THE GREEK HOPLITIC PHALANX part 1
This article will be presented in 3 or 4 parts and will cover the Greek Hoplitic Phalanx and its Oblique Phalanx form. It is meant to dispell many misconceptions about the subject and to fill in your knowledge on this subject.
Remember first and above all that the phalanx is as old as 700 BC, at least, if not older and forget the word Macedonian in connection with it. The Macedons found it already there from the Greeks and embellished it and changed it to suit their materials and times.
What you will read is from a book I am translating and is strictly copyrighted, so keep it to yourselves. I am not even sure I should be doing this, but seeing that very few people know much about it, I decided to help. I have skipped the introduction (mainly because I need to rewrite it) and gone straight to the Theban invention of the Oblique Phalanx.
You can use the knowledge in your battles, mods, addons, etc and you should if you want to be more faithful to history and take your sim seriously.
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The Oblique Phalanx
A Theban Invention that Dramatically Changed the Hoplitic Battle
In the first quarter of the 4th century BC the two Theban generals, Epaminondas and Pelopidas, introduced the tactical ploy of the oblique phalanx to their Theban Greek army, and led the art of hoplite warfare to its apogee. As George Steinhauer points out, the two leaders came up with this tactic after an intense effort to solve a very difficult military and political problem. This was that they had to face the attack of a well-trained and larger army that was traditionally invincible with the given numbers of 6,000 to 7,000 men at their disposal. Many commanders have faced (and still face) similar difficulties and those who need to fight under such circumstances have to offset their “material inferiority” (qualitative and quantitave lag in an army) with a corresponding amount of intellect, with new tactical or strategic concepts derived from their own hard thinking. Thus, after examining various ways of offsetting their disadvantage, they arrived at the solution that the best answer lay in the manner of deploying their units for battle. Let it be noted here that the two Thebans had always preferred to fight facing their opponent’s front, as was customary in the conduct of hoplite warfare. This resulted in their never having seriously considered the possibility of deployment in locations that were unsuitable for the phalanx such as difficult terrain or walled cities. Their problem was therefore limited to the question of how they would gain victory in an ordinary, conventional battle between two phalanges of hoplites in open ground.
The two generals drew ideas and information from two resources. The first was their enemy itself, Sparta. The Lacedaemonians, having fought continually for about 60 years (from 457 to 395 BC) with the Thebans and other Greeks (mainly Athenians), had revealed to their allies their customs and methods of warfare in such operations. The knowledge thus gained had not been used by earlier Theban generals who had had the occasion to confront a Spartan army in the Corinthian or Theban War but had been defeated. In the battle of the Nemea River (early summer of 394 BC), about 5,800 Thebans deployed in great-depth had overrun their Achaean opponents, but were later defeated when the Spartans’ Right had outflanked them. A few months later, during the extremely hard battle that was fought on Boeotian soil in Coroneia (August or September 394 BC), the Boeotians, in contrast to their allies the Athenians, were initially winning the battle against the Ocrchomenians and the Phocians and were on the verge of dispersing them, but later, when engaged by the Lacedaemonians, they were again defeated. The success Pelopidas had had as the commander of the Sacred Band in the Battle of Tegyra at 375 BC, a Spartan defeat of limited magnitude, was merely a forgotten episode. At the time, during the second quarter of the 4th century BC, the reputation of ‘invincibility’ was still very much an attribute of the Lacedaemonian hoplites and only the sporadic successes of the Athenian general Iphicrates had cast a few shadows on it. But Iphicrates’ victories had been won by a another type of military corps, the peltasts and not the hoplites, who used different tactics to fight and who at the end had not managed to occupy the battlefield –an important issue for the military scope of Greek battle at the time.
The Lacedaemonians, through cultivating their fame as invincible, were not slow in becoming overconfident and undertook repeated campaigns against the Thebans in 378 and 377 BC. In this way they violated their basic principle of warfare which dictated that they must not fight the same opponent often so as not to give him the chance to study their tactics and learn from them. This had been one of Lykourgos’ teachings. The historian Anderson points to this with these words: “Agesilaus, despite the teachings of Lykourgos, obliged his opponents to gain battle experience though his frequent wars.” It seems that the same conclusion had been reached by Agesilaus’ contemporary and older compatriots. According to Plutarch’s “Life of Lykourgos and Agesilaus”, when Agesilaus returned wounded from a recent expedition in Boeotia, his fellow citizens teased him by telling him that the Boeotians had richly rewarded him for the lessons of tactics he had given them.
Another source of inspiration for the oblique phalanx was the military tradition of Boeotia itself. During the long years of the Peloponnesian War, a strong Athenian army of 7,000 hoplites and a great number of lightly armed troops under the command of Hippocrates had invaded Boeotia. The Boeotian chief general Pagondas applied a new tactic and gave the Theban infantry of his superior right wing greater depth of 25 men, while the other elements of his Center and his Left –Orchomenians, Thespians, the hoplites of Aliartus, of Coroneia, of Levadeia, etc. –retained the classic depth of 8 men. The battle was fought in 424 BC on the Delium Plain and the deep formation of the Thebans gave them the ability to breech the Athenian opposite wing, which was only 8-men deep. They then proceeded to completely overrun and destroy the Athenian force, while other Boeotian units in this battle were being defeated. The defeated Athenians mourned more than 1,000 dead hoplites, including their commander Hippocrates, while the Boeotians lost 100 men. What became obvious then was that a deeper formation meant greater pressure and this resulted in local superiority and the defeat of the opponent’s resistance at the point of impact.
Pagondas’ innovation and its significant success in this battle was mainly recognized and appreciated by the Theban generals who used it at all times adopting formations of great depth. At the great Battle of the River Nemea we described earlier (394 BC), the Thebans had formed up their phalanx in great depth but this had contributed to the disorder of their anti-Laconian formation due to bad timing. During their charge, the allied elements of their army had lagged behind resulting in the Spartan right wing holding their ground and then outflanking their Theban opponents. The same thing seems to have occurred in the Battle of Coroneia, where the Theban phalanx, having formed in great depth, overran the Orchomenian and Phocian troops initially but was soon defeated after a strong frontal clash with the attacking Lacedaemonians of Agesilaus who were more experienced in battle.
(part 2 to follow)
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