Agesilaos wrote Thur 31 July:
agesilaos wrote:LOL! So now you have Xenophon’s horsemen performing ‘parembole’ and him calling it ‘paragoge’ despite the fact that Polybios is clear the two are not the same.
I confess I am at a loss as to why you keep repeating this thoroughly incorrect statement, when you are well aware that the word 'parembole' did not exist in Xenophon's day to describe a military evolution. The word is an anachronism in a military context for Xenophon's time. Polybius hundreds of years later is irrelevant.
Continued repetition of what you know to be incorrect does not do your credibility any good whatever.
A main problem here is that you insist hoplites could only move in ‘the order that has no specific name’, on a six foot frontage and would then have to close to 3ft to fight. I say they can move on the battlefield just as well on a three foot frontage; even in your model they move at this density for the final stade/200 yards.
That is not what the evidence of both Xenophon and the later Hellenistic manuals suggest, which is that movement was
generally ( I have never said only) carried out in files in open order ( 6 ft frontage), closing up as late as possible into close order ( 3 ft frontage) for combat. Your assertion that they can move just as well across country in close order as open simply demonstrates that you have not tried to move men in a long linear formation cross-country. For a long line of hoplites to maintain formation in close order over 1-200 yards was difficult enough, let alone any great distance. It might work on a parade ground, or in a meadow, but those were in short supply in ancient Greece.
But let’s shelve the re-hashing and look at something new to whit, Hellenika VI 2 xxi,
καθ᾽ ἑτέρας πύλας ἐπιτίθενται ἁθρόοι τοῖς ἐσχάτοις: 21] οἱ δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ὀκτὼ τεταγμένοι, ἀσθενὲς νομίσαντες τὸ ἄκρον τῆς φάλαγγος ἔχειν, ἀναστρέφειν ἐπειρῶντο.
meanwhile others sallied out by the other gates and in mass formation attacked those who were at the extreme end of the line. [21] These latter, who were drawn up only eight deep, thinking that the outer end of the phalanx was too weak, undertook to swing it around upon itself.
There are several issues here with the translation, ἁθρόοι, does not mean ‘a mass formation’ but just ‘a mass’ the Corcyrans sallied as a crowd not in an Epidamondian ‘embolon’. I am grateful to Christopher Matthews for the next point, in discussing Xenophon’s alleged four deep formation at the Cilician parade, he notes that there is no indication that depth is actually meant and that the Greek couls equally means ‘they drew up by fours’ ie each enomotia in four files, this would be eight deep were the enomotiai 32 strong.
I'm afraid you are direly in need of help if you are persuaded by anything Christopher Matthew has to say. His ideas on hoplite warfare are bizarre! He believes hoplites fought with couched spears, knight fashion, and that all depictions (the vast majority) showing men with spears overhead are in the act of throwing!. This man cannot even tell a long thrusting spear from a throwing weapon!! There are no bounds to his ignorance. Paralus attended a conference in Sydney where this fellow made various silly assertions.To borrow your colourful 'bon mot', the only place for his book is hanging sideways on a dunny wall. The expression "in fours"/epi tettaron in the Anabasis [I.2.15] is exactly the same as "in fours"/eis tettaras in the 'dinner drill'. The final evolution has the 'pempadarchs/half-file leaders bringing the rear half-files up "in fours", so that the formation is in close order of half-files four deep.That somehow "in fours" means 8 deep in close order of files as per Christopher Matthew is frankly garbage, and I am amazed that you should clutch at such straws. In the case of Mnasippus, it is the whole phalanx/battle array that is in eights, not individual enomotia.
Here, we are similarly dealing with mercenaries, Mnasippos had no Spartan troops, so we can shelve Xenophon’s suggestion that the ‘only eight ‘contrasts with the norm of twelve, which the Spartans alone seem to have adopted. It also hardly makes sense to say that hoplites deployed eight deep were in a weak formation, this is the normal depth in my world and twice that in yours and your cohorts. Were they eight deep in open order, as you wish then they ought to insert their half-files and assume fighting depth and density according to your theory.
Why should the fact that these are Spartan mercenaries rather than Lakedaemonians preclude them from forming 12 deep, if the occasion demanded, especially as this seems to be the Spartan norm at this time ? For whatever reason, they decided that 8 deep ( in open formation most likely) was "weak" against a "mass" – presumably deep like a Theban one, even if not actual column/embolon formation, and chose to double their depth by means of an 'anastrophe'/folding back.
They instead perform an anastrophe. Were this a simple (?) counter-march it is hard to see the purpose, it is more likely that alternate files counter-march to the rear of those halting to deepen the line and make it stronger, the files would presumably close-up after doubling their depth, just like the Macedonian phalanx at Kynoskephalai.
You evidently seem to mis- understand the meaning of 'anastrophe', for it was not Aelian's 'compacting' sideways which was never, as far as we know, ever done by classical hoplites. Instead, doubling of depth was achieved by the ‘anastrophe’/folding back manoeuvre in Xenophon's time. Aelian's manouevre would be anachronistic for Xenophon's time.
Some commentators describe this as ‘wheeling’ but this is not the meaning of the Greek – and Agesilaos certainly didn’t have room to wheel half his army in a narrow valley [XH VI.2.21]. Most commentators agree the ἀναστροφή involved two movements, (1) an about turn, followed by a march to the rear, and (2) a turning of the line and marching along the line of troops in front until it stood behind these adjacent troops, thus doubling the depth of the phalanx. ( which could then close up to 8 deep in close order, with all the officers in the front line)
The initial formation must actually be formed ‘by eights’ rather than ‘eight deep’; this would lead to a four deep line which was considered too weak to face the sallying mass, which scuppers lines normally fighting four deep, but then we never hear of that only Xenophon’s parade ‘depth’ Matthews interpretation of which is supported by this passage.
I don’t think this can be correct - they were not trying to end up with a phalanx 4 deep, as from files 8 deep, but instead trying to
increase depth. The anastrophe would have left them 16 deep ( in open order - all manouevres such as counter-marches etc being carried out in open order before the final 'closing up'.)
C.Matthew's “by eights”, i.e. 8 front x 4 deep cannot be the case, because there is no reference to enomotia – it is the whole ‘battle array’/tetagmenoi that is formed ‘in eights’ [᾽ ἐπ᾽ ὀκτὼ τεταγμένοι,], which can only therefore refer to the depth of the whole battle array as 8, just as 'epi tetaron' and 'eis tettareis' must refer to a depth of four.( Unless you wish to postulate the whole battle array stood on a frontage of 8? ) More on this when I get to your post of Sat 2 Aug.
Mnasippos, had ranged his men four deep to cover the gates (we are told earlier that he thought the city as good as taken and was playing silly buggers with his mercenaries VI 2 xvi ff), one might recall the Diodoros passage too.
This cannot be so – see above.
This is a clincher (note the triumphalism, like my favourite emperor I love a Triumph!). This is an actual battle, not a parade, or a fictional dinner drill and any interpretation disproves the theory you have espoused. And England have, despite their captain’s best efforts finally won a Test!!!
Sadly, your 4 deep cannot be so, but even if things were as you and C.Matthew would have them, it would not disprove anything, being but an exception that ‘proves[tests]’ the general rule. To dismiss Xen An. I.2.16 as a ‘parade’ amounts to wilful blindness for you know perfectly well that they were drawn up “
in their customary battle formation”. ( Also, I am not aware of hoplites being referred to as having a specific 'parade' formation in any of our sources)
Similarly, to call the dinner drill ‘fictional’ overlooks the fact that half-file leaders are referred to several times elsewhere, and that in Xen. Constit’n Lak. XI.5 we hear of enomotia formed 3 frontage x 12 deep ( obviously in open order), or 6x6 ( obviously close order with the rear half-files brought up between the front half-files – entirely consistent with the dinner drill, which is not therefore ‘fictional’.
Any hypothesis which leaves out significant parts of the evidence, as Agesilaos does here, is generally incorrect.
edited to correct typo
edited change of phraseology to clarify
