ty for answers, i suppose reality is quite different than what i thought would happen based on movies ( two armies literally fight until one is completely dead or runs). So it seems as if those in the front ranks of the winning army have a bit less chance of survival but still good, but for the losing side those in the front were dead anyway, not because it was it was a lot more fatal to be at the front, but because their army was defeated. Still, i guess people were just really brave and were ok with being assigned to being at the front of the army
I'd like to challenge the assertion that those in the front ranks were 'certainly dead'. Can someone shed more light on this? I have heard that in ancient and medieval battles most casualties came when an army routed.
I asked a similar question about Rome. Here's a link to a good response.
This is a case of mistaken priors, though the question is valid. The answer is that it was perfectly possible, even likely, that you would survive serving in the front ranks. Using the Greek phalanx as representative, since you didn't specify a time period: Krentz argues based on primary sources that the average casualty rate for a phalanx as a whole was in the vicinity of ~5% for the victor and ~15% for the defeated. These are major, set-piece battles with what contemporaries would consider "heavy" casualties, these were the absolute bloodbaths of the ancient world, and even in the front rank you had better than even odds to survive. If you assume the worst case scenario: that only the front row incurs fatalities, that means that on average any individual in said front row has a ~50-60% chance of survival assuming eight to twelve rows in a phalanx. More often the casualties would have been distributed, becauser archer, slingers, and peltasts did exist on the ancient Greek battlefield.^1
Likewise, the notion of two armies literally colliding and this being a normal state of affairs is dubious: there is significant debate about the phalanx and the use of the word osthimos to indicate the front ranks literally pushing against each other, but for a variety of reasons literal infantry pushes were unlikely to have taken place.^2 The most obvious reason is that with a shield in one hand and a spear in the other the mechanics of it just don't work: there is nothing to the left or right in the ranks to maintain balance at an individual level, because nobody has a free hand to balance you, and in such a scenario nobody can use the spears they're carrying because the front rank is shield to shield with the enemy and the rear ranks can't stab for fear of hitting friendlies. From the onlooker's perspective it would have been like me and my brothers having Jedi battles with foam pool noodles.
Moreover, our primary sources tell us, repeatedly, that the phalanx could disengage and withdraw only to re-engage multiple times in a fight, which is much easier if you're at spear distance rather than kicking each other's greaved shins. Greek hoplites probably did run down archers, slingers, or peltasts a few times; but that's because light infantry need distance to employ their (mostly shot or thrown) weapons and rushing them denies their ability to use their weapons. Heavy infantry against heavy infantry would have been a careful, step-by-step affair, with spear points probing for weaknesses and mostly hitting bronze shields, helmets and greaves.
P. Krentz, ‘Casualties in Hoplite Battles’, GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 1985, http://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/view/5321/5325.
Goldsworthy, A.K. "The Othismos, Myths and Heresies: The Nature of Hoplite Battle." War In History 4, no. 1 (January 1997): 1-26.