Phalanx

fa'lanks, a mode of military formation adopted by the infantry of Sparta, Thebes, and Macedon. The soldiers were armed chiefly with long spears. Each carried a shield to protect himself from the darts of the enemy. The phalanx reached its greatest efficiency under Philip of Macedon. The phalanx of Philip was an oblong mass of men standing in perfect order several ranks deep. They carried spears twenty-four feet long,-so long that the points of the fifth rank extended three feet beyond the front of the phalanx, while the front spears must have extended ten or twelve feet. In all, the points of five spears bristled before the front soldier. When the spears were held upright, the soldiers could wheel to the right or to the left, or about face, as readily as though they carried muskets, but when the spears were lowered for a charge, they riveted the entire phalanx into a body of men that could move in a forward direction only but whose onset was simply irresistible. Neither footmen, horse, nor rider could stand for a moment before a bristling wall of spears with a mighty mass of men behind them. By means of the phalanx Philip organized the most efficient military force in the ancient world. With its aid his son Alexander made himself master of Asia, and made Greece for a time the foremost power of the world. See Macedon