Intermission: Battle Pulses

Summary

This week we’re going to take a brief break from our series on hoplites (I, II, IIIa, IIIb) to address a broader question in how we understand the mechanics of warfare with contact weapons, which is the mechanics of the concept of a ‘battle pulse.’ This notion, that front lines in contact might occasionally withdraw to catch their breath, replace wounded men at the front or simply to relieve the psychological pressure of the fighting keeps coming up in the comments and is worth addressing on its own. Because while it is an important question for understanding any kind of contact warfare (because ‘pulse’ proponents insist on the pulse as being a general feature of contact warfare, not restricted to any particular culture), it is both very relevant to understanding hoplites, but also emerged as an extension of the argument about othismos that extended into Roman warfare. There is something of an irony that we are briefly disengaging from our discussion of hoplites to discuss if hoplites briefly disnegaged from battle. So our question here is, “was the fighting at the point of contact between two formations of heavy infantry a continuous run of fighting or did it proceed in pulses and bursts and if the latter, of what nature might they have been?” I should note that the normal expression here is to describe the sparring at the line of contact as a ‘series of duels’ but anyone who has watched or participated in experiments in contact-line fighting will immediately recognize they are not ever a ‘series of duels’ as any given combatant on the front moving into measure is entering measure of several enemies and so may attack or be attacked by any of them (and indeed, striking the fellow to the left or right of the fellow in front of you, catching them unawares, is often useful). So the line of contact is not a series of 1-on-1s but rather a rolling series of ‘several-on-severals’ with each man having his own set of ‘several,’ depending on the length of the weapons used. No...