Advantage
The Macedonian phalanx was not very different from the Hoplite phalanx of other Greeks states, save it was better trained, armed with the sarissa enabling it to outreach its competitors and stave off enemy cavalry, and wore far lighter armor enabling longer endurance and long fast forced marches, including the ability to sprint to close and overwhelm opposing positions and archers. In essence, the range of their counter-weighted sarissa, allowed them superior mobility as well as superior defense and attack abilities despite the encumbrance disadvantages of the longer weapon once trained up to handling it in formation. Centuries later, the organized militia of Swiss pikemen enjoyed similar advantages over less well trained contemporary militaries which were identically equipped, which emphasizes the importance of training and unit cohesion in the scheme. In Phillip's and Alexander's time, the Macedonian phalanx had clear technical superiority.
Read more about this topic: Macedonian Phalanx
Famous quotes containing the word advantage:
“One great advantage which poetry has over prose—one sense in which, we might even say, it is considerably more beautiful—is that it fills up space approximately three times as rapidly.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer’s profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man’s home, could suggest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)