Not exactly OT, but ....
I picked up Esposito's Carthaginian Armies of the Punic Wars ($1.99 on Amazon seemed like a good bargain, though its never been a focus of my interest), and ... he's quite adamant that Carthage re-equipped its heavy infantry in Hellenistic mode - sarissa, small shield hung off the neck, etc - from 256 BCE onward, under the influence of the Spartan, Xanthippus (he also, in an aside, ascribes the invention of the sarissa to Iphikrates, which surprised me a little).
I checked the pub.date to see if this was a woefully out of date book, but it says 2023, so .... Did WRG get it wrong all this time, and the Cartho heavy foot should be Pike? or is this guy woefully out of date? Anyone know anything of the recent research/publication around this ?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/824840264342234/posts/2982643841895188/
Denis GreyI am not sure I would place any reliance whatsoever on Professor Esposito's ex catherdra pronouncements. Does he adduce any evidence (beyond his own belief that this is the case)? And does he give a date for when the Carthaginians abandoned this mode
of fighting or is he suggesting that Hannibal's troops in Italy were equipped in this way?
Phil Malthus
798 pointsDenis Grey IDK he goes into some detail about the construction of the sarissa and its use, but that could all be adduced from Hellenistic sources. As for stopping them being used, he seems to think Hannibal re-equipped them with Roman armour (at least)
after Trebbia, but he doesnt refer to sarissa use again after that, so ... yeah, I'm much inclined to your view, that this is someone who did crap research, offhand, but for a book specialising in the army, he doesn't have the usual historian excuse of 'oh thats not my subspecialty'
Charles SingletonHaving briefly dealt with him in an editorial capacity a decade ago, I will never work with him again.
Denis Grey
Charles Singleton Wow! And I thought my review (published in Slingshot) of his "Armies of the Thracians and Dacians" was damning.
Ben Vartok
4,699 pointsOh man, do I have to repaint my army?
Adrian Coombs-HoarProfessor Esposito's book on the Late Roman Army is a complete travesty, I advise avoiding anything he wrote at all costs.
Denis GreyI asked on the Society of Ancients forum.
The collective wisdom there is that it is an old theory first propounded by Peter Connolly who relied on a fairly inexact translation of "pointy poking-stick thingy" by someone who was a classicist rather than
a military historian. There is no other supporting evidence for the theory and Plutarch describes the Carthaginians as using short spears in 215. (There is no evidence either that neck-slung shields was ever part of the "Hellenistic style").
Andrew Bennetts4,408 points The suggestion that Carthaginian heavy infantry may have been equipped as Macedonian style phalangites probably dates back to the Loeb edition of Polybios published in the 1920’s. This misleadingly translated the Greek term “lonche”, usually understood
to be a light spear capable of being thrown or thrust, as “pike” and thus “lonchephoroi” (lonche carriers) as “pikemen”. This seems to have led a few secondary writers (including Peter Connolly is his otherwise excellent “Greece and Rome at War”) to propose that Carthaginian heavy infantry were phalangites. However this view is effectively disregarded by most leading experts in the field (Lazenby, Head, Goldsworthy to name a few).
On the subject of Iphicrates inventing the sarissa, Esposito is in better company. Both Nic Sekunda and Christopher Matthews (in “The Invincible Beast”) see the long spear Iphicrates is said to have adopted as a prototype sarissa and therefore his “reformed peltasts” as early phalangites. I believe this reasoning is also why the DBMM lists make Iphicratids Pk(F).
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