and the general formations and structure of the byzantine infantry

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/...archy.html

The romans also highlight another aspect of the colective agressive behaviour desired in the renaisance pike blocks.

The republioica roman legionary was equiped in the style of the Samnites, with large shield, javelins and sword. This was a mode of fighting adopted by the romans after their own phalangites where defeated by said samnites.

So, what are the advantages of such equipment, compared to the phalanx? Here is my thoughts on the subject:
First we need to look at the phalanx vs phalanx fight, as we are allready discussing in this thread. The phalanx is very powerfull when handled propperly, and devastating agains uncoordinated foes, such as the asian leavies.
When fighting each other, however, they are prone to all the problems described by the renaisance writers. Namely, that they end up standing at safe range and "fence" with their spears untill one side breaks.
I have seen an article stating that the greeks would estimate 10% casualties for a loosing phalanx, and 5% for the winner. Indicating that even a greek phalanxs would break at around 5% losses.
While low compared to renaisance numbers, this still constitutes more than half the front rank of a 5 man deep formation.

Phalanxes also tend to pack together, as this is the focus of their training. Thus, they loose their momentum and are easy to fix in place.

The roman legionary's equimpment, on the other hand, leaves him two options. He can aviod melee and throw his pila, or he can throw his pila, and dive head first into close combat. "Fencing" at spear length is not an option. A charging legionary cohort will go directly into the push.
Or aviod melee all together, and wrap around the narrow front of the phalanx, and hammer them with javelins.
This will push the phalangites together, and devastate their morale, as their front corners are turned. (this is probably what renaisance swordsmen would do to pike blocks as well.)
Unable to see constructive courses of action, the phalanx falters, and falls back.

In the manipular system, the lighter hastari would probably wrap around the foes to "fix" them, while the heavier Principes went inn to finish them.

Novara seems to play out about the same as battle of Morat, maybe not in details, but it seems in both cases Swiss had to overcome inicial resistence posed by artillery position with some defending troops, where they suffered considerable casualties and then it was basically a slaughter of unprepared enemy in their camp.

recently i also found these images of the NVG group testing the drills attributed to the hoplatoi aka, byzantine pikemen,
http://nvg.org.au/gallery/Kontarion-project?page=1
http://nvg.org.au/gallery/Kontarion-project/K...rformances (drills)
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescrip..._46_1_2225 and this describes the deployment of the pikemen alongside the archers and slingers/ skirmishers
http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/vv10/Serge...yman/3.jpg this photo shows a cross section of the byzantine battle lines showing the hoplatoi in the rear 2 ranks, and in the front is an unusual trooper called the menalautoi aka menavlion bearers, these men supposedly held stoutly shafted spears (i think it was reccomended they use a WHOLE sapling as a spearshaft, minus branches.) with long iron blades (most assume these would be like lugged/ winged hewing spears like those of the vikings)

they were instructed to act like they are in the photo when helping resist cavalry. aka to plant the butt into the ground and point it upward. noting that the menavlion would hold fast even in instances when the kontarion (infantry pike) would be broken by a cavalry charge.

these menavllion bearers are seen as being alot like the daneaxe wielding troops at hastings, the hypaspists of macedonian pike systems AND, alot like the halberdiers and 2 handed swordsmen/ sword and buckler men of renaissance pike formations.
since they were a form of 'flying squad' that moved to wherever it was needed.

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arrangement of ,*left to right* menavlatoi and 2 ranks of hoplatoi (pikemen)

also, note the fact that all 3 have shields while holding their weapons, which are all 2 handed polearms.

Dear William, it seems like we are talking about two different things.
I never claim or did claim that the phalangists dropped their main shield, their aspis. They dropped a kind of bevor that was called a "shield" because it was similar to a shield in construction. A bevor is NOT a shield nor a buckler. The link should answer the problem of misunderstanding. You don't need to construct the bevor out of metal, sometimes wood and leather are fine, especially for bevors that are intended to be dropped after the approach within striking distance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevor

oh so were talking about a ACTUAL bevor not just an extra shield, the photo of the indian guy confused me alittle. made me hink you were saying he macedonians defended themslves agains missiles with that kind of thing
or is it.. im not sure anymore regarding what its supposed to look like.

pesonally im liking the 'jousting shield' setup idea. i.e a shield attached to the

Like it or not, though, I still haven't found any support for the idea that the Macedonian troops at Pydna sported such an ad hoc grandguard/bevor setup, even after looking through more sources (including a few of the loonier secondhand interpretations).

On the other hand, permanent shoulder shields (not improvised contraptions meant to be dropped before the battle was joined) was mentioned as part of a pikeman's equipment in one of the Burgundian ordinances of the 1470s. I don't think there's much in the way of clear evidence of what these shields looked like (I've seen interpretations that made them look like jousting ecranches, including in the Feature article on Burgundian armies) or whether they ever saw any actual use (since the illustrations to the near-contemporary Swiss chronicles don't really seem to depict them much, if at all).