Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray.

Today's question is less of a question, more of an accusation, really, which I framed as a question

to answer. More of that in a moment. Of course, you can ask us a question if you like. You can send us an

email. You can make a comment on Facebook, on YouTube, on any of the platforms where you listen to this

podcast or watch this podcast. You can send us a telegram. I'm not even sure how you send

telegrams anymore. You can send us a postcard, P-O-box-2-2-2-B-E-L-F-I-E-L-D, NSW-1-N-S-W-1-N-S-W-1-N-N-S-W-E-N-E-N-W-E-T-E, which I still have to answer this question from

Francescoe, I'm on that. Now, the question slash accusation, where are the light troops?

In several recent podcasts, I have talked about the stagnation of the phalanx and casualty numbers in the phalanx.

And several commenters have taken umbrage at the fact that I don't mention the light troops.

In my defense, it's a 10

minute segment i can't mention everything in 10 minutes if i could uh everything everywhere all at

once but light troops are a fascinating issue in ancient warfare because more often than not

they are in fact not mentioned um in warfare across the history of the ancient world, both in terms of

Greek, Roman, but also other warfare.

And so it's a peculiar aspect of ancient warfare that heavy infantry societies emphasize

heavy infantry, heavy cavalry or cavalry societies emphasize cavalry.

And so what you find in those is that light infantry are not mentioned at all, or

they are mentioned in passing in several battle accounts.

And instead, what the battle accounts concentrate on are indeed

the heavy infantry, the phalanjites, the hoplites, the legionaries. And so we are stuck as

ancient, as modern ancient historians saying, but we know these light troops existed. And we extrapolate

that into saying light troops always existed these light troops existed. And we extrapolate that into saying light

...