The Classical Phalanx - over-arm or underarm?

[Jubal]

I asked a LARPer and a re-enactor yesterday, both claimed from experience to prefer underhand grips on account of overhand limiting your reach and your choice of points to attack.

[Bercor]

It's clear that the overhand grip limits the holder in a way that the undehand does not. However, on the other hand, the overhand allows you to stay in formation. Personally, I would prefer safety to reach, or possibilities of attack, any day.

[Silver Wolf]

It had to be overarm.

Underarm is more versatile, but it makes no sense in phalanx fights.
As we all know, hoplites fought in shield-wall formations and when two sides clashed their front rows were supported by a huge mass of soldiers behind them, pushing them forward. In such scenarios there is simply no space for underarm fighting style. You would not be able to move you elbows. Even if you could, wounding your enemy would be extremely hard, since he would be standing in your face with his shield for cover.
The only option is thrusting down at your enemy's upper body while his shields is pinned against yours. And that's overarm.


Also for some reason my overarm thrust has more force than underarm (usually the opposite for most folks), but less control (as expected).

[Jubal]

I feel like once you got that close the front rank would be likely to drop their spears regardless - a sword would be much more useful once you were actually at pushing range. Also you can get an underarm spear at least to shoulder level or a little above (assuming we're still defining underarm as a thumb-forwards grip), and I suspect that even doing that would give you a crucial advantage for reach compared to an overarm fighter.

[Bercor]

Yes, it would. But, once again, it also would be impractical in a formation.

[TTG4]

Just reading through this, I hadn't even thought that over-arm was a possibilty! It feels like with overarm you use the bicep muscles more, whereas underarm feels lie you use the tricep muscles more. In general, someones bieps are stronger than their triceps.

Though since you've got a spear, I'm not certain how much difference that would make.

[Jubal]

I'm pretty sure it would only be impractical in a very close packed fight; the aspis isn't so big that you can't hold a couched spear at shoulder height and have it sticking over the top (though it's perhaps a slightly unwieldy position). I'm sceptical about the idea that hoplite battles purely involved a shoving match of people; it makes sense for some battles, but not others. Also, greek armour design doesn't seem to make that much sense if downward thrusts are the main issue and the aspis is covering the centre of the body; the place that got reinforced most often was the belly.

I think what all this calls for is some test fights between different styles of phalanx, under some sort of re-enactment/LARP rules. 

[comrade_general]

I picked up a stick and tried it. Both seem to have their own pluses and minuses. Who's to say it wasn't a personal preference back then as well and was often interchangeable?

[Jubal]

I doubt you could have an effective formation if people varied style within it. I expect that it was fairly interchangeable though.

[Bercor]

I found this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Jubal]

Cradling the spears between the shields is an interesting one there, particularly. That would make holding a high underarm a much more sustainable option in a push.

[Bercor]

Yeah, and you can see how there's no possibility of hitting the guy behind you, plus you can rest the spear in your forearm.

[TTG4]

The wrist roll is interesting, would the point be twisting upon contact?

If so, among martial artists, a twist on the end of a technique is considered to increase the damage caused. Whether or not this is relevant to a spear though I'm not too certain.

[Alavaria]

Yeah, the heavy bronze cuirasses that the white hair guy refers to in the second video were completely outdated in the Hellenistic period. Almost no one used it. So, that "restric movement" argument doesn't quite hold up.

What are the types of bronze cuirasses that appear in a bunch of the RTW mods?

[Jubal]

Not sure - I mean, I'm sure part-bronze was common, but the restriction of movement only really holds if the whole thing is a single block of bronze - if it's just reinforcing a regular piece of leather armour or indeed if it's a breastplate-backplate arrangement with straps I think movement should still be sufficient.