Explanation: At the Battle of Cynoscephalae, a Roman tribune, a mid-level officer, demonstrated the flexibility and responsiveness of the Roman military system by wheeling around some 2,500 men, pursuing fleeing skirmishers, to hit the rear of the opposing Macedonian phalanx, which had fought the other part of the Roman force to a standstill. As the Macedonians could not effectively turn their formation of long pikes, they were utterly overrun, turning what seemed to be a hard-fought draw or near-win for the Romans into a total and devastating victory.
I was gonna say, looks very intimidating from the front but if you manage to hit the back… what are they gonna do with with a long-ass stick pointing the wrong way?
Yeah, it was the Achilles' Heel (dohohoho) of the weapon.
Later, Medieval pike formations would mix in soldiers with shorter weapons in the formation (swords and halberds, typically) so if anything nasty like that happened, the troops with weapons that weren't almost 20 feet long could buy the pikes some time to get themselves somewhere where they weren't 100% useless, lmao.
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