I want to know more about what it was like fighting in pitched

>>2802153
Unfortunately for all of us Anon, first hand, Omaha-beach style narratives about combat are virtually nonexistent.

Closest I know of is Polybius 18, and even that is more tactics than first hand stuff.

There's plenty of good secondary sources that discuss hand-to-hand combat from a scholarly perspective as well.

>>2802153
>There are lots of historic descriptions of the tactics involved, but I've found nothing highly personal, as if you were there in the moment yourself.

The only way to achieve this level of hermeneutic understanding is through joining a reenactment association

>>2802338
This

No one felt the need to describe what a battle was like, unfortunately for us, because everyone had a rough idea of what it looked like

Probably would've been a lot of stabbing at other people's shields until one side got spooked and ran away, at which point you would start chasing them and slaughtering every enemy in sight.
Most killing was done while the enemy broke rank and tried to run, unless you Hannibaled their ass and surrounded them

There were some pretty great 'scenes' in A War Like No Othe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0

Is this an accurate portrayal of how they rotated their lines?

>>2802347
Interesting. Could be the fact that there were plenty of people who had seen either combat or non-military violence of this scale (riots, etc) so there was no readership for such things.

Could be that our modern detachment from most forms of horrifying physical violence has led us to fetishize it.

Who knows really.

To follow up my comment here >>2802338 I found this, which has a bit more than usual gritty detail mixed in for authors of this vintage.

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/378adrianople.asp

>>2802350
Yes war was basically just a bunch of people trying to beat the shit out of each other, except with pointy metal.

Think a Detroit riot but they all have spears.

>>2802370
I mean, it makes sense if you think of it how most, if not all, members of a Greek city-state or a Roman province would be involved in combat in one form or another (the whole farmer-citizen-soldier thing). Even the poor of Athens would serve as rowers in the galleys.

>>2802379
Which makes me want to know how you would even keep track of formation movements in such a clusterfuck.

>>2802362
Reality seems a bit more chaotic to me to be honest. One of the last Game of Thrones episodes (Battle of the Bastards) actually had a quite realistic depiction of chaos involved with an actual battle, and how this results in 'friendly fire'

>>2802388
I mean, maybe as far as unorganized medieval warfare goes, but it's not much help with understanding what a hoplite experiences. >>2802356 I actually know what you're talking about, the bit where the Athenians are getting massacred by the Spartans and the author's talking about how the men are slipping on the blood, shit, and guts of their friends as the Spartans are slowly carving their way through the packed mass of humanity.

File: 1487834456926.jpg (32KB, 436x324px) Image search: [Google]

32KB, 436x324px

>>2802379
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-URa-PoLp6o

>>2802370
This is pretty good, thanks

>>2802417
np

>>2802388
>>2802383
>>2802379

look upon the biggest melee in recent memory, the Euromaidan protest/revolution back in 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dekRW9svf8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7mOVux83p8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6hx_QXlBtk