How was Pyrrhus able to hold his shit together while fielding what was basically an out dated fighting force...

How was Pyrrhus able to hold his shit together while fielding what was basically an out dated fighting force, when every other Greek leader was later steam rolled? Why couldn't Greeks "modernize"?

Pyrrhus was basically the only Hellenic leader after Alexander and his successors that actually fucking used combined arms instead of going for a heavier and deeper phalanx like became norm in Hellenic world. After fighting the Romans he even modified his phalanx line formation by augmenting the space between syntagmas with swordmen.

Pyrrhus always get blasted like he was a moron when he was in fact one of the greatest generals and fighter in antiquity. His losses could be attributed to his short-term plans and diplomacy (whatever feels right), unreliable allies (fuck Manga Graecia) and shit manpower (Romans basically had endlessly deep pockets unlike Hellenic kingdoms). Pyrrhus kept on making enemies without finishing any of his started fights and eventually fate fucked him over for good.

>greatest generals and fighter in antiquity
because he had a cool story? A good general wouldn't get BTFO the way he was, when there are scores of conquerors from that age

This sounds exactly like Hannibal to be quite honest.

But the thing is that Pyrrhus didn't get BTFO. He won all his battles against Romans and took way less casualties but his troops were far harder to replace than Romans' were. So he had to abandon the war against Rome.

>He won all his battles against Romans
He lost Beneventum. Badly.

Pyrrhus was tactically brilliant. Strategically and diplomatically retarded

Makes sense now why Hannibal was also tactically gifted but failed strategically; he was an admirer of Phyrrhus and emulated him> >

Macro >>>>>>>> micro

Not like any Hellenic kingdom could have won over Rome without godly streak of luck. The power structures in them made acquisition of manpower harder as the Hellenic landowner class was small ruling military elite. Only Mithridates VI tried massing Roman style thureophoroi troops to fend off Rome but I don't know enough about Pontus to say how successful integrating such raised troops into his kingdom would have been. I think he raised them from conquered lands in Western Asia Minor.

Now I feel like a dumbass for making a dumb RTS joke. It's nice that somebody raises the bar on this board.

Actually according to some of the texts thureophoroi was also used by Phyrrus, i suspect he could not get troops promised by his allies in southern italy to amass on time and would often disaband quickly due to inaction so he had to depend on the core of his professional troops to fight decisive engagements and caused him a great deal of headache due to manpower losses, which is possibly why he turned south into Sicily, possibly to gain a foothold and then recruit professional troops and rebuild his army for round two with the Romans which did not go as planned at beneventum.

>How was Pyrrhus able to hold his shit together while fielding what was basically an out dated fighting force, when every other Greek leader was later steam rolled?

Best general of his time, elephants, and an inexperienced militia army of Romans.

When it was time for the Romano-Hellenic wars far later, the Romans had just finished annihilating Carthage in three never-before-seen massive wars along with subjugating barbarians at Telemon, Illyrian pirates, and Spanish tribes in about 100 years.

Now hold on, you might think that Rome was tired of struggle ... but their military might was like the Soviet army at 1945, they had put their war machine into overdrive to defeat the greatest navy and the greatest general of the ancient world in decades long wars.

Greeks had NO chance. Not even if the ground was flat at Pydna, could Macedon have won it.

>Why couldn't Greeks "modernize"?

Greek culture and learning was THE culture and learning at the time, there was only them. Who else could they go to? Greeks already had an inflated sense of superiority since BEFORE the first Persian war! Now imagine after Alexander the great's conquests.

Who were the Romans to them? Just some tribe in the middle of nowhere. Didn't even own half of Italy, Greeks and Greek culture went to India, and from India to Spain. Phyrrhus considered them backwards and could not fathom thinking their military could defeat the phalanx, heavy cavalry, and elephant combo.

To be honest lad ... Rome deserved their empire. Greatest people ever.

how the fuck did greeks acquire elephants

After Alexander the great's conquests they were introduced to elephants in warfare, so the successor states started to trade for them.

>had a mental image of Pyrrhus as a mild mannered Robert E Lee type character
>he was actually full blood and guts and trying to build a personal empire

Also:

> But Pyrrhus was already on the retreat. And as long as the marketplace afforded him room for withdrawing and fighting, he would turn and repel his assailants; [3] but after he had been driven out of the market-place into the narrow street which led up to the gate, and encountered those who were rushing to his aid from the opposite direction, some of these could not hear him when he called out to them to withdraw, and those who did, even though they were very ready to obey him, were kept from doing so by those who were pouring in behind them from the gate. [4] For the largest of the elephants had fallen athwart the gateway1 and lay there roaring, in the way of those who would have turned back; and another elephant, one of those which had gone on into the city, Nicon by name, seeking to recover his rider, who had fallen from his back in consequence of wounds, and dashing in the face of those who were trying to get out, crowded friends and foes alike together in a promiscuous throng, [5] until, having found the body of his master, he took it up with his proboscis, laid it across his two tusks, and turned back as if crazed, overthrowing and killing those who came in his way. Thus crushed and matted together not a man of them could act at all for himself, but the whole multitude, bolted together, as it were, into one body, kept rolling and swaying this way and that.

The whole story of his final moments in the failure to take Argos was jaw dropping.

>ITT: Memes
PROTIP: The other Hellenic leaders during the late period of Hellenism were abandoning Macedonian Phalanxes.

Due to both the Romans and the Celts, they've been adopting flexible formations of long-shield bearing, javelin throwing, spearmen like the Thureophoroi and the Thorakitai.

These troops were the ones Romans scoffed at as "Imitation Legionaries." When Ironically, like Rome, they got most of the idea from their Celtic Mercenaries.

>Pyrrhus had little time to mourn, as he was immediately offered an opportunity to intervene in a civic dispute in Argos. Since Antigonus Gonatas was approaching too, he hastened to enter the city with his army by stealth, only to find the place crowded with hostile troops. During the confused battle in the narrow city streets, Pyrrhus was trapped. While he was fighting an Argive soldier, the soldier's old mother, who was watching from a rooftop, threw a tile which knocked him from his horse and broke part of his spine, paralyzing him. Whether he was alive or not after the blow is dubious, but his death was assured when a Macedonian soldier named Zopyrus, though frightened by the look on the face of the unconscious king, hesitantly and ineptly beheaded his motionless body.

MOMMA HELP ME
OPPA MY SON

Ignore this guy.

Every Hellenic army the Romans defeated were phalanx at the core, every other arm a separate unit in support of the lumbering phalanx/heavy cav combo.

>Launches invasion with elephants, fails to get city states to revolt against rome, loses, rip Pyrrhus
>Launches invasion with elephants, fails to get city states to revolt against rome, loses, rip hamilcar
>Launches invasion with elephants, fails to get city states to revolt against rome, loses, rip hannibal jr
Why is hannibal considered a genius again?

>Every Hellenic army the Romans defeated were phalanx at the core

Egypt, Pontos, and the rump states in the Levant says hi.

I don't even think the Greek City States used them.

>Why is hannibal considered a genius again?

Mostly because of Cannae. Perhaps the greatest humiliation that Rome suffered during their rise to power. Also for managing to get a huge army over the fucking alps, which mystified the Romans for centuries afterwords.

Obviously fake, Judaism wasn't even a religion until much later.

Its based off the carvings on the Herodion.

The Jews- being under Hellenic rule like the Seleucids and the Ptolemies back and forth- had their military system hellenized.

Hell they even have "Galatian" guardsmen, who were often local Heebs armed in the fashion of Galatian Celts, who made a name for themselves as Mercenaries in the East.

The strength of the legion was in its organization. The individual fighting man was no better armed or trained than the soldiers of hellenic or hellenized states. Their formations allowed for calculated and organized withdrawal and speedy reinforcement of the line but moreover their state prioritized supply to a far greater extent than their neighbors. Losing a legion or 5 while a significant blow to morale was not a war ending proposition. Losses in both men and materiel were always recoverable.

In that, more than anything, lay the strength of Rome. The phalanx formation at no point was "outdated". It was the way the units were organized that was outdated. That however, as with any detrimental state suffered by an army can be overcome by a talented commander. The shortcomings of a state however cannot and so it was that Pyrrhus would see himself leave Italy at being unable to recover his losses as quickly as the Romans could recover their own.

the phalanx was poorly used than outdated,it relies on the belief that the attacker would use the same tactic as them to counter the phalanx,some of the diadochi tried to emulate new tactics such as putting romanized infantry like the thureos or thorikitai,putting hypaspist etc but they lacked the combined arm knowledge brought by alexander and it was a little too late

You just debunked yourself.

The Hellenic armies HAVE been using these units, longer than the Romans. So how have they've been copying the Romans?

And you said the Romans copied the Celts......well guess what, who are the Galatians? The Greeks have been perfecting these "roman" units as you call them before they ever had open war in Greece or Asia. Because they've been in contact with these types of troops for centuries in Illyria.

BUT, here is where I win. Every Hellenic army has been a combined arms army. Macedonia's last ""great"" defeat at Pydna was at the expense of their PHALANX core army.

Magnesia against the Seleucids, PHALANX core army...

Makes you think, dont it?

It wasn't outdated.

I don't know what moderntards say, but primary source material ranks Pyrrhus pretty highly when it comes to military brilliance. His army was also considered impressive and even had gimmick elephants when he went to Italy.

Who's the guy on the right?

>OPPA MY SON
keked hard

football captain or some shit like that
left guy was a latin guy, right now is a germanic

saying those 2 look similar is a insult to romans as germanics were the one that exterminated them

stop this, latins didnt look like that

romans even said that germanics were different from them

He reached the Portas

Europeans are very genetically homogeneous. It isn't that far-fetched for a present-day German to look like an ancient Roman. However, "Romanz wuz Nordick" is and always will be BS.

>When Ironically, like Rome, they got most of the idea from their Celtic Mercenaries.

didn't Rome copy it from the Samnites?