For classics twitter consideration (@BretDevereaux @ProfPaul_J ) (without rendering my own opinion, which is worth little).https://www.academia.edu/45455304/The_battle_mechanics_of_the_Hoplite_Phalanx?fbclid=IwAR0qEj5KHMEj2JGOyzy8-1bgwKNdiQqS2CvlzKYp4qrZLIPCAi-aJIKrjNs …
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Not a Classical historian, but some parts of the paper have me feeling very cautious, like the interpretation of Xen. Ages. 1.31 and the use of a single magazine article to make sweeping statements about the Middle Ages that the article either doesn't support or is wrong about.
The 'analogy with medieval knights' bit is one of those points where I can actually kind of see it as a comparison that could be valid and instructive, but only with a lot of explanation of what exactly is meant, where the analogy holds and where it fails.
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'Their kit was expensive' provided here isn't quite enough to make the analogy work. A lot of urban militias, *in the middle ages* had expensive kits. What made knights different was the possession of skills linked to a specific, skill-heavy style of combat.
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At the very least, it ought to come with a proviso that the 'hoplite class' seems to have been far more extensive than the knightly class ever was. The Second Estate was c. 1.5% of pre-revolutionary France, for instance. Even the Spartiates are a bigger slice of the population.
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I was thinking more in terms of medieval "phalanxes" being shieldless and the roll of the Swiss in reviving pike combat. Leaving the Byzantines to one side, long spears were a feature of Welsh, Scottish and Flemish armies for far longer, and they were often used with shields.
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To add an additional thought, the spread of dismounted men-at-arms fighting with lances, which initially seems to be an English/Scottish trait that spread to France and Italy, is also an often overlooked factor in the revival of "pike" tactics. /1
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