 It could be a Macedonian-style phalanx or some troops using long two handed naval lances, a practice quite common among marines at that age and according to Plutarch also successfully employed by the Romans.The claim of sarissa armed Carthaginian infantry is naturally disputed by experts capable of reading the Greek original, and Polybius himself is not clear, when he mentions Hannibal next to Pyrrhus in his famed comparison between the Roman manipular system and the Macedonian system.It is not clear what the Macedonian system constitutes, pike blocks or combined arms tactics, although the variant of the Hellenistic empires was heavily reliant on their exclusive ethnic group forming the pike blocks, with others serving as numerous less relevant skirmishers.