Review: Richard Taylor, “The Macedonian Phalanx”

Richard Taylor, The Macedonian Phalanx: Equipment, Organization & Tactics from Philip & Alexander to the Roman Conquest (Pen & Sword: Barnsley, 2020) xii + 482 pages ISBN 978-1-52674-815-7

Available from Pen & Sword, biblio.com, and amazon.com

The Macedonian Phalanx is a thoughtful, engaging account of the ancient pike phalanx. By drawing upon literature, inscriptions, archaeology, and comparative evidence it uses the best available methods in ancient history. I am both jealous and relieved that I no longer have to write such a book myself.

The Macedonian Phalanx was partially based on the author’s doctoral dissertation but rewritten for a broader audience. All sources and quotations are translated, and competing theories are discussed without expecting readers to learn the names of different researchers and publications. There are more citations to primary sources and research than in a textbook, but less than in a scholarly monograph. A moderate number of line drawings are provided, particularly to illustrate manoeuvres and changes of formation. These are clear although it is surprising that some of the diagrams of drill movements show a phalanx with short spears and large shields not long pikes! Ninety pages of back matter (pp. 393-482, 19% of the book) include a list of battles, a list of rulers and generals, a glossary, endnotes, a bibliography of about 260 items with bibliographic essay, abbreviations, and a useful index. The works cited are mainly in English and French, but some are in German.

Strengths

Most books on early Greek warfare contain a paragraph with ritualized denunciations of the three surviving manuals of phalanx tactics and then barely cite them (“philosophers with no military experience … (wrote) inferior, pedantic, tactical manuals of much later ages … some were clearly not (of practical value) “). The longest of these manuals, by Aelian, still has no edition based on the best manuscript. Since Polybius and Arrian wrote both tactical manuals and histories, the idea that these can be separated from ‘proper’ literature is peculiar. Taylor takes the position that the tactical manuals deserve the same careful, skeptical attention as any other kind of source. So several parts of this book are a three-way dialogue between the traditional literary sources, the three Hellenistic tacticians, and English practice in the 17th century. Rather than assuming that one kind of evidence has priority, each is considered and compared to the others. So when he turns to specific battles like Issos, he can discuss how the various manoeuvres might have been performed with diagrams (p. 280). He also notes that when we consider the tactical manuals from Arrian to Maurice, there is stronger evidence for massed pushing in the Macedonian and Roman phalanx than in the classical Greek phalanx (pp. 306-314). I would have liked to hear Taylor’s best guess why so many thoughtful and learned people are reduced to stereotyped dismissals when they talk about the tactical manuals. I have always wondered if some eminent philologist in Cambridge or Yale passes down their ur-Doktorvater‘s prejudices to students and refuses to graduate anyone who says anything nice about the tactical manuals.

The comparative evidence from the 17th century is another notable feature. Scholars have often noted that in the 15th century Europeans reinvented drilled formations of pikemen, and that by the late 16th century the soldiers who commanded these formations often studied the ancient manuals, but few scholars have been willing to study these later sources in detail. I would like to see ancient historians work together with early modern historians familiar with old forms of Spanish and Italian, the military credentials of different authors, and how the proscriptions in 17th century manuals relate to practice. In an earlier post I discussed the debate amongst specialists in 16th century warfare whether the practice of firing muskets by countermarch (having the first rank fire then march to the rear to reload while the second rank stepped forward and took aim) was really borrowed from the ancients or just attributed to them. There are even manuals in Arabic which adapt Aelian’s instructions to their context!

Research on early Greek warfare has traditionally been dominated by philologists and written evidence, especially works by the great writers which could not be dismissed as ‘technical.’ The Macedonian Phalanx takes the all-sources approach which has been the gold standard in ancient history since the early 20th century and in Roman Army Studies since the 1980s. For example, there is a lengthy discussion of the three types of shields which were used with the long sarissa and how these relate to Asclepiodotus’ statement that the best shield for the phalanx is eight palms wide and not too hollow. Inscriptions, art, and experiments are cited where appropriate (although artefacts are usually cited through earlier summaries, not detailed archaeological publications).

One of the last chapters follows Polybius to address battles of Roman legion against Macedonian phalanx. The author’s attitude to Polybius is similar to my own. Because Polybius was an ancient soldier familiar with Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman armies, we should be very careful to reject anything he says because it does not fit our preconceptions about how battles happen. But Polybius was a pundit trying to convince other Greeks that the Romans had become unstoppable, not a disinterested historian. Many of his generalizations about Macedonian armies are hard to reconcile with other evidence, especially evidence from the time of Alexander. And his wording is not always as clear as translations make it seem. So he provides valuable evidence for phalanxes in the second century BCE, but he should be read skeptically. I would be interested in comparing this book’s version to Rudolf Schneider’s Legion und Phalanx: Taktische Untersuchung from 1893 https://archive.org/details/legionundphalan00schngoog

Areas for Improvement

The Macedonian Phalanx overlooks some work on similar problems in different fields. Contrary to page 300, there is actually a strong tradition of research on the ‘face of battle’ in the Roman republic and empire, Iberia and Germania during contact with Rome, and even Early Medieval Europe.[1] Yet it is striking that this research draws on research on early Greek warfare, but the researchers on early Greek warfare ignore it. When the the California school and the Krentz/van Wees school hurl analogies at each other like skirmishers exchanging stones and darts, those analogies point to Prussian doctrine in 1870, games of rugby, highland warfare in New Guinea, or riot police and football hooligans today. Somehow the researchers interested in early Greek warfare isolated themselves from other kinds of ancient history, let alone the medieval chronicles which historians up to the 1960s sometimes used to understand supply dumps in Theopompus or linen armour in Suetonius. By the time the ‘heretics’ had clearly won their tug of war with the California ‘orthodoxy’ in 2013, they were so tired and had accepted such a narrow framing of the question that they could no longer lead the next stage of research. Today the most interesting young researchers are looking for ways to build on the work of Krentz and van Wees but use new methods and ask new questions.

Although this book brings in archaeological and experimental evidence, it does not use that evidence quite as comfortably as the texts. Contrary to page 40, some early modern European pikes did have irons to discourage soldiers from shortening the pikestaff or to keep the butt from splitting when it was planted in the ground (Sekunda, “The Sarissa,” pp. 30-33 [2]). You cannot make a bronze helmet or shield by hammering or pressing it against a helmet-shaped or shield-shaped block of limestone (p. 49). The theory that ancient linen armour was made of layers of cloth glued together (p. 66) derives from a misleading English translation of a French summary of a chronicle describing armour in the 12th century CE, and nobody is known to have made armour by gluing together linen before 1970.[3] Peter Connolly’s description of his test whether a 15-person phalanx could form up with one cubit per file is concise but it does not seem “lacking” details to me (p. 9):

Doubling the files proved far easier than expected. Formed up in the standard two cubit formation, with pikes in the upright position, the right hand file turned about, marched towards the rear, wheeled and came about in the interval between the other two files. They then leveled their pikes proving that it was possible to ‘double’ the formation allowing only one cubit per man. … we had the front rank stand firm and the other four ranks push forward. This resulted in the formation condensing to one cubit per man in file.

(Connolly, “Experiments with the Sarissa,” p. 111 [4])

I did learn some things about archaeology in this book, such as that the paintings and models of sarissae with four-winged counterweights on their butts are based on the single tomb with the infamous not-a-coupling tube! But I hope that more archaeologists join in the debates about early Greek warfare. Their skills and evidence can be valuable contributions to a topic traditionally dominated by philologists and retired soldiers.

Conclusion

The Macedonian Phalanx brings original answers to old questions, and uses sources which have previously been neglected. With this book and Karunanithy’s Macedonian Fighting Machine, we now have reliable, accessible accounts of Macedonian armies as armies to pair with the social, institutional, and kingdom-oriented studies of Christelle Fischer-Bovet, Bezalel Bar Kochva, M.B. Hatzopoulos, and Angelos Chaniotis . Future work can build on these studies while making the archaeological evidence as accessible as the famous writers and the great art. I hope that this book sells well enough that the small mistakes and oversights can be corrected in a second edition.[5]

The Macedonian Phalanx is available from Pen & Sword, from biblio.com, and from amazon.com. I was given this copy to review. If you want to read more reviews like this, please, support this site on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay

Edit 2021-06-14: added a link to my definition of the California School

[1] Some examples of research on the mechanics of Roman battle:

• Sabin, Philip (1996) “The Mechanics of Battle in the Second Punic War,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, No. 67 (1996), pp. 59-79 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43767903 (Added 2021-06-15)
• Zhmodikov, A. (2000) “Roman Republican heavy infantrymen in battle (IV–II centuries BC).” Historia 49.1 pp. 67–78
• Sabin, Philip (2000) “The Face of Roman Battle.” The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 90, pp. 1–17
• Halsall, Guy (2003) Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450-900. War and History (Routledge: London and NY, 2003) {cites VDH}
• Quesada Sanz, Fernando (2006) “Not so different: individual fighting techniques and small unit tactics of Roman and Iberian armies.” In P. François, P. Moret, S. Péré-Noguès (eds.) L’Hellénisation en Méditerranée Occidentale au temps des guerres puniques. Actes du Colloque International de Toulouse, 31 mars-2 avril 2005. Pallas 70 (Presses universitaires du Mirail: Toulouse) pp. 245–263
• Bartosz Kontny, “The war as seen by an archaeologist. Reconstruction of barbarian weapons and fighting techniques in the Roman Period based on the analysis of graves containing weapons. The case of the Przeworsk Culture.” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 16 (2008) pp. 107-146
• Taylor, Michael J. (2014) “Roman Infantry Tactics in the Mid-Republic: A Reassessment.” Historia, Bd. 63 Heft 3 (2014) pp. 301-322
• Michael J. Taylor, “Visual Evidence for Roman Infantry Tactics.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 59/60 (2014/2015) pp. 103-120
• Anders, Adam (2015) “The ‘Face of Roman Skirmishing’.” Historia 64.3 pp. 263–300
• J.F. Slavik, “Pilum and Telum: The Roman Infantryman’s Style of Combat in the Middle Republic” Classical Journal 113 (2018) (added 2023-11-24)

[2] Sekunda, Nicholas Victor (2001) “The Sarissa,” Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Archaeologica 23 pp. 13-41 https://repozytorium.uni.lodz.pl/xmlui/handle/11089/7892

[3] Manning, Sean, “The History of the Idea of Glued Linen Armour,” Mouseion 17.3 (2021) pp. 492-514 https://doi.org/10.3138/mous.17.3.003

[4] Connolly, Peter (2000) “Experiments with the sarissa – the Macedonian pike and cavalry lance – a functional view.” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 11 pp. 103–112

[5] Miscellaneous pedantry (I may expand this note as I read more sections closely):

To say that depths from 4 to 12 were typical would be better than to say that 8 was typical (pp. 23, 86), since only about 40% of our references to a Greek phalanx’s depth mention eight or “about eight” but 65% mention depths from 4 to 12 (Konijendijk, Classical Greek Tactics, pp. 126-129) Asclepiodotus ii.1 says that 8, 10, 12, or 16 are common depths for the Macedonian phalanx, but as far as I know no ancient writer says that any depth was typical for Greek armies (Asclep. ii.9 implies that at some point the Macedonian phalanx was 8 men deep, since it mentions the supernumeraries which existed in the Macedonian phalanx but not earlier Greek armies).

Battle standards are not documented in the Aegean until the death of Hephaistion, but are known in Egypt and Mesopotamia since the Bronze Age, so they may be one of the Egyptian and Near Eastern practices which Alexander and his successors adopted.

Edit 2021-07-27: Added correct title and link to article in Mouseion after it appeared.

Edit 2022-06-27: Fixed link to an earlier blog post