what were battles like for real in antiquity?

>Is our understanding of the tactics used and how they unfolded absolutely correct?
Do we have an understanding tho? There's a big debate about the degree of "pushing" involved in the hoplite tactics, a debate about the role of pilum in the roman army, and we know even less about the other fighting styles. Recently experimental archaeology (i.e. people making real life Macedonian sarisas and trying to maneuver a group of people armed with them) has been filling some gaps, but we're far from having an "understanding".

>>3198153
I mean understanding like for example in movies Gladiator and Alexander. They must have an understanding set as to portray the battles they did.

And in games like Rome Total War.

I read a page once about how it was stressful to be hacking limbs non stop so it was argued that battles where more like skirmishes where both sides approached fearfully one another, swung their swords and spears and then retreated to rest and to gather courage. This was repeated until one side routed. Can't find it now though.

>Were ancient battles really how they are depicted in movies, tv shows and games?
No, those things are made for entertainment, not for accurately portraying history.

We're lucky enough to have detailed orders of battle in some historical documents, so you can kind of extrapolate those and apply them to other battles around the same time and place.

>>3198174
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/10/pre-modern-battlefields-were-absolutely.html?m=1

Well we don't really know for sure. Some historians think it was like the movies with huge walls of men crashing into each other and fighting. Others argue that there would have been a space between the two armies where men would fight while the two sides threw projectiles at each other. The argument is that humans simply aren't willing to run into a giant wall of spears, this can be demonstrated in bayonet charges. Barely anyone ever died from bayonets, because nobody likes stabbing people and nobody likes being stabbed. There's lots of accounts of men in bayonet charges stopping and firing at each other rather than keep going. Because people don't like stabbing.

>>3198141
>Where ancient battles really how they are depicted in movies, tv shows and games?
Yes, the common way to fight was to march slowly in tight formation toward the enemy and then when you're close enough all would break formation and just charge the enemy resulting in a battlefield of thousands of 1on1 battles until one side wins.

Movies are correct.

>>3198277
lol

and that isn't even in the top 50 of things braveheart got dead wrong

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1MB, 1280x720px

>>3198141
This pretty much

the side that could keep on their formation for longest was the one that would probably win
look at cynosphalae,where the macedonians thought camping on a hill was an advantage without thinking that their stupid phalanx would become easy disrupted as hell
even roman legion were prone to be countered,carrhae was one of the most terrific underdog victory,the parthian army there was basically a scouting force, but the romans still had a good showing there,if Surena didn't brought his camels with arrow Crassus could've salvaged the legions
Cannae is one of the most impressive battle of all time,Hannibal used the legions own weight against them to encircle a superior force

No, we do not have a perfect understanding of what happened but we do have a very broad general underatanding. We know how things like phalanx' moved and fought almost entirely but for a few details.
The romans are even more widely documented but there are still gaps of knowledge here and there

>>3198174
>And in games like Rome Total War.
Total War wasn't designed to portray anything but RTS battles with a lot of the micro abstracted away from the player.

Media in general takes most of its cues from older media, meaning battle scenes are understood based on older movie battle scenes rather than military history.

>>3198226
>>3198250
I would take this fear of stabbing with a grain of salt, considering that people with a low mental development who grew up in a brutal environment where violence and blood is not uncommon are quite capable of commiting gory acts. See the gang members in Mexico or Brasil, or the warlords in Africa, they're not "afraid of stabbing" at all.

>>3201684
Well it's easy to overcome your fear of stabbing, but not so easy to push forward into a wall of armored meat that's about to stab you.