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Old 22nd March 2005, 09:35 AM   #5
Yannis
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Athens Greece
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Well, too many words to answer.

1. Except “nationalistic Greeks” there are hundreds of Anglo-Saxon scholars that say the same things. I am not the nationalist type, but I have seen lot of ancient greek warriors in original artwork holding kopis. I have not seen any Caucasian. I believe that this sword is coming from an older form, most possible from Egyptian khepesh. Through emporium and colonies it was spread in all “known” world, before Alexander, from Iberia (Spain) to Colchis (Caucasus).

2. Of course exchange of technology (or ideas) is not one way, but Greeks pushed the wagon little further, like Democracy (Athens), Philosophy (Plato, Socrates, Aristotle), Geometry (Pythagoras), Physics (Democritus), Medicine (Hippocrates) etc. As far as I know the schools around the globe still inform their students about it.

3. Alexander was on the tide of Macedonians and the demand of all Greeks for revenge against Persians. But if it was not him, greek army would not reach India. A lot of times he had stand against his soldiers will to return home. He was clever enough to try new strategies, fighting against bigger armies.

4. Talking about weapons, the Greeks, like any successful army, had studied a lot their weapons and developed new kinds of them for new strategies. For example, Spartans with sort swords and big shields developed the tight formation where each soldier was covering a partner. The Theban general Epaminondas 'invented' new battlefield tactics by concentrating his assault on one selected point of the enemy line. Macedonians developed the sarisa, a 17 feet long pike. In the phalanx the sarisas of the first five rows were pointing forwards, a forest of armor piercing iron. The other rows lifted their sarisas at an angle upwards, forming an effective protection against missiles.

A recent American fiction book about Alexander is Steven Pressfield’s “The virtues of war”. It is based on ancient writers.
Finally this is a Macedonian phalanx:
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