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Ancient Warfare Podcast

AWA373 - Greek phalanx vs. Germanic shield wall: how different were they?

Ancient Warfare Podcast

The History Network

History, Society & Culture

4.3645 Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of the Ancient Warfare Podcast, Murray tackles a question from Jörn: How different are an ancient Greek city-state's hoplite phalanx and a Germanic shield wall? While separated by centuries and culture, both formations relied on close-order infantry and cohesion.

Murray explores their tactical similarities and differences, the contexts in which they developed, and what each reveals about the societies that used them.

 

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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

0:09.3

your weekly 10 minute fix of ancient warfare related material where I rant and rave for 10

0:15.6

minutes about something ancient warfare related, hopefully relating to a question you've asked

0:20.2

me, which you can do in

0:21.4

various ways, which I'll get to.

0:22.9

And this is, of course, to take you away and distract you from whatever's happening in your

0:26.1

real lives so that you can think about the ancient world at war at least for 10 minutes

0:31.5

a week.

0:32.5

What I do, of course, is I attempt to answer questions from readers, viewers and listeners.

0:36.2

You can send me an email.

0:38.0

You can comment on a previous video or podcast.

0:41.4

You can send me a postcard.

0:43.4

You can shout in the street.

0:44.9

You can track me down.

0:46.5

I'm quite distinctive.

0:48.1

Anyway, you can, of course, back us on Patreon, one of three different levels.

0:52.8

You can even listen to the big podcast.

0:54.1

You can even ask a question on one of the big podcasts and it'll get to me. People have

0:58.9

said, hello, ancient warfare answers team. I am that team with the help of course of Angus,

1:04.5

who posts all these videos. Today's question is from Yearn. This is the second of one of

1:09.5

Easy Center series so that I don't run out. Hi, IW18. Hi. Just a few questions to ensure that you don't run out of podcast stuff. So this is the second one of Yearns that I'll be answering, hopefully. How different are an ancient Greek city state and a Germanic shield wall, really. Now, shield walls, exciting. I'm

1:32.0

going to add a range, not just talking about Greek city state and Germanic. I'm going to talk

...

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