Bret Devereaux

"Hoplites, schmoplites" - Artaxerxes, probablyhttps://twitter.com/askhistorians/status/1462859425639583747 …

Almost like the hoplite fought w/ equipment and a style of warfare that was well suited to Greece, the W. coast of Anatolia and S. Italy but didn't travel well, while Persians practiced warfare that was - because it had to be - generally effective in a broader range of places.

It's almost as if, Polybios notwithstanding, military success actually hangs on quite a lot more than the individual utility of one's heavy infantry

To be fair to Polybius, he notes, "it is better to give battle with half as many infantry as the enemy and an overwhelming force of cavalry than to be in all respects equal" (Plb. 3.117). Or the shorthand I use, "cavalry superiority covereth a multitude of sins."

I sometimes wonder, if we had all of Polybius, if we'd be writing papers about how inconsistent he seems to be sometimes with himself. Like, Fortune rules all of the affairs of men, but also Roman dominance was inevitable from 264 onward.