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

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levels, legionary Optio and Centurion. Now, today's question is from M. Rook E. Ward and he writes,

without any data in front of me, it would appear that heavier

armored or protected troops seemed to be able to make light troops relatively ineffective. I don't

recall European armies being decimated by missile armed troops, the Battle of Karai being one of the

few exceptions, is that a false memory of mine,

whereas Persians, for example, had a predominance of missile troops, and I've assumed, again,

without data, this is because of their enemies tended to be lighter and more mobile, or such as,

for example. This seemed to play against them later. How else would an outnumbered Macedonian

army survive against a

shahrab arrows, slings and javelins? So, with these potentially false and unsupported assumptions,

it's not just the social prestige of being wealthy enough to be armed and armored and in the ranks

of the heavies, but the ability to see off threats of light troops long enough to force a battle

decision in melee by

the heavies. Do we have data to support, to debunk that? Okay, I think we do, but it's a peculiar

one, and it comes down to all sorts of interesting assumptions as well. So there are examples of armies being

...