Why didn't non Greeks adopt this? Didn't this formation help the Greeks beat the Persians...

Why didn't non Greeks adopt this? Didn't this formation help the Greeks beat the Persians? Why didn't the Persians ever adopt the hoplite?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

it only works in specific circumstances, the Persians defeated it several times

they did, bnut learning how to use a speak as required in a phalanx rquires almost life-long commitment. You have to be displined, well equipped, supplied, and have a somewhat educated populace to be able to make the armor and arms necessary for each person. It did to a degree. Persian's horse cavalry tactics are superior to a phalanx for the most part. Theres also so much land that its better to maneuver around than have a fixed position

I thought it was largely due to the hoplite that Alexander was able to defeat the Persians. That and Marathon.

they also failed to conquer greece and got conquered themselves by greeks who used this formation. Its actually a very powerful formation that survived for centurues

greeks didnt create it, sumerians first did something similar

the Macedonian phalanx and the Spartan phalanx circa Thermopylae were not the same,

the latter doesn't work well in open planes

>Alexander
He didn't use Hoplites, he used Phalangites and beat the shit out of Hoplites at Chaeronea. Completely different equipment

>Why didn't the Persians ever adopt the hoplite?
But they did, sort of. In all three of Alexander's major battles, Greek mercenary hoplites formed either the core or a major portion of the core of Persian infantry, and they tended to perform pretty well until they got cut off/surrounded.
>got conquered themselves by greeks who used this formation.
It wasn't the phalangite that beat the Persians, it was primarily cavalry and general excellent use of combined arms.
>He didn't use Hoplites,
The hypaspists were essentially hoplites, and the wrecked shit when they were used for frontal assaults.

Training 1000s was expensive, they lacked the institutions and wealth Greek trading city states had.

>the phalangite didn't beat them
>it was other stuff
your opinion is worthless the fact of the matter is that his use of teh phalanx was mroe revolutionary than his use of cavalry and thus was more helpful. Combined arms is literally just logistics, history being that early shouldn't suck on his dick because of it.

>use of teh phalanx was mroe revolutionary than his use of cavalry
>an evolution on the hoplite
vs
>the invention of shock cavalry
Okay.

chariots are shock cavalry and they existed prior to him. On top of that, Alexander the great is what one them the war, not some unit.

>chariots
A single piece of hardware that had to be kept at distance from another one, and had poor maneuverability, thus inadequate for repeated charging of formations.
>On top of that, Alexander the great is what one them the war, not some unit.
Yeah no shit, the discussion is which aspect of his tactics were more vital to him winning. Maybe actually try reading up on his major battles against the Persians, but for a tl:dr; it wasn't the phalangites that were breaking through Persian lines, or carrying out decisive charges and movements that caused the whole line to start a rout.

>they also failed to conquer greece

They conquered most of it, they burnt down Athens, a generation later they were playing Athens off of Sparta and forcing peace treaties between them. That sounds like dominance to me.

Most hoplites were citizen soldiers who did little if any training.

>burn down athens
>pay of gayreeks to fight each other
kek

Have you ever considered OP, that the greek parts of the persian empire were a small and minor part and most of their open frontiers consisted of the steppes which required a lot of massed light infantry?

>lose 2 emperors and and empire fighting greeks
>took a couple city-states
Conquering 'most' (which they didn't, most greek city-states were still independent even before the 2nd war) isn't the same as conquering or 'dominating' a nation.
>sparta vs athens
thats not even most of the greek nation

>lost one shitty city
>two major players fight each other while the rest of greece makes strides in the arts, technology, and philosophy
persia fanboys are deluded. Besides, Persia lost most of its population when The greeks invaded their shithole of a country.

if you were from Athens that might be the case, who'd occasionally lose because their spearmen weren't that good. Their focus was more on ships than a proper heavy infantry.

>rest of greece
ah yes, the spartan art of having other people bang your wife.

>Yeah no shit, the discussion is which aspect of his tactics were more vital to him winning
his piety. him being white. which is related to the glory of heavy infantry. Eat shit you horse-scum.
>muh shock
weren't enough of them to matter. On top of that he used traps to lure his opponents in instead of charging like a retard into pitched battles which his enemies avoided too. Making your proof of breaking enemy lines impossible.

>waht is rome, corinth, argos, sicily, kaffa, trebizond
you should study greek city states before you shit on them like its the cold war

the phangites were a part of his combined arms, and as the other guy said during chaeronea they did get defeated by the phalangites, while they may have performed better than the rest of the persian infantry they werent as good as the phalangites, which is why they were phased out by the greek states

The Greek nation does not emerge until the 19th century, user.

>spend boyhood idolizing achilles
>spend years accumulating expensive armor, weapons and a heavy shield to fulfil your obligations as a citizen
>have to be taught to fight shoulder to shoulder in formation even if you never bothered practicing with your weapons
They weren't hill peasants pressed into service either.

Ah yes, trebizond.
The part that was cozily tucked in a persian principality.
Corith argos and syracuse barely compare to athens in terms of hegemony or great amounts of art or literature produced.

And the greeks were such a great and advanced culture that alexander became a persiaboo

No, pretty much everyone but Sparta did fuck all training.

It's why the Spartans were considered so good, they actually knew some drill.

nations have existed before the concept of nationalism. Socrates knew about them and used them to define an empire. You should eat shit. sophist.

>meanwhile the persians didn't have anything like this at all
yeah, its not that the immortals were a standing army that were armed and fought in a different manner, or the fact that the persians hired greek mercenaries to fulfill their heavy infantry roles.

syracuse (and the rest of sicily which banded together) resisted a athenian naval invasion. Honestly Troy is the best city-state

You're talking about a very small minority of people there.

A lot of hoplites would be middle class, maybe had a spear, a shield, a helmet passed down from dad.

The very richest aristocrats could be decently trained, but there wouldn't be many of them.

>what are trojans, romans, siciliians, and tracians
they're famous for their lavish and romantic training regime, but they weren't the only people who knew who to make a proper phalanx and heavy infatry

Perhaps, but the Greek nation didn't.

themistocles quoted the existance of the greek nation during his service to athens, homer luaded the greek nation and culture/religion in his illiad and odessey. Romans quoted the invasion of "Greekese" when they took much of the greek-speaking people beneath their banners. Therefore it existed with the exception of Sparta.

going by your logic the indian nation also existed since that time, and so did the persian nation.

>what are trojans

Myth.

>romans

Exactly the same kind of untrained citizen army until the Marian reforms.

>siciliians, and tracians

I don't know, what can you tell me about SICILIAN and THRACIAN training?

quote the people who said there was a nation and ill tell you if there was

>thracian
BIX NOOD MUFUGGA, MUH FALXES AND LIGHT INFANTRY AND SHEEIT

Silly boy. That's modern translations using the word "nation" when "ethnicity" would be more appropriate.

>Myth
the shadow of rome falls heavily over the land, and the greeks lived beneath it, and died beneath it. For hundreds of years. For Troy and Hektor is no myth, but as real as the sky.
>sicillians
trained with bows and spears and learned to combine their arms since birth by making them watch older people train and then training them when they came of age. The shield came later, then horse-archery.
>thracians
foguht alongside great hektor and were famed for their skills in battle, survived the army of Agamemnon with their city unscathed from the war. They learn from experience and raiding.
>romans
they conquered lands with professional training since the city was founded beneath their King.

>you have been fooled by modern (not post-modern? modern academia was pretty dope) academia
then tell me why there was no greek nation when they all had pretty much the same laws, language, culture, etc..

Sicilians were horsearchers.

>Sicilians
>horse-archery

...Please tell me you don't mean SCYTHIANS you dumb cunt.

>foguht alongside great hektor and were famed for their skills in battle, survived the army of Agamemnon with their city unscathed from the war. They learn from experience and raiding

No proof here.

>they conquered lands with professional training since the city was founded beneath their King

Yeah, because they were only ever fighting smaller untrained citizen armies. Then they got their shit pushed in by Hannibal.

Okay.

There was no concept of a singular Greek nation until the 19th century.

There was a concept of Greek culture, and ethnicity, but if you asked a Greek what he identified as he'd always say "Spartan" or "Athenian" rather than "Greek".

They have similar laws, they do not have the same law.

They all speak Greek, but not the same Greek.

They have similar culture, but not a homogenous one.

>Sicilians were horse archers

>slight bump in the ground
>entire formation compromised

Xenophon says hi.

And you're not being fooled by modern scholarship, you're just putting far too much faith in sub-par translations, probably from the 30s.

>he doesnt know about how the sicilians mastered the ways of the steppe so they could better make the long journey to sardinia

what you think that decades long trip isn't going to go slower if they are just foot archers?

Fuck, we've made a new meme.

fetch me the horse gabagool

>weren't enough of them to matter.
You're an idiot.
>On top of that he used traps to lure his opponents in instead of charging like a retard into pitched battles which his enemies avoided too.
Good job repeating what I already said
>Making your proof of breaking enemy lines impossible.
>The Hypaspists led by Alexander, on foot, delivered an assault during this time across the riverbed on the Cardaces and managed to punch a hole through the Persian line. Alexander then mounted a horse at the head of his Companion cavalry and led a direct assault against Darius, who fled from the battlefield.
Oh look.

>Battles between two phalanxes usually took place in open, flat plains where it was easier to advance and stay in formation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx

Flat terrain was one thing, but generally the hoplites would seek to fight in a place where flanking was impossible. Thermopylae and Marathon are both ideal phalanx battlegrounds, and neither conforms to any definition of "open"

Mind you the same is true of the Macedonian phalanx. The difference is that they would have a fuckton of other troops to guard the phalanx' flanks.

user the cavalry are easily the most important factor there, and this is made painfully apparent when rome shows how shitty it actually is without an extremely effective shock cavalry force, because like you the greeks had the misconception that the phalangite was the key to success and so they slacked on the cavalry and made their phalanxes bigger and bigger but this was ultimately pointless without the cav to protect the flanks and deliver decisive blows. Every time Rome fought phalangites they were able to hold steady on the flanks and flank the phalanx themselves because the cavalry was never good enough to land a decisive blow and nobody in history had cavalry as good as than until alexander came into the picture. They learned the hard way that the phalangite was extremely flawed and that the real piece that made it all workw as the cavalry. This is why the middle east focused on improving the companion model of cavalry in their own armies because they knew it was the cavalry advantage that alexander possessed that allowed him to conquer persia. Plenty of heavy cavalry forces have proved throughout history that a damn good charge is about the most powerful blow you can deliver on a battlefield for most of history, and if its good enough it doesnt need a damn anvil. Hammers can still deal damage without an anvil, phalangites are completely reliant on their hammers or they'll be surrounded by more flexible infantry. Meanwhile alexander's model for cavalry would become the most powerful and expensive piece on the battlefield all over eurasia, meanwhile pikes are only ever good when they have something supporting them. How many battles have been won by a cavalry charge throughout history? Most I expect. The anvil changes all the time but the concept of heavy cavalry remains steady until WW1 and then its role is replaced by tanks which pretty much do the same thing.

>some out-of-context quotation
you're pathetic. You have no education in this matter and just talk-shit because your shit-filled mouth has more germs that your fucking lobotomized excuse of a brain.

Not every civilization is adaptable or clever enough. Romans started out with hoplites but soon discovered some fatal flaws in it and changed to a more flexible system.

we;re talking about how important alexander's shock cavalry were. A bunch of people are saying its the most important part of his tactics when they aren't. I know this because alexander himself said cavalry are shit because they don't have composite bows.

"Persians" are mentioning the iranian nation all the time in their ancient writings. Indians had a similar concept as well, this I know, although maybe in their case it could be closer to european sentiment than nationalism (don't know enough about India to decide, sorry).

youre fucking retarded, I just told you exactly why the companioms were in fact the crown jewel of his tactics, I even showed you how this is reflected in history and you ignored all of that and spewed some shit about skirmisher cavalry, we're talking about heavy cavalry, and the companions were the best heavy cavalry in the world. Having the best heavy cavalry in the world is the reason he conquered persia, and this is why throughout all of history people have prized good heavy cavalry over all other things, why good heavy cavalry is a staple of the nobility, why being part of the heavy cavalry was the most prestigeous role on the battlefield, even in societies like rome where its not even all that relatively important. The frontline of an army changes all the time, but what commanders throughout history have taken from alexander isnt "use pikes," its how to deliver a decisive blow with some damn good heavy cavalry. Stop posting.

>CARMELA CAN YOU PLEASE FETCH ME THE HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORSE

they weren't heavy cavalry you idiot/ It wasn't because he had fucking horsemen it was by divine providence you fucking idiot you don't udnerstand anything about history other than fucking bean-counting.

Im not sure if youre retarded, too butthurt to admit youre wrong, or trolling.

>more name0calling
you forgot your autistic quotations and walls-of-text with shit prose that would make mary shelly look like ser isaac fucking newton you sophist dick-sucking idiot. Keep jerking off the cavalry, their roles were always small in history. On top of that, he could've won if all his cavalry were gone because of how good of a general he was. Without his infantry he would've lost because he didn't have enough fucking cavalry. QED you're an ignorant bastard who needs to eat shit until he learns that hes a fuckign moron./

damn youre dumb as fuck and mad as fuck, what a combination. phalangites are clearly the best thing ever, you go to military academy and read about alexander its just a small sentence that says "Use pikes." Pikes were clearly the key to everything, and its not like the entire concept became completely obsolete until gunpowder or anything, its not like roman legionaries proved just how worthless they were without heavy cavalry, its not like heavy cavalry is consistent throughout all of history but the concept of a pikeman only shows up briefly during pike and shot before fading completely from history...oh wait all of those things are true.

There's no text out there that implies that there was ever actual annual phalanx drills conducted by polies. There was an 'ephebeia', that trained citizen youths in physical exercise and maybe sword prying and javelin throwing for a year or few. Plato and Xenophon both state that hoplites only have to focus on individual endurance exercise in their private time and pure motivation during combat, and that they contrasted archers and javelinmen who actually had to train with their arms and with drills.

When did Persia lose "two" Emperors to the Greeks? No Persian ruler ever died in battle against them.

> i went to a military academy
you failed if thats the case you stupid bitch

This guy gets it.
The hoplite was only possible because of the cohesion endeared by the Ancient Greek polis. If you didn't share the same social structure as the Ancient Greeks then you had no hope of turning your civilians into hoplites.

>rundown
Maniples were a unit that Romans adopted to replace the phalanx during the Second Samnite war to adjust to the mountainous and hilly terrain of Samnium. Instead of fighting in a single long line as a phalanx and having your camp and reserves often behind them, and auxiliaries on the flanks, the maniple legion often uses a checkboard formation in open battle. The maniple consisted of four distinct infantry units: velites (light javelin skirmisher infantry that carried a small buckler and sword, consisting of the poorest and youngest of soldiers) that engage in skirmishing before the main infantry units engage and were used as sentries, hastati (heavy infantry, that carried the scutum, 2 javelins, greaves, gladius, a bronze helmet, ad often a plate of bronze in square shape that covered the chest, but not the entire torso; they consisted of the youngest and poorest of the heavy infantry that could afford their own gear) that formed the first 'line' of heavy infantry, followed by the Principes (basically the same as the hastati in gear, but consisted of more experienced and older soldiers, and were described of wearing a shirt of mail instead of a bronze square pectoral armor), and the Triaii (consisting of the most experienced of the Roman infantry, who were armed like the Triaii but armed with a spear instead of a javelin) at the final line.

cont
>What advantages do they have over phalanx

They were more versatile and independent if they were ever broken up during battle or on a march. Their checkerboard formation gave them an advantage when it comes to rough uneven terrain. The fact that most of the infantry carried javelins, the strategy of a heavy infantry maniple unit in the Legion was to throw their javelins at the same time with their unit as it got close to their enemy, which would often inflict a lot of causalities into their front line and throw it into disarray by either killing their frontline troops or having their javelins get impaled into their shields and rendering them useless. the fact that most of Rome's heavy infantry were armed with such missile capacity basically negated one of the biggest disadvantages of the phalanx (that it was a slow unit that would be incapable of stopping skirmishers and other light troops at a distance without separate auxiliary units).

The arms of the Roman legionary also came with a lot of advantages. The scutum protected more of the body and was lighter than the aspis. The hoplite aspis was held with two grips (one located near the center that the forearm went through and supported, the second at the rim gripped by the hand) which limited parrying abilities of the shield and was more biased to covering one's left / shield arm side, which on the phalanx level made the right flank very vulnerable to incursion and charges. The scutum, on the otherhand, had a horizontal grip behind the metal boss of the shield, meaning it could be used more effectively for parrying and bashing, and holding it at more sharp angles without compromising your stance.

nice.
didn't the hastati carry hastae?
also, I thought the phalanx could be surprisingly mobile when necessary like at Marathon with the Athenian infantry charge, although I suppose that was under special circumstances

>anons forget that by the time the romans began to fight the greeks the thueros reforms were already in place.

post-Peloponnesian war Greece is just fucking depressing and not worth talking about

>didn't the hastati carry hastae?
They originally did before the Maniples reform, and their name just stuck around after the reform like other terms of the Roman army. For example, the word 'centuria' is from the Latin word for hundred (centum), but for Republican Marian and of the Imperial Principate, the Legion centuria typically only had 80 legionaries in it. This is because centurias were really said of units of 100 soldiers when the Romans were using hoplites and deploying them in phalanx, but after the Maniple reforms, size for each infantry group changed, with Hastati maniples gradually growing larger over the 3rd and 2nd centuries. By the end of the 3rd century b.c., Hastati and Principes maniples consisted of 120 soldiers in size each, and triaii only 60. Later in the 2nd century B.C., the hastati maniple increased to 160 in size, while the principes and triarii remained the same, but the Romans started to have Hastati and Principe' maniples consist of two units split into equal size, led by an Officer and a lieutenant, that they referred to as centurias again, with the hastati's being 80 in size, the principes 60, and the triaii's unit size not changing at all during the process of this. The hastati centuria became the precursor of the Marian Legion centuria, as they became the most common infantry unit near the end of the Maniple system and most legionaries resembled them more in spirit with regards of class and experience background.

The Athenian rush at Marathon also happened after a few days of both sides standing off and waiting for each other to move, with the Athenians literally zerg rushing when the Persians thought they weren't going to battle. So their case was an anomaly as far as how the phalanx is used in battles.

[cont]
>I thought the phalanx could be surprisingly mobile

The phalanx could charge at rapid pace, it just didn't move as fast when running as a unit compared to practically any other infantry unit (perhaps other than pikemen) while in formation. Their speed as an entire unit isn't just it: I also meant that if a singular phalanx line was broken apart, and you have two or more different factions off it trying to fend for themselves, they would have more trouble than the maniple would as they had a more disproportionate right side exposed, their shields not as good for individual melee, and it could be argued that their spears in such a frenzy melee would be a detriment when you have a situation of a stranded hoplite company broken apart from the rest of the phalanx and getting attacked by two or more directions, with the troops banding close together and trying to prevent their spears from getting in the way of each other, whereas the shield and gladius wielding Romans in that situation would be far more suited and naturally responsive to such closequarter melees.

The phalanx then is like a chain--strong when it is together, but very weak and not that well functional when you split it apart in many pieces. Polybius (who was a Achaean officer during the rise of Rome in the Aeagan from his time as a hostage in Rome, and had a lot of experience with Roman officers and going on deployments with them and their armies afterwards) summarized the Macedonian pike-phalanx as being very alluring when set up correctly and led by competent officers, and practically unbeatable with other infantry units (except for pike units with longer pikes and better trained pikemen) but says, as far as war goes, combat is a very inherit unpredictable thing that you should always just assume shit's going to go wrong, either from poor fortune or poor officers, and having it go wrong with a pike-phalanx is too much of a gamble

We literally have stele from Sumer showing them in a phalanx formation.

>some kike trick
learn to read holy texts

Most of the city states that joined the Persians weren't conquered.

You are pretending to be dumb right?

The real strength of the maniple system was in its combination of spacing and officer corps, allowing for a great deal of tactical maneuvering and quick reactions without requiring the direct order of the general himself. By spacing soldiers in the triplex acies they were keeping soldiers in reserve, and officers were expected to react dynamially to the situation, bringing his soldiers to whichever part of the line was wavering and in need of reinforcements. T

The drawback, of course, is that when you don't have good officers it all congeals into a massive disorganized blob of soldiers, such as what happened at Cannae, and any other moment in Roman history where they were utterly humiliated in the field.

Pretty sure there's a mention of a band of vikings using the formation on one occasion. Of course nothing all vikings would use, but some were aware and organized enough to utilize it.

Darius was captured and murdered by his own men.

Alexander came after the height of phalanx use in battle.
Phalanx are powerful but very slow, be it moving or re-organizing tofollow new commands.
Also, as an efficient phalanx requires an amount of training only professional soldiers have, which not all societies, especially at that time, can support.

Alexandre's main "thing" was the spear-headed cavalry charge, as opposed to ligne charge in use before. The spear formation allowed every horseman to see his leader at the point, which meant a whole bataillon could be directed in real time with no need to talk, everyone just keep up with the guy at the point, who's in charge. Alos allowed for better breaching of defense lines

He was murdered by his own cousin actually.

>Persians lacked wealth
>Hoplites had training

Hoplite formations are only as good as the men carrying the arms.

he did