Legiones frente a Falanges

Since the days of ancient Sumeria, the phalanx of heavy infantry dominated the battlefield. Armed with spears or pikes, arranged shoulder to shoulder and shields locked, the soldiers of the phalanx presented an impenetrable wall of wood and metal to the enemy. That is, until the Roman legion made its appearance and challenged its hegemony. Myke Cole examines the legion and phalanx tactics, weapons and equipment, organization, and deployments during the time they fought. Here, drawing on original sources, he carefully narrates six battles in which legions and phalanxes fought to show how and why the Roman legion, with its flexible organization, versatile tactics and iron discipline, came to outshine the hitherto invincible Hellenistic phalanx. "Your army is the best trained and equipped, and the most beloved of the gods. Their warriors are immovable as a mountain, indestructible as the earth itself. They are trained to move and fight as an organism. The phalanx knows no defeat. Front you have an army of Romans. Barbarians who don't even speak Greek. They wear crude bronze helmets, strange hulks for shields. They are armed with javelins as if they were harassers, and with long knives that you are more used to seeing in the hands of butchers and tanners than warriors. With those little things they will be lucky if they manage to get close to your men, let alone wound them. The iron points of your soldiers' spears will skewer them before they can even get close. And in the first battle, maybe too. in the second, that's the way it happens. But while you watch them, the Romans learn. They adapt. Battle after battle, they assimilate and apply the lessons of their defeats. And soon, although they lose, and a is not so easy. And before you know it, they've stopped losing".