Hello and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers. My name is Jasper Ortiz. I'm the editor of ancient

warfare magazine and with me is Murray Dam. He's the assistant editor. And today we are going to

answer a question from one of our patrons, Josh. If you want to support us, go to patreon.com

slash ancient warfare podcast where you can support us at various levels that include getting a digital or print copy of the magazine.

You don't have to, and you can still submit questions such as the one that Josh did.

How did Macedonian and Hellenistic phalanxes manage combat with more mobile cavalry armies,

such as Scythians, Sogians, Meads, etc.

Murray.

Well, there we go.

The phalanx again.

The phalanx main role is obviously it presents to any enemy a vast number of spears from the time of Alexander,

9,000 cirruses poking out towards the enemy. So in the first instance, it's occupying space

and in all of his battles, Alexander pushes his phalanx forward first.

So it's an imminent threat.

It's a vast number of troops occupying ground and posing a threat.

So the first thing that Alexander does is he uses his phalanx to be that threat. And what he then does is he fights a cavalry

battle with his other troops, whether it be it cavalry versus cavalry or whether it be light armed

troops and missile troops versus cavalry. And when you look at Alexander's battles, he will always tend to charge his right wing out towards the right with the expectation that the enemy left wing, the Persian left wing, will try and match that maneuver.

And so what happens at both, well, at all three battles, Granicus, Galgamela and Isis, is that a gap appears, or enough of a gap appears in the Persian left wing for Alexander to be able to take advantage of it.

And he then charges home through that gap, followed by the infantry, and then they defeat the Persians by breaking their formation

and of course having Darius flee from the battlefield which never helps.

So the interesting thing there is that the phalanx as such is not necessarily intended to fight cavalry,

...