Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Ancient Warfare Podcast.

With me today are Mark Dissentis, Murray Dam, Michael, and Mark McAfree.

And my name is Jasper Wirthaus.

I'm the editor of Ancient Warfare Magazine.

And today we are collectively answering a question that Murray already had, he said,

a bite of the cherry of, namely Jern Schneider's question,

what do you think was the most important factor in ancient warfare?

And I'm sure that we're trying to get at what is the most decisive factor in winning on the ancient battlefield.

I have four people with me who all have strong opinions about that.

So I suggest that we just take it one by one and then maybe we'll have a short debate at some point,

probably a lot earlier than we expect it because it's how it tends to go.

Who wants to kick off?

What is the most important factor on the ancient battlefield?

Not Murray, because he's already had that cherry. Sure, I'll kick off. There's certainly a lot of

critical factors here that I think should be discussed, but the one that I want to hammer on the

most is unit cohesion, specifically. And I want to apply that also to even dispersed formations, or what we call, you know,

light infantry, so skirmishing troops that don't necessarily are in lockstep like we would consider to be heavy infantry.

There's a few reasons why this is critically important, right?

One of the things,

the first is just the simple basics of flanking and rear attacks in battle. In both the

hoplight phalanx, the pesidairoi phalanx of the Hellenistic age, the Legion, the Polybian Legion,

I don't want to talk about later formations because I get outside my area of expertise. The purpose of the formation, particularly in heavy infantry, is to make

...