Byzantine Long Spears

[daveparish]

Byzantine infantry have always been a bit difficult to represent in Ancients games. I think it is because they were an answer to a particular problem. The Byzantines main enemy at the time were cavalry who either charged home (Arab long spear cav, various Westerners) or skirmished and shot (Steppe nomads, various Moslem cav). An all bow formation would be ridden down by the charge-y types and an all spear shot up without reply by the skirmishers. So this hybrid was developed, which has been a bit difficult to represent for rules that assume a unit has to be either fight-y or shoot-y.
We know somethings about this infantry though - for example it wasn't the main fighting part of the army, that was the cavalry. The manuals describe the infantry supporting and covering the cav - even providing a "box" they can fall back into. Even against other infantry they weren't used aggressively - there is an account against the Rus on the steppe where the archers are used to shoot them up and then the Varangians are sent in for the hand to hand. However they weren't just all wimpy bow either. They were put on the flank in march formation to hold off the enemy (with spears +shooting) and as I say they sometimes formed a protective box for the cavalry (ie they could stand when a load of triumphant enemy cav were rushing towards them)

I think MeG represents them quite well - and it has a couple of neat features. As Nik said there is an instruction in one manual for doubling up a unit  to give more resilience (and perhaps punch). If you take 8s in MeG you can do that. Also the menavlatoi have been difficult to represent - the manuals have them as a thin "skin" at the front of the infantry to help resist mounted charges - and MeG allows you to do this by getting the shieldwall characteristic. But MEG isn't too proscriptive - if you don't accept those interpretations you don't have to take the infantry that way, you could have sixes without shieldwall for example.

So overall I think this current MeG classification is the best I've seen for trying to represent Byzantine infantry