Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Sumerian phalanx-like formation c. 2400 BC, from detail of the victory stele of King Eannatum of Lagash over Umma, called the Stele of the Vultures. The phalanx (pl.: phalanxes or phalanges) [1] was a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar polearms tightly packed together.
The phalanx was later changed to a 16-by-16 formation, and while the date for this change is still unknown, it occurred before 331 under Philip's rule. [2] Philip called the soldiers in the phalanx pezhetairoi, meaning 'foot-companions', bolstering the importance of the phalanx to the King. [3]
In addition to these changes, Philip created the Macedonian phalanx, an infantry formation that consisted of soldiers all armed with a sarissa. Philip is credited for adding the sarissa to the Macedonian army, where it soon was the common weapon used by most soldiers. [15] [16]
The phalanx was a large, dense formation of men ... the Seleucid rulers created military settlements. There were two main ... attacking body parts of the ...
Roman infantry tactics are the theoretical and historical deployment, formation, and manoeuvres of the Roman infantry from the start of the Roman Republic to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The original Roman army was made up of hoplites, whose main strategy was forming into a phalanx.
The rugged terrain of Samnium, where the war was fought, was not conducive to the phalanx formation which the Romans had inherited from the Etruscans and Ancient Greeks. The main battle troops of the Etruscans and Latins of this period comprised Greek-style hoplite phalanxes, inherited from the original Greek phalanx military unit.
Cleomenes created a 4,000-strong phalanx and then formed another phalanx with 2,000 freed helots to counter the Antigonid Leukaspides. Philopoemen reformed the army of the Achaean League into the Macedonian phalanx in 208–207 BCE and we are told that, by the end of the 3rd century, the Boeotians did the same, thereby creating the 'Peltophoroi'.
The sarissa-bearing phalanx would usually march to battle in open formation to facilitate movement. Before the charge, it would tighten its files to close formation or even compact formation (synaspismos). The tight formation of the phalanx created a "wall of pikes", and the pike was so long that there were fully five rows of them projecting in ...