The Best Armies that never Fought with Each Other

[Cambyses]

Ah, btw, stirrups do nothing for lances. It won't hold you in the saddle, although it might keep you attached to the horse after you fall off (not exactly a good thing, though ). That i know personally, as i sort of like horseriding very much.

I heard they are important for horsearchery on the move, and i can understand it, as they allow for counterbalancing horse moves. But withstanding lance impact? Doesn't make any sense.

I ride too. The point of stirrups facilitating the use of a lance in a couched manner similar to an European knight is that it stops you falling off the horse. A couched lance delivers far more force, and can be larger, than one used in ancient fashion like the xyston. Without stirrups to provide resistance that force is enough to knock the rider right out of the saddle.

Oh, Sarissa is bulky, but lighter than Roman (or hoplite) shield. Factor in much ligther arms (both have swords, but only romans had javelins) and armor (much heavier in Greek and Romans casees), and you have better mobility of the phalangites, depending on what you understand as mobility.

It's not just the weight, but the length. Granted the sarissa had excellent counterweights, but something 12 foot long is going to be unwieldy, especially in a tight formation- though that problem would be lessened in the more professional soldiers.

The tactical flexibility is not as important as it might seem so. There is no point in detaching small enough pezhetairoi units on battlefield - of course, phalanx formation is viable only on battlefield, not in urban fighting, or something like that. Note that the actual army didn't have one big 10'000 "unit" of pezhetairoi, of course. For other you have hypaspists, peltasts, whoever else and obviously indispensible cavalry. M. army components were more specialized to its tasks.

Have to disagree about tactical flexibility not being important, but you're correct about the M.Army using specialised troops to cover their phalanx. The problem was that these supporting troops were usually nowhere near as high quality as the phalangites themselves (except the cavalry of course).

Actually, the phalanx at Pydna broke itself, or, indeed Romans broke it by fleeing . It takes much more to make good phalangite than good legionnaire, and the penalties for not being good are much worse in former case.

This is probably true. Although the legion was very well trained, it was likely easier to train than a decent phalanx.

On a side note, how do you find late Roman army evolution? Doctrinal and technological progress? I agree that both Roman and Macedonian armies were very good.

Late as in post Constantine? It was still the best army in the world, but arguably not the equal of the Legions of Trajan, which was probably the peak. The late legion incorporated many of the lessons the Romans had learned over the years, and was far more varied than in times past, as different regions of the empire raised different troop types to cope with whatever local threat they faced (for example the ERE developed excellent heavy cavalry to deal with the Sassanids, whilst the West remained more infantry focused).

The problem was money. The professional Roman soldiers were still very, very, good, but they were hideously expensive. The East could afford to pay for them, whilst the West could not. This led to an increasing reliance on Germanic mercenaries which had some rather unfortunate consequences for the Western Empire.

Wiki seems to think it's one thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanid_army The links here lead to different pages, neither of which are particularly informative, and there are differences in spelling between the two. Sources on the Sassanid army are scarce, and usually Roman, but as far as I can tell Daylami refers to a type of soldier (like a legionary or a phalangite) whilst Deylami refers to a specific tribe. I suppose it was very possible that a Deylami could become a Daylami, which must have been confusing.