How long was the Macedonian sarissa? - Duncan B. Campbell

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An obscure debate over a very long spear

HOW LONG W\S HE MACEIDNIAN SARLSSA? Nineteenth-century historians were fascinated by the Macedonian phalanx and its characteristic weapon, the sarissa. However, some were convinced that reports of the sarissa's extreme length must be incorrect, while others struggled to reconcile the testimony of different ancient writers and even resorted to altering the original texts. looking back over a century-and-a-half of scholarship, we can see how the debate was derailed by misinformation and finally brought back on track by the discovery of an unexpected source.

By Duncan B Campbell

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n 1854, the eminent hi stori an George Grote wa s hard at work on the twelfth and fi nal vo lume of hi s amb iti ous His­ tory of Greece, in w hi ch he ca rri ed the story from the access ion of Al exa nder the G l'eat in 336 BC down to th e death of Agatho cles in 288 BC Natu l'all y, military affairs bu lked large, and so, in order to

present the latest wisdom on the su bject,

Grote consulted the recently publi shed

Geschichte des griechischen Kriegswesens by the Germ an military historian s W ilhelm Rustow and Hermann Koc hl y, On e topi c req uiri ng spec ial ex plan a­ ti on was the long pike know n as the sa ris­ sa, w hich wa s the hallmark of the M acedo­ ni an p halanx, (Purists consider sarisa to be the correct for m, but th e G reeks used both versi on s, and the spellin g with a double's' has passed into co mm on En gl ish usage,) Grote assured hi s read ers that the len gth

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of thi s new weapo n was "so prodi gious and so unw ieldy, th at we sho uld ha rdly be lieve it, if it did not co me attested by the distinct asse rtion of an histori an li ke Poly­ b iu s" , When th e vo lume duly appea red in 1856, he deci ded th at th e chapter on 'The As iatic Campa igns of Al exa nder' should be fo llowed by a short appendi x 'O n the length of the M acedoni an sa rissa or pi ke', exp la ining the matter to hi s readers,

The ancient writers According to Ru stow and Koch ly, th e Mac­ edonian sa rissa was "1 4-16 feet in length", but Grote's read ing of the anc ient sou rces convin ced him th at "(the sarissa) of the in­ fantry in pha lan x was not less tha n 21 feet lon g" , How had suc h a di screpa ncy ari sen?

In fact, the Germ an histori ans had reached th eir con clusion by convolu ted rea­ soning, First, they con ceded that "all reports, w ith the single exception of Arrian's in the Taktika, give the length of the Macedoni an sari ssa as 16 cubits or 24 feet", Thi s is not

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Reeanactor equipped with sarissa against two regular hoplites. Note how the lance bends across its length. © Hetairoi e.V.

strictly true. Besides two Byzantine compi la­ tions, only one ancient source gives this pre­ cise length. This is Polyaenus, who alleged that, when Cleonymus of Sparta besieged Edessa in around 275 Be, the garrison sal­ lied out in phalanx, and "each sarisa was 16 cubits long" (Stratagems 2 .29.2).

We may imagine that, although Poly­ aenus wrote during the reign of Marcus Au­ relius and Lucius Verus (AD 161-169), he drew upon information from the thil'd cen­ tury BC for this story. Nevertheless, Rustow and Kbchly were suspicious of such a late source. The only authority they were will­ ing to acknowledge was Polybius, whose involvement in Rome's Third Macedonian War (171-168 BC) and whose authorship of a now-lost treatise on tacti cs bolstered his credibility as a military historian.

However, it is noticeable that his de­ scription of the sarissa is closer to Polyae­ nus' version than to Rustow and Kbchly's: "Since (. ..) the length of the sarisa is, ac­

cording to the original design, 16 cubits, but as adapted to actual practice, 14 cubits - from which we must subtract the distance between the (bearer's) hands and (the length of) the counterweight behind the projecting part, being 4 cubits in all - it is evident that the sarisa must extend 10 cubits beyond the body of each hoplite, when he charges the enemy grasping it with both hands."

Much the same information is found in the tactical treatise of Aeli an, composed over two centuries later, around AD 100. Explain­ ing the Macedonian phalanx, Aelian wrote that "the length of the sarisa is, according to the original design, 16 cubits, but in reality 14; from this 2 cubits (should be subtracted) from the projecting part for the distance be­ tween the hands; the (remaining) 12 cubits projects beyond the bodies" (Tactics 14.2-3).

Another ancient treatise on tactics, this time by Asclepiodotus, was written in the late first century Be, and thus dates from the period roughly midway between Polybius

How long is a cubit?

The ancient Greeks used units of measure based on body parts. The "foot" (pous; pl. podas) was divided into 16 "fingers" (daktyloil or 4 "palms" (palaistai). The foot used

at Athens (for other city-states had their own standard measure, which could vary sig­ nificantly) was long thought to have measured 30.83cm, but is now thought to have been closer to 29 .5cm, which has the virtue of being equal to the standard Roman foot.

The ancient Greeks also employed a measure called the "forearm" (pechys ; pl. pecheis), whi ch equated to a foot and a half. In the system of body parts, this was sup­ posedly the distance from the finger tips to the elbow. The Romans called the same measurement an "elbow" (cubitum) , from which we derive our word cubit. In a system based on a 29.5cm foot, the cubit will have measured 44.25cm or thereabouts, which is only 2cm shorter than the cubit previously advocated by nineteenth-century scholars.

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• • • • • • • • • and Aelian. Asclepiodotus, too, mentioned th e Macedonian phalanx and its characteris­ tic weapon. However, where Aelian clearly lifted his explanation from Polybius, Asclepi­ odotus preserved a slightly different version.

He claimed that "the spear (of the Macedo­ nians) is not shorter than 10 cubits, so that the projecting pali is not less than 8 cubits, but is never longer than 12 cubits, so that the projecting pali is 10 cubits" (Tactics 5.1).

This passage and others demonstrate the complex relationship between the so­ ca lled 'tactical writers'; although they seem ultimately to have derived much of their information from Pol ybius, one or other of them also relied upon the now -lost w ork of Posidonius, who was Asclepiodotus' teacher. Both Polybius and Posidonius were credited as sources by Arrian, the third of the 'tactical writers' after Asclepiodotus and Aelian, who wmte his Art of Ta ctics in AD 137. His account comes closer to Asclepi­ odotus than to Aelian, for he claimed th at "the size of the sarisa was 16 feet. Of this, 4 (feet) are for holding it by hand and the remainder extends from the body, so th at 12 (feet) pmject beyond the body of eac h front-rankel'" (Art of Tactics 12.7).

Commentators have always found AI'­ rian 's account problematic. Already in the seventeenth century, Johannes Scheffer suggested a mix-up of feet and cubits, so that, rather than a 1 6-foot sarissa, Arrian had actuall y envisaged a 16-cubit sar issa.

However, the German scholar Johannes Kromayer, reviewin g the whole subject of Greek and Roman warfare (in the journal Hermes 35 , 1900), pointed out that it was at least as likel y that Arrian himself had de­ cided to shorten the sarissa, as one of the man y small additions and improvements he made to his soul'ce material. A 16-foot weapon may have seemed more practical to him than a 16-cubit one.

Scheffer'S origi nal suggestion perhaps planted th e seed of an idea in Rustow and Kochly's minds, for - rath er than agreeing with Sch effer outright - th ey dec ided to apply his theory in revel'se, and proposed that, in th e tex t of th e generally reliable

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Polybius, an origin al reference to 14 po­ das ("feet") had bee n changed to 14 pe­ cheis ("cubits") by mistake.

Conseq uent ly, Rustow and Kochly al­ tered every instance of "c ubits" to read "feet", thus al'rivin g at th eir preferred 14­ 16-foot sarissa. In their view, anything lon ger would have been ridiculous, for they calculated that a 24-foot (7.4m) ash-wood sarissa, narrowin g from a di­ ameter of 2" (5cm ) at the butt down to 11J4" (3. 5cm ) at the point, would weigh around 1 71bs (or 8kg). Furth ermore, they reckoned th at maintaining this length of pike in a couched position exerted an in­ tolerable strain (they calculated 30lbs, or 13. 5kg) on th e bearer's right hand . Hence, it was dismissed as unhistorical.

A different hypothesis It is obv ious that Rustow and Kochly's case for a 14-foot sarissa was misconceived.

Their emendation of every text but Arrian's was unjustifiable and their criticism of Po­ Iybius was groundless. Grote pointed this out in Volume 12 of his History of Greece, but if he hoped that the matter had now been laid to rest, such optimism was mis­ placed . In 1888, the al'chaeologist D.G. Hoga rth , one-time President of the Royal Geographical Society and an associate of Lawrence of Arabia, took issue with Grote's opinion (in the journal of Philology 17), ca lling his 21-foot pike " the last resort of military incompetency."

Like Rustow and Kochl y, Hogarth mistrusted Pol ybius, but onl y concern­ ing his know ledge of Alexander's pha­ lan x. Hogarth presumed that this original pha lan x must have been far more mobile and fle xible than the phalanx of Pol ybius ' own day, which had easily fallen prey to the Roman legions . Wh iIe happ y to ac­ cept Polybius' 14-cubit sarissa as com­ monplace in the warfare of the second century BC - "he must have seen it often enough, and could hardly make an error of 7 feet in its length" - he emph as ized that "it is needless to credit Al exa nd er's pikemen with so monstrous a weapon as

• • • • • • • • • this; it belongs to the days of decline when generals, deficient in tactical ability, had reverted to solid immobile formations as more within their power to handle".

Hogarth decided to champion Ar­ rian's Art of Tactics, which he (wrongly) presumed to be "the earliest and best ver­ sion" of the tactical treatises, and which he (wrongly) quoted as advocating a 14­ foot pike. Thus, he simply cherry-picked those elements of Rustow and Kochly 's argument that allowed him to equip Al­ exander's phalanx with a shorter sarissa.

Although Hogarth's theory found no ad­ herents, Rustow and Kochly's opinion continued to influence scholars. For ex­ ample, the original reference to "a spear more than 20 feet long" in J.G. Droysen's Ceschichte Alexanders des Cro(!,en ('His­ tory of Alexander the Great', published in 1833) had been replaced by " a spear of 14-16 feet in length" , by the time of the book's third edition in 1880.

An unexpected source Ironically, it was Droysen's son Hans who, in 1889, first ex posed the weakness of Rustow and Kochly's theory, in his Heer­ wesen und Kriegfuhrung del' Criechen ("Army organization and warfare among the Greeks"), for he had unearthed an obscure source that they had overlooked.

This was the philosopher Theophras­ tus, Aristotle's successor as head of the Lyceum in Athens and a friend of Cas­ sander; as a contemporary of Alexander the Great, he had probably observed the original Macedonian phalanx in person .

At any rate, he expected his readers to be familiar with the phalanx's distinctive weapon, as a throw-away comment in his Enquiry into Plants demonstrates; for he claimed that the height of the Carnelian cherry tree " is about 12 cubits, which is as big as the longest sarissas" (3. 12.2).

Droyse n realized that this was crucial ev idence for the phalanx of Alexander's day using a 12-cubit sarissa; but still being in thrall to Rustow and Kochly's wisdom regarding the supposed error of Polybius

and the 'tactical writers', he concluded that the sarissa, originally 18 feet long, had later been reduced to 14 feet.

However, it took the pel'spicacity of Johannes Kromayer finally to question Rus­ tow and Kochly's high-handed treatment of the sources. He listed three false assump­ tions: (1) that Pol yb ius recorded a 16-cubit sarissa, when he actually said it measured 14 cubits (a difference of nearly 90cm); (2) that the sarissa must have weighed over 8kg, which (K romayer reckoned) was dou­ ble the likely weight; and; (3) that the bearer gripped the sarissa by the final 2 feet of its haft, which simply increased the pressure on the right hand unnecessarily.

For comparison, he cited the pike of the medieval Landsknechte, which at 5.2m was only a little shy of 12 cubits, and which weighed a mere 3.285kg. In­ terestingly, at virtually the same time, Kro­ mayer's contemporary, Edmund Lammert constructed a 6.5m sarissa out of green ash-wood, which (so he claimed ) proved to be easily handled, despite weighing 6.5kg. A second vel'sion, made from sea­ son ed wood, weighed only S.6kg. Lam­ mert calculated that, wielding the pike in its couched position, the pressure on the bearer's right hand, far from Rustow and Kochly's 13.Skg, was only around 6kg.

Kromayer's correction of Rustow and Kochly's misinformation dul y took its place in his new handbook, Heerwesen und KriegfUhrung del' Criechen und Romer, wh ich he joi ntly authored with Georg Veith in 1928. In the section on M acedonian affairs, he wrote that "the longest sarissas in Alexander's time were 12 cubits long (which is S.Sm)", while for the Hellenistic period, he suggested that "the sarissas were lengthened to 16 cubits (. .. ) and by Poly­ bius' time, men were content with sarissas only 14 cubits (6.2 1m) long". As we shall see, this seems broadly correct.

A detail from the famous Al­ exander Mosaic in Pompeii, now on display at the Archae­ ological Museum in Naples, gives an impression of an ar­ ray of pikes. © Public domain

A different unit of measurement?

Meanwhile, across the Channel in Britain, an eccentric theory was evolving in the mind of w.w. (later Sir William) Tarn. In

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The debate

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Two reenactors with lances; the extreme length of the weapons is quite evident. © Hetairoi e. v.

1930, Tarn delivered the Lees-Knowles Lec­ tures in Military History at Cambl·idge Uni­ versity, and later that year, published them as a booklet (Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments), in which he floated a radi­ cal new idea. Like Hogarth, he was trou­ bled by the thought of Alexander's famously manoeuvrable phalanx carrying 18-foot pikes. The only solution seemed to be to reinterpret Theophrastus' measurement. The result was Tarn's famous 'short Macedonian cubit'. His justification lay in the knowledge that different Greek states operated different standards of measurement; but, whereas known cubits varied from 0.44m up to around 0.48m, Tarn's was barely 0.33m!

Despite the complete absence of cor­ roborating evidence, this hypothesis was hailed as a major breakthrough and flour­ ished well beyond Tarn's death in 1957.

Even as late as 1969, Professor J.R. Hamil­ ton, in his commentary on Plutarch's Life of Alexander, wrote that "Tarn has argued con­ vincingly that thel·e was a short Macedonian cubit of about 12-14 inches". It was only in 1973, with Robin Lane Fox's Alexander the Great, that the 'short Macedonian cubit' was finally exposed as a fantasy.

A new hypothesis Most twentieth-century scholal's have fol­ lowed Kromayer and accepted that Alexan­ der's original sarissa of 12 cubits (18 feet) somehow grew to 16 cubits, falling back to 14 by the time of Polybius. In this scheme, Arrian's 16-foot sarissa has always proved an embarrassment. Generally, scholars followed Scheffer's suggestion that Arrian's "feet" must be amended to read "cubits"; only Minor Markle stood apart in believing that "perhaps he is providing only an average dimension" (American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 81, 1977), presumably of Alexandel"s sarissas, since (as we have seen) Asclepiodotus gives a range of 10-12 cubits (of which the average would be 161f2 feet).

However, Professor Frank Walbank, in his influential Historical Commentary on Polybius (Vol. 2, 196h perhaps real­ ized the difficulties of Arrian's measure­

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ment when he wrote that "podas must be emended to pecheis", because Arrian also specifies a two-foot spacing between the ranks (as opposed to the other sources' two-cubit spacing), which would not al­ low much room for movement. Neverthe­ less, like Kromayer before him, the Arrian scholar Professor Philip Stadter preferred to retain Arrian's 16-foot sarissa, pointing out that "the mistake - or correction - is An'ian's" (Classical Philology 73, 1978).

A new hypothesis was suggested by Alejandro Noguel·a. Proceeding from the consensus that Theophrastus accurately described the sarissa of Alexander's day, Noguera suggested that both Arrian and Asclepiodotus were describing Alexander's phalanx, since (as we have noted) Arrian's 16-footer falls within the range of sarissas mentioned by Asclepiodotus, whose long­ est sarissas match Theophrastus' version.

This theory has the twin benefits of explaining why Arrian's testimony doesn't fit the description given by Polybius, while shedding a little light on the 'tacti­ cal writers', for it seems likely (if we fol­ low Noguera) that, while Aelian followed Polybius in describing the later Hellen­ istic phalanx, Asclepiodotus was follow­ ing Posidonius' account of Alexander's phalanx (which is now lost). Not only has Grote's faith in Polybius been vindicated, but the debate over the length of the sa­ rissa may open up another debate that has barely begun; namely, the I'elationship between the 'tactica I writers'. NV

Dr Duncan B. Campbell is a regular contributor.

Further reading • E. Lammert, 'Sari sse', in: Re­ alencyc/opadie vol. 1 A.2 (1920), cols.2515-2530 • A. Noguera Borel, 'L'evolution de la phalange macedonienne: Ie cas de la sari sse', in: Ancient Macedonia 6 (Thessalonica 1999), pp. 839-850.