Bret Devereaux

What about the metal tube? Andronicos guessed that this was meant to join two 9-foot wooden poles to make the complete 18 foot haft for the infantryman's sarisa, for ease of carrying. Here's the problem: no ancient source says that. 22/xx

Moreover, we have artistic depictions of the infantry sarisa. The Alexander mosaic shows a bunch, including the spot where the connecting tube would go - no tube. No ancient artwork I know of shows this tube, in fact. 23/xx

Remember, that tube was just an iron thing Andronicos found outside the tomb - we don't really know if it was associated with the other finds! Moreover, I have *real* doubts about the integrity of a 9-foot wooden pole held by a 17cm metal sleeve. 24/xx

A sleeve which, I feel compelled to note, shows no signs of rivet holes or any kind of attachment system. I'm not sure I'd be on board with only using friction to hold together my 19-21 foot long, 4.05kg primary weapon. 25/more

So in practice a two-part sarisa isn't impossible, but there is also basically no evidence for it. We have a tube of unknown purpose which might have been involved. The problem here is that many for-the-public reconstructions present the tube as 'known' when it isn't. 26/31

By the by, the major problem with the 'short' sarisa as proposed is that Polybius is explicit (Plb. 18.29) that the front five men can bring their weapons into action. He's also explicit about the same each person takes up in line. 27/31

So, in very short that's how we know how long the sarisa was. The weight of its length was counter-balanced by the flanged butt at the back, along with tapering the wooden haft and using a *very* small and light tip. Which is how a lot of other pikes work so 28/31

I think here the argument from practicality must bear a lot of weight. C. Matthew (2016) argues that Polybius described formation is impossible to carry out, which is baffling given that P. Connolly (2000) *did* carry it off with a renaissance pike troop; note dates. 29/31