Did Greek phalanxes really fight by shoving? Historians still disagree
The popular image of hoplite battle is a giant rugby scrum: two walls of shields pushing until one side breaks. It is the most widely accepted reading of the sources, yet no Greek artwork ever shows it, and at Delium an Athenian line eight men deep held against Thebans stacked 25 deep.
A phalanx was less a unit than a shape: a dense rectangle of heavy infantry with spears or pikes, advancing as one body. A Sumerian monument, the Stele of the Vultures, already shows something similar in the 25th century BC, and Egyptian infantry used similar tactics. Homer supplies the Greek word in the Iliad, where it marks organised line fighting as distinct from the duels his heroes favour. Whether the Greek version descended from older models or was simply reinvented, since shield walls and spear hedges occur almost everywhere, is unresolved.
Its birth date is being revised too. Tradition places the hoplite phalanx in 8th-century Sparta, but many now favour the 7th century, after Argos introduced the aspis, the large round shield; the Chigi vase of about 650 BC shows fully equipped hoplites. Men locked shields, with the front ranks' spears projecting over them, so an enemy faced both a wall and a thicket of points. Because each soldier's shield covered his left-hand neighbour, lines drifted rightward as men edged behind cover, and generals tried to overlap the enemy's exposed right flank.
The shoving theory, known as othismos, draws support from very deep formations; Victor Davis Hanson argues that such depth only makes sense if rear ranks were pushing. The Greek word phalanx could also mean a log used as a roller. Critics answer that the word for push was used metaphorically, even for arguments, that an eight-foot spear is useless in a crush, and, as Adrian Goldsworthy argues, that casualty figures do not fit.
What nobody disputes is the role of morale. Armies usually marched at walking pace to keep formation, fought on flat ground chosen by both sides, and battles often ended when one side ran. Herodotus said the Athenians at Marathon were the first Greeks known to charge at a run, perhaps to cross the zone of Persian arrows quickly. Friends and relatives were placed together, so shame kept men steady.
Source: Phalanx
