Phalanx
FAY-lanks
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe formation hoplites fought in: a block of men several ranks deep, shields overlapping, spears levelled over the top of the rank in front.
Its strength is that it cannot be fought as individuals and its weakness is that it cannot turn. Herodotus has the Persians at Thermopylae unable to make their numbers count in the narrow pass, and then winning the moment a path was found around it.
Thucydides records the rightward drift as a known fault that generals had to plan around. The line does what frightened men do, not what the commander drew.
Sources
- Thuc. 5.71
- Hdt. 7.211-213
- Hdt. 9.61-62
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Discussed in the papers
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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