Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A DESCRIPTION OF THE MACEDONIAN PHALANX. This was a body of infantry, consisting of sixteen thousand heavy-armed troops, who were always placed in the centre of the battle. Besides a sword they were armed with a shield, and a pike or spear called by the Greeks Eajio-o-a. (sarissa.) This pike was fourteen cubiIs, or twenty-one feet, long, for the cubit consists of a foot and a hali'.t The phalanx was commonly divided into ten corps or battalions, each of which was composed of sixeen hundred men, one hundred in rank, and six leen in file. Sometimes the file of sixteen was doubled, and sometimes divided, according to occasion; so that the phalanx was sometimes but eight, and at other times thirty-two deep; but its usual and regular depth was sixteen. The space between each soldier upon a march was six ieet, or, which is the ame, four cubits; and the ranks were also about six feet asunder. When the phalanx advanced towards an enemy, there was but three feet distance between each soldier, and the ranks were closed in proportion. In fine, when the phalanx was to receive the enemy, the men who composed it drew still closer, each soldier occupying only the space of a foot and a half. This evidently shows the different space which the front of the phalanx took up in these three cases, supposing the whole to consist of sixteen thousand men, at sixteen deep, and consequently always a thousand men in front. This space or distance, in the first case, was six thousand feet, or one thousand fathoms, which make ten furlongs, or half a league. In the second case it was but half as much, and took up five furlongs, or five hundred fathoms.J And, in the third case, it was again diminished another half, and extended to the distance of only two furlongs and a half, or two hundred and fift...
Synopsis
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