The phalangite (soldier of the phalanx) was farther provided with a short sword, a circular shield of rather more than two feet in diameter, a breast-piece, leggings, and a kausia or broad-brimmed-hat—the head-covering common in the Macedonian army. But the long pikes were in truth the main weapons of defence as well as of offence. They were destined to contend against the charge of Grecian hoplites with the one-handed pike and heavy shield; especially against the most formidable manifestation of that force, the deep Theban column organized by Epaminondas. This was what Philip had to deal with, at his accession, as the irresistible infantry of Greece, bearing down everything before it by thrust of pike and propulsion of shield. He provided the means of vanquishing it, by training his poor Macedonian infantry to the systematic use of the long two-handed pike. The Theban column, charging a phalanx so armed, found themselves unable to break into the array of protended pikes, or to come to push of shield. We are told that at the battle of Chæroneia, the front rank Theban soldiers, the chosen men of the city, all perished on the ground; and this is not wonderful, when we conceive them as rushing, by their own courage as well as by the pressure upon them from behind, upon a wall of Pikes double the length of their own. We must look at Philip’s phalanx with reference to the enemies before him, not with reference to the later Roman organization, which Polybius brings into comparison. It answered perfectly the purposes of Philip, who wanted mainly to stand the shock in front, thus overpowering Grecian hoplites in their own mode of attack. Now Polybius informs us, that the phalanx was never once beaten, in front and on ground suitable for it; and wherever the ground was fit for hoplites, it was also fit for the phalanx. The inconveniences of Philip’s array, and of the long pikes, arose from the incapacity of the phalanx to change its front or keep its order on unequal ground; but such inconveniences were hardly less felt by Grecian hoplites.[124] [124] The impression of admiration, and even terror, with which the Roman general Paulus Emilius was seized, on first seeing the Macedonian phalanx in battle array at Pydna—has been recorded by Polybius (Polybius, Fragm. xxix. 6, 11; Livy, xliv. 40).