If a phalangite took advantage of an opportunity to deliver a killing blow to the chest of an enemy standing opposite him, could enough power be delivered with a thrust of the sarissa to overcome the armour of the time and injure or kill that opponent? The ancient literary sources seem to suggest that this was possible, but how easily this could be accomplished is not detailed. An examination of the penetration power of the sarissa demonstrates that this lengthy and somewhat unwieldy weapon possessed the ability to deliver tremendous killing power on the field ofbattle.
Many modern works which examine the warfare of the Hellenistic Age suggest, albeit sometimes generally, that the members of the pike-phalanx were able to easily dispatch an enemy through thrusting actions performed with the sarissa. Warry, for example, states that the pike ‘must have given the formation greater thrusting power’.¹ Heckel suggests that the heads of the sarissae presented by the phalanx, which he incorrectly equates with the large ‘head’ found by Andronicos at Vergina, ‘sliced through shields and armour like swords’.² Similarly, Gabriel states that the sarissa had sufficient power to penetrate an opponent’s shield and armour.³ Sekunda, following the premise that the sarissa had only a small head, suggests that it was specifically designed for piercing armour.⁴ Worthington elaborates further on the penetrative power of the sarissa by stating that the head was designed ‘not merely to damage an opponent’s armour or wound him like a conventional spearhead, but to penetrate the armour and keep going into the enemy’s body’.⁵
The ancient sources contain passages which reinforce these claims. At Halicarnassus in 334BC, the Greek mercenaries fighting against Alexander’s troops received numerous frontal wounds.⁶ This would suggest that the sarissa was capable of penetrating the bronze or linen armour commonly worn by the Greeks in the fourth century BC. In 327BC, Alexander’s phalangites were able to thrust their weapons through the shields carried by those facing them and further into the opponent’s lungs.⁷ This suggests that the pike was capable of penetrating shields as well as armour with the one strike. Pausanias states that linen breast-plates were not useful for soldiers as they let the iron [head of a weapon] pass through if the blow is a violent one.⁸ If this was true for both spears and pikes, this would correlate with the other statements which suggest the possession of a high penetrative ability by the sarissa.
Yet the ancient texts also contain numerous references to those who had faced a pike-phalanx, been wounded, and survived. Such references can be found across the Hellenistic Period from the Medizing Greek mercenaries who were carried unconscious from the battle of Halicarnassus in 334BC, to Agis III receiving ‘many frontal wounds’ at Megalopolis in 331BC, to Antigonus’ 4,000 ‘walking wounded’ following the battle of Paraetacene in 317BC, to the numerous Romans wounded at Magnesia and Pydna.⁹ Such accounts suggest that the sarissa may not have been able to penetrate an opponent’s shield and/or armour as easily as other ancient passages would suggest. An examination of the penetrative power of an attack delivered with the sarissa helps put these passages into context.
In their experiments to determine the penetrative power of various pieces of ancient weaponry (other than the sarissa), Gabriel and Metz filmed a man 6ft (183cm) tall and weighing 180lb (82kg) using high-speed strobe photography of ten, thirty and sixty frames per second while using different replica weapons in front of a graduated scale.¹⁰ Measuring the distance that a select point on the weapon (e.g. the tip of a spear or sword) travelled between each frame of the strobe photography allowed for the velocity of each action to be determined in feet per second. The velocity of the strike, and the weight of the weapon tested, was then inserted into the following formula, used by the US Army Ballistics Laboratory, to determine the amount of energy (in foot pounds [ft lbs]) that was delivered with each action:¹¹
The ‘killing power’ of each weapon was then determined by examining the area of a wound that it would produce by measuring the circumference of the opening made and the size of its impacting edge or tip.¹²
Gabriel and Metz then calculated the amount of energy required for a weapon to penetrate bronze plate armour by conducting baseline tests using a bow and arrow, which is the easiest weapon to use which produces a standardized set of velocities over multiple impacts, against target plates of 2mm thick brass.¹³ They concluded that an arrow needed to hit the target plate with around 75.7ft lbs (103j) of energy to penetrate to a ‘killing depth’ of 2in.¹⁴ The results of this base-line test were then used to calculate the impact energy required for other weapons to penetrate the same target plate to a similar ‘killing depth’ by determining that, if the size of the impacting edge is the same for two weapons (e.g. the tip of an arrowhead and the tip of a spearhead), and it requires a certain amount of energy for one weapon (e.g. an arrow) to penetrate to a depth of 2in (A) resulting in an opening in the target of a certain size (B), then for a different weapon (e.g. a spear) to penetrate to the same depth but create an opening of a different size (C), that weapon must deliver an amount of energy equal to (A/B) x C.¹⁵ Based upon the results of these tests and calculations, Gabriel and Metz determined that it requires 137.0ft lbs (186j) of energy for a spear to penetrate a 2mm thick metal plate to a ‘killing depth’, while it would require only 2.0ft lbs (3j) to penetrate flesh, 68.0ft lbs (92.0j) to break any bone of the body other than the skull (which requires an impact with 90.0ft lbs (122j) of energy to be broken), and an impact to the head of between 56.0-79.0ft lbs (76.0-107j) to produce unconsciousness.¹⁶
Using these same principles, the penetrative power of the sarissa was calculated. A test participant 5ft 5in (168cm) tall and weighing 180lb (82kg) was filmed performing attacking actions with a replica sarissa in front of a graduated scale at a rate of ten frames per second and while wearing a full phalangite panoply. Five different actions were filmed and the footage was then analyzed using computer software to determine the velocity of the movement of the tip of the pike in each thrust from its ‘ready position’ to its combat range (the most effective point of impact for the penetration of a target). The average recorded velocity for the delivered strikes was 20.9 feet (6.4m) per second. Using the US Army Ballistics Laboratory formula, and the weight of the sarissa used in the tests (11.9lb – 5.4kg), the amount of energy delivered with a thrust of the sarissa would be 81.2ft lbs (110j). This would suggest that a thrust from the sarissa would be incapable of penetrating the target plates used by Gabriel and Metz in their experiments. Yet the ancient literary sources suggest that the sarissa could easily pierce both shields and breastplates (and in some cases the body underneath). There are several factors which must be considered in relation to the penetration power of the sarissa and, when these are taken into consideration along with the parameters of Gabriel and Metz’s tests, the results of these re-calculations demonstrate that the Hellenistic pike was a formidable piece of weaponry.
The size of the head on the spear used by Gabriel and Metz in their calculations was bigger than the head of the sarissa. The figure given by Gabriel and Metz for the circumference of an opening made by a spear penetrating to a ‘killing depth’ is 3.6in (9.1cm).¹⁷ This would be the result of a weapon with a head that was approximately 4.5cm across at a point 5cm back from its impacting tip. However, the sarissa seems to have been configured with a head similar to that used on the spear wielded by the Classical Hoplite – the head of which was smaller. The average maximum width of the common ‘J-style’ spear head of the Classical Age is 3.1cm.¹⁸ It also seems likely that the head of the traditional hoplite spear was reused in the creation of the pike as part of the reforms of Iphicrates in 374BC (see pages 89-90). Thus the sarissa would have possessed a head similar in size to that of the hoplite doru. The head on the replica sarissa used in this research had a similar width to that of the ‘J style’ hoplite spear head – 3.2cm at a point 5cm back from its impacting tip. Such a head would produce an opening of around 6.6cm (2.6in) in circumference when thrust into a target to a ‘killing depth’ of 2in. A recalculation of the energy required for the smaller head of a sarissa to create an opening in the target plates used by Gabriel and Metz with a circumference of 2.6in shows that an attack delivered with a reduced amount of energy equal to 98.9ft lbs (134j) would penetrate the target to a ‘killing depth’ of 2in. This is still greater than the estimated amount of energy that can be delivered with an attack made with a sarissa (81.2ft lbs or 110j) which still suggests that the Hellenistic pike would have been incapable of piercing Gabriel and Metz’s target plates. However, there are factors other than just the size of the impacting head that affected how easily the pike could be used as an offensive weapon (see following). Importantly, such considerations demonstrate that the large ‘head’ found at Vergina, which has a width of 4cm at a point 5 cm back from the tip, is unlikely to have come from a sarissa unless it is assumed that the pike possessed less penetrative power than the traditional hoplite spear.
The bronze plate corslets that may have been worn by the Greeks who faced Philip Il’s pike-phalanx at Chaeronea in 338BC or Alexander’s troops at Halicarnassus in 334BC were not 2mm thick like the target plates used by Gabriel and Metz in their calculations. The thickness of both helmets and armour from the Classical Age averages only 1mm.¹⁹ The linen armour used by the Greeks and Macedonians in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, which may have been up to 10mm thick, possessed at least the same protective abilities as 1mm bronze plate.²⁰ The thickness of the armour worn by a combatant facing a pike-phalanx will influence how easy it would have been for a sarissa to penetrate it. In its most basic terms, the thicker that the armour is, the greater the amount of energy is required to pierce it. The thickness of a specific type of armour can be incorporated into the calculation of the killing ability of the sarissa through the inclusion of an ‘energy multiplier’. Williams, in his examination of the effectiveness of medieval armour, provides a scale of ‘energy multipliers’ that can be used to account for the varying thicknesses of different pieces of armour (Table 13):
Table 13: The ‘energy multiplier’ required to calculate the penetration of armour of different thicknesses.²¹
Based upon the figures provided by Williams, it takes almost three times the amount of energy for a weapon to penetrate a target with a thickness of 2mm than it does to penetrate a target only 1mm thick to the same depth. Thus the amount of energy needed for the sarissa to penetrate a 2mm thick target to a killing depth oftwo inches (98.9ft lbs or 134j) can be recalculated to only 34.1ft lbs (46.2j) needed to pierce the armour worn by some Greek hoplites, who were possibly the best armoured of any of the opponents that the Hellenistic pike-phalanx would face other than the Romans. This is far less than the amount of energy generated by an attack made with the sarissa (81.2ft lbs or 110j) which in turn suggests that the sarissa was an effective killing instrument.
Additionally, both the angle at which the pike impacted with the target, and the curvature of the armour itself (which also determines the overall angle of impact) will have bearings on the ease (or difficulty) that an attack delivered with a sarissa could penetrate a target. The arrow impact tests undertaken by Gabriel and Metz to gather their base-line data involved projectiles striking flat target plates at an approximate angle of 45°. This was done to simulate the downward trajectories of lobbed volleys of missile fire and the downward trajectories of swung hand-held weapons like the mace or axe.²² The surfaces of most armour worn in the Hellenistic Period were not flat like the target plates of Gabriel and Metz’s tests but the curvature of the armour itself may have still resulted in an equivalent angle of impact up to 45° (or possibly greater if the curvature was combined with a strike delivered at an angle to the target). The helmet of the Hellenistic Period, for example, could have numerous curved sections depending upon the style being worn (see Plate 10). The bronze ‘muscled’ cuirass had stylised musculature depicted in high relief on the front plate of the corslet which meant that there were very few flat areas on the armour. Even the less elaborate linothorax possessed a curved barrel-shaped torso and curving shoulder guards. Williams states that due to the curvature of the medieval chest plate, which is similar in many regards to the curvature of the linothorax, even a flat thrust from a weapon such as a spear will impact with the armour at an angle equivalent to 0-45° from the perpendicular depending upon where on the armour the strike actually lands.²³
Thus in a ‘best case scenario’, where an attack made with the sarissa from the low position followed a fairly flat trajectory and hit an enemy almost squarely in the chest, the weapon would impact at an angle not far from perpendicular to the surface of any armour that opponent might be wearing or shield he might be carrying. It would only be the curvature of the armour itself which would alter the angle of this impact. Additionally, as the location of the impact moves around the body, the curvature of the armour (relative to the angel of impact) increases and this would then make it harder for the weapon to penetrate.
Similar to the way an ‘energy multiplier’ can be used in any calculation of penetration power, a different set of ‘energy multipliers’ can be used to account for the angle at which any attack will strike a particular target (Table 14):
Table 14: The ‘energy multiplier’ required to calculate the penetration of armour at different angles.²⁴
Based upon these figures, it requires forty per cent more energy for a weapon to penetrate a target at a 45° angle of impact (either actual or equivalent based upon the curvature of the target) to a certain depth than it does to penetrate a target struck perpendicular to its surface to the same depth. When the ‘energy multipliers’ for both the thickness of the armour and the angle of impact are considered, the adjusted figure of 34.1ft lbs (46.2j) of energy required for the sarissa to penetrate a 1mm thick target at a 45° angle of impact can be recalculated (Table 15).
Table 15: The energy required for the sarissa to penetrate armour of different thicknesses and at different angles.
Thus an attack made with a sarissa, delivering energy of 81.2ft lbs (110j) would be capable of easily penetrating the 1mm thick plate armour worn by the Greek hoplite even at angles greater than 60° from the perpendicular. If the calculations of Aldrete, Bartell and Aldrete are correct, and 11mm thick linen armour was the equivalent of 1.8mm thick metal plate, the sarissa would still be able to inflict a killing blow on a victim so long as the attack was delivered at an angle less than 30° from the perpendicular. Due to the ability to keep the pike level through a flexing of the wrists when an attack is made from the low position, all attacks will strike their target roughly perpendicular – with the only variance in the angle being caused by the curvature of the actual armour the target was wearing. But even here, angles of impact up to 50° would not prevent a sarissa from delivering a killing blow so long as the armour worn by an opponent was less than 1.5mm thick (or equivalent). Even with a given amount of flex that would absorb some of the impact energy, it would seem likely that the sarissa would have been capable of penetrating linen armour as well as bronze plate and some shields.
In another test, a replica sarissa was used against a sheet of 1mm thick corrugated iron (which was held perpendicular to the ground at chest height by two brave volunteers) to test the weapon’s penetrative abilities. Participants wearing full phalangite panoplies engaged this target sheet with attacks delivered from the low position. In almost every case, the tip of the sarissa easily penetrated the corrugated sheet to a killing depth of 2in or more with very little effort. In one case, the entire head of the weapon and part of the shaft passed through the sheet – a depth of penetration of at least 16cm which would have caused significant injury, if not immediate death, to any victim. This level of penetration occurred regardless of where upon the corrugated surface of the metal sheet the weapon struck. At no time did the curvature of the sheet cause the pike to glance off or fail to penetrate. This basic practical experiment correlates with the calculations provided above that an attack made with the sarissa, following a relatively flat trajectory, was capable of easily penetrating plate metal armour at almost any angle of impact.²⁵
Such conclusions then shed light on some of the ancient passages which recount the combative use of the sarissa. At Issus for example, Alexander’s pikemen, who were in the riverbed as they attempted to cross, found it difficult to slay the Persians holding the higher bank above them and so were forced to thrust their sarissae at the faces their opponents.²⁶ This would suggest that attempting to thrust upwards at an angle with the sarissa (as would happen with a phalangite in a river bed thrusting at an enemy on an elevated bank) could either not generate enough force to penetrate armour and shields due to the awkwardness of the action, caused too great an angle of impact for the penetration of armour and shields, or both. In this case, Alexander’s troops were then forced to direct their attacks at a more vulnerable area of their opponent’s body, the face. The ease with which a more level attack made with the sarissa could penetrate armour would also confirm the accuracy of the passage of Diodorus which recalls how Alexander’s phalangites were able to thrust their pikes through enemy shields and into their bodies.²⁷
All of the data outlined above was gathered from filming a stationary participant wielding the sarissa who did not lean into, or step forward with, their attacks as their movements were recorded. The ability of a member of the front rank of the phalanx to either step or lean into any attack they may commit would add substantial body mass to that attack and so increase the amount of energy delivered through the impacting tip of the weapon.
The transference of the body’s potential energy to the impact of a weapon occurs when the link between the two is sufficiently rigid.²⁸ If the pike is simply held in its ready position, braced in place by the two hands wielding it, and a phalangite leant forward to try and force an opponent back or move his shield out of the way, a considerable amount of his body weight is applied to the attack. Such short leaning attacks would have occurred when an enemy was pressed up against the tip of the phalangite’s weapon and when there would have been little room for the swinging motions of a thrusting attack. If a phalangite weighing 80kg and wearing 20kg of equipment, could get even a fraction of his body weight behind this sort of drive, it would add considerable weight to the calculation of how much energy could be delivered through the tip of the weapon – not enough to force the tip through a piece of defensive armour such as a thick shield or breastplate, but possibly enough to either knock the opponent over or force them backwards.²⁹
Considerably more energy could be ‘delivered’ if the pike was held in place and an enemy then charged upon it, impaling themselves. Plutarch states that at the battle of Pydna in 168BC the Pelignians and Marricinians charged upon the presented weapons of the phalanx ‘with animal fury’ and that the sarissae, which were held firmly in place with both hands by the Macedonians, pierced ‘those that fell upon them, armour and all, as neither shield nor breastplate could resist the force of the Macedonian pike’.³⁰ If the Roman auxiliaries who charged onto the phalanx weighed a total of 100kg (220lb), and hurled themselves onto the tips of the sarissae even at a brisk walk of 5km/h (4.4ft/second), then the amount of energy of the collision between a charging Pelignian and the tip of a presented pike would be around 665ft lbs (902j). This is nearly double the amount of energy required to penetrate armour 3.5mm thick at an angle of impact of 60°. Had the charge been quicker (as the ‘animal fury’ described by Plutarch would suggest) then the amount of impact energy would be even higher. This would account for Plutarch’s statement for how, at least in this instance, the sarissa was able to easily penetrate shields and armour as the very momentum of the charging assailant was the cause of their own demise. This would also account for the passage of Lucian which describes how a pike, rigidly braced in position, was used to kill both a horse and rider which charged upon it.³¹
As a battle wore on and a phalangite’s level of energy decreased, this would have a detrimental effect on the effectiveness of any of his offensive actions to penetrate the armour of an enemy he was facing. The first committed attack made (i.e. not a short jab designed to probe an enemy’s defences, but a solid thrust aimed at delivering a killing blow) would undoubtedly be the strongest. As time wore on, and the muscles of the arms began to tire, the actions of a thrust would be slower and weaker, thereby imparting less impact energy on the target.
However, a phalangite could not guarantee that his first committed attack would be successful – it could miss, be parried, taken on an opponent’s shield or evaded in some other way. Additionally, even if the phalangite was able to slay his opponent with his first attack, there would undoubtedly be more enemies to face him. As such, phalangite warfare had to involve a method of fighting that could be maintained for as long as possible and, most importantly, be as effectively as possible. The energy that could be delivered with a sarissa from the low position – the posture that causes the least muscular stress on the arms – can accommodate a 70 per cent reduction in the amount of energy delivered due to the onset of fatigue and yet still be capable of penetrating 1mm thick armour to a killing depth so long as the target is struck perpendicular to its surface. This, combined with the ability to simply hold the sarissa in place and keep an enemy at a safe distance, with committed attacks against opportune targets only being made when (and if) they presented themselves, would have allowed phalangites to operate effectively on the battlefield for considerable periods of time.
The sarissa, for all of its weight and bulk, was an extremely effective battlefield weapon. The amount of energy that could be delivered with a committed attack could easily pierce any of the armour used in the Hellenistic Period. The ability to simply hold the weapon in position allowed the sarissa to be used in a number of ways which allowed contingents of phalangites to engage in combat for protracted periods of time, and may have even resulted in the slaying of enemies brash enough to charge upon them. It can subsequently be concluded that the numerous references to walking wounded who had survived confrontations with a pike-phalanx were either the result of weakened attacks made by the tiring phalangites (attacks that may not have penetrated an opponent’s defensive armour to a serious depth), the result of ‘accidental’ attacks where a pike that was pressed into the shield of a facing enemy slid off its surface to impact with the face or legs, or were the result of being pushed back by the lengthy pike which may have resulted in some form of minor injury. Regardless, the sarissa appears not to have been the cumbersome weapon that it may seem to have been. Rather, it was an impressive piece of weaponry, one which allowed the Macedonians to dominate the battlefields of the ancient world, and which allowed its length and weight to be used to their full advantage so long as it was employed within the safe confines of the massed formation of the phalanx.