Back In March,

I started watching,

 Alexander, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but unknown to myself it flopped at the box office, big time! but in a strange twist of fate the film has been hailed as having and I quote the, "Most Accurate Depiction Of Ancient Combat" a strong recommendation indeed from historian Dr. Roel Konijnendijk, In a recent video shared by Invicta, historian Dr. Konijnendijk analyzes the epic Battle of Gaugamela scene from Alexander in which the great leader's forces encounter a massive Persian army, according to the historian, the battle scene in the film is actually surprisingly historically accurate,

 

“As you fly over the battlefield you can see these squares of pikes, which are the pike formation…of the Macedonian phalanx. These are blocks of 16 by 16, forming 256 men. There are formations of 1500 men that consist of these blocks, and there are six of those in the Macedonian formation. You can see them all in the overview, it’s all laid out, the way it looks is frankly unrivalled. There’s no other movie that does this much to try and portray the formations as they actually looked…. The advisers on this movie were really a crack team of scholars… Because the director really gave them a lot of leeway and listened to them, the result is the most accurate in terms of its faithfulness to the sources. The most accurate depiction of ancient combat that we have”, for the full article have a look here, just a shame it did not do well on the big screen.