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To summarize, I started on a continent with Arabs and Khmer. I was peaceful with them at first, but I refused their alliances too many times and they both declared war on me. I'm finding myself fighting endless Phalanges. I beelined to Monotheism, I'm running a monarchy and I'm trying to push outwards but it's just impossible. The line barely moved for the past 500 years, and their border cities are filled to the brim with units.

Just how am I supposed to get out of this? I have a few courses of action I want to consider:
1. Fortify the borders, hunker down, go republic, and beeline to riflemen
2. Make a huge deathstack in one of the cities and bring it down.
3. Use diplomats.

I see the mountains are perfect for defence. Bunker down, develop. Get workers, irrigate, grow cities. Go maritime, see if there are free lands.

Diplomats are as good as your treasury and I don't think you'll have enough funds for that, but you can probe enemy cities to see how much they'd cost. I think it would be unfeasible, but I could be wrong.

Sorry to come in late, but here's how i would attempt to tackle this situation.
Bring strong defensive units to the enemy land. As many as you can. Then try to occupy cells around cities in order to reduce his production level. This way, he will be forced to disband units as he can no longer support them.
Concentrate on a single city, ideally one located on a cell that does not offer a defensive bonus. Then, bring in 15-20 attack units and try to take it (in a single turn).
You can use diplomats to spy on city defenses, counting units and attack where they are the least numerous. The AI has the tendency to bring extra units from other cities when it detects a menace ; use this fact against it (and block its paths by controlling cells around).