Decline
The armies of the Diadochi period were equipped and fought mainly in the same style as Alexander's. Towards the end, however, there was a general slide away from the combined arms approach, and the phalanx once more became the arm of decision, much like in the days of the earlier hoplites. So long as everyone was using the same tactics, these weaknesses were not immediately apparent, but against a varied force and complex tactics, the Hellenistic-era phalanx fell prey to its foes. The Phalanx finally met its end in the Ancient world when the more flexible Roman manipular tactics contributed to the end of Macedon in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C.
Read more about this topic: Army Of Macedon
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)