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The Makedonian phalanx -- why such depth?
#46
Quote:As I said, I would not wish to get into yet another digression on the subject of peltasts/thureophoroi, but....
Ruben wrote:
Quote:I should first note that I am only working from Asclepiodotus, as I think that his manual is the only one that can be verifiably linked to any true Hellenistic military practice

....it is generally reckoned that all three manuals -Ascepiodotus,Aelian and Arrian are drawing on a common single source - sometimes thought to be Poybius lost section on this subject, but the source is more likely Posidonius. Asclepiodotus is mentioned by Seneca as being a follower of Posidonius, and both Aelian and Arrian refer to him.

But herein lies the clincher for me: Asclepiodotus was almost certainly a pupil of Poseidonius, who was very likely well-acquainted with the Seleucid military, and who drew from his teachings directly. Aelian and Arrian, while they most likely drew from Poseidonius, are fairly far removed from him. Therefore, of the three I think only the details of Asclepiodotus can be trusted. We all know how easily ancient authors relying on sources which were already ancient for them could mix up simple statements or passages. Case in point:

Quote:Arrian says:" ....Light troops (psiloi) are the exact opposite in having no body armour,shield,greaves or helmet, but being trained to the use of missiles, arrows, javelins and stones slung or by hand..."

Aelian says:"...on the contrary the light infantry (psiloi) are equipped in the least cumbersome way; they wear neither a coat of mail, nor greaves, nor the heavier kinds of shields; but they use missile weapons, either arrows shot from bows or darts/javelins or else stones thrown from slings or with the hand...."

but elsewhere: "...the equipment of the foot-soldiers is of three kinds - some are completely armed, some just have shields, and some are light-armed troops( psiloi). The completely armed soldiers wear the heaviest armour of all; after the Macedonian manner their shields are round and their pikes are long..."

Where does Arrian get the "no shield or helmet" part from? Why does Aelian state that the psiloi used shields, and yet doesn't mention helmets?

Quote:Clearly, these three 'classes' of troops are the broadest of generalisations. All three manuals say that the 'light/ medium' troops carry a shield lighter or smaller than the round shield of the heavy armed, which whilst it may be true of the argive aspis, isn't true of a Macedonian Phalanx who carry a species of pelta !

As elsewhere in his treatise, Asclepiodotus seems to either be missing something in his understanding of Hellenistic infantry or deliberately reorganizing things to suit his idea of what a Hellenistic army should be (like Xenophon's cavalry equipment in On Horsemanship doesn't actually reflect what an Athenian cavalryman of his day would wear). He states on this matter only that the hoplites (phalangites) carried "shields of the largest size," and then goes on to state that the best shield for the phalangite to use is the Macedonian, which was bronze, c. 60 cm in diameter, and shallow. While he describes the pelte, which the peltasts used, as being different from the "shields of the largest size" carried by the phalangites, the Greek does state that phalangites could (and presumably did) use different kinds of shields. Therefore, I think what he means by distinguishing between the shields of the phalangites and those of the peltasts is that the former were heavier because they were faced with bronze (as in the Chalkaspides, Arguraspides, etc.) and could be much bigger (as in the Aemilius Paullus relief, or the Pergamon battle plaque), while the latter were neither. It is perhaps for nothing that the most prominent peltast unit in the Antigonid Macedonian army was distinguished from the Chalkaspides by having white, rather than metallic, shields.

Quote:If we follow the manuals broad generalisation of 'light/medium'(peltastoi) as being troops who can skirmish in open order, or, thanks to having shields/helmets/some armour can also fight hand-to-hand ( though not able to withstand heavy-armed infantry) then Thureophoroi fall into this category, and are the natural successors to greek peltasts - the original ones. Which isn't to say that the pelta, if defined as simply 'light shield' had disappeared - it continued in use, no doubt, among other peoples but it appears to have been supplanted by the 'thureos', which also replaces the aspis among Greek mercenaries, so that instead of 'mercenary peltasts' and 'mercenary hoplites' as separate types, we now hear only of 'mistophoroi'(mercenaries) as a single category......

At least from Asclepiodotus, no indication is made of the peltasts being skirmishers - only that they carried lighter shields and shorter spears. I simply cannot take Asclepiodotus' comment, however, that the peltasts are so-called because "the pelte is a kind of small, light shield" as an indication of anything other than that these men carried the pelte proper. It is too explicit to be able to interpret this class as also including thureophoroi.
Ruben

He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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#47
I don't think that to contend that Thureophoroi are psiloi/light troops is logical or likely, based on the overall evidence. After all, technically they are more 'heavily' equipped than true peltasts....and there is evidence that they skirmished, as I have mentioned. One should not rely on Asclepiodotus alone ( who after all is making a generalisation) and certainly not take him, or the other two manuals too literally. There are in reality an infinite variety of troop types, based not just on equipment, but on organisation discipline and training, just to mention a few factors. For example, an early Thracian tribal 'peltast' is a far cry from his more disciplined, better equipped Greek mercenary counterpart of later years, who is different again from a Hellenistic mercenary 'Thureophoros' - but all fall within the Manuals definition of 'medium' troops who can skirmish or fight hand-to-hand..... and are between true psiloi and Hoplites/heavy armed.
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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#48
And so we argue about words: words written – sometimes – by sources well after the events. In the case of Arrian we have a man writing about events that occurred over four centuries hence (in the case of Alexander). That is akin to one of us writing a history of events that took place in the early seventeenth century. Technical details can easily become lost and that is if such really mattered to Greeks.

Much of the ‘technocrapia’ (just invented a word) that we moderns utilise is just that: crap. We rigidly apply our take on what the ancient Greeks wrote because it suits our sense of regimented (pun intended) order. That we refer nowadays, in strictly military terms, to particular units and divisions of armies with particular functions is our fetish. It does not follow that the ancient Greeks suffered the same fetish.

Many of the terms we insist on being translated literally were, for the ancient Greeks, rather more fluid. To quote a friend (‘Agesilaos’):

The Greeks just did not appreciate technical precision only the sound and rhythm of the language, something alien to us.

The ancients’ use of terms was rather more “interchangeable”. Hence we have “hoplite” for Macedonian phalangites or “somatophylake” for hypaspist and “synaspismos” for a phalanx when, if we insist on “proper terminology”, it should be “synpeltemos” or some such claptrap.

In any event, were are in an age of small production. Johnny Schumate’s depiction of the Macedonian phalanx – where any number of equipment variations are apparent – is surely on the money. There were no Chinese mass production edifices here.

I sometimes think that we apply our modern technical fetishes to the ancient Greeks in the way some do modern morals.
Paralus|Michael Park

Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους

Wicked men, you are sinning against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander!

Academia.edu
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#49
Yeah, wot he said !!! Smile D lol:
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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#50
Have any of you seen Asclepiodotus online anywhere? He is the only one I cannot find translated.

Also I have my doubts that there was a general transition from light troops with small round pelta to oblong thureophoroi. There were many oblong shields in both thrace and the east. Surely various light troops would have been armed with them. I think the "appearance" of the Thureophoroi simply marks the wide-scale adoption of the specific scutum-esque shield of the west (Not just invading Celts, but from Italy and Adriatic as well).
Paul M. Bardunias
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A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
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#51
Quote:I don't think that to contend that Thureophoroi are psiloi/light troops is logical or likely, based on the overall evidence. After all, technically they are more 'heavily' equipped than true peltasts....and there is evidence that they skirmished, as I have mentioned.

I'm confused. Before you were stating that there is evidence that thureophoroi were reckoned as euzonoi (as, for instance, in Polybius' account of the crossing of the Elburz range) and that they skirmished, but fared poorly in close combat, and yet you don't think they could be reckoned as light troops?

Quote:One should not rely on Asclepiodotus alone ( who after all is making a generalisation) and certainly not take him, or the other two manuals too literally. There are in reality an infinite variety of troop types, based not just on equipment, but on organisation discipline and training, just to mention a few factors.

Yes, but there was a large difference between peltasts like the Macedonian Leukaspides and thureophoroi, and ancient sources readily acknowledge this. We're not talking about minor variations here; we're talking about two totally different kinds of shields.

Quote:For example, an early Thracian tribal 'peltast' is a far cry from his more disciplined, better equipped Greek mercenary counterpart of later years, who is different again from a Hellenistic mercenary 'Thureophoros' - but all fall within the Manuals definition of 'medium' troops who can skirmish or fight hand-to-hand..... and are between true psiloi and Hoplites/heavy armed.

No, they don't all fall within the category of medium troops, as I stated before. Asclepiodotus states that the peltasts are lighter because "the pelte is a kind of small and light shield (mikra tis estin aspidiske kai kouphe). These are peltasts in the strictest sense of the word - men with peltai, not thureoi, or other kinds of shields. It should be noted that Asclepiodotus explicitly refers to thureophoroi cavalrymen elsewhere, stating "(the cavalry arm is sometimes called) the thureophoroi, when some also may carry unusually long shields on account of also protecting the horse (aspidas ... paramekeis dia to sunepiskepesthai kai ton hippon)," so he is clearly aware of thureophoroi.

Quote:And so we argue about words: words written – sometimes – by sources well after the events. In the case of Arrian we have a man writing about events that occurred over four centuries hence (in the case of Alexander). That is akin to one of us writing a history of events that took place in the early seventeenth century. Technical details can easily become lost and that is if such really mattered to Greeks.

Much of the ‘technocrapia’ (just invented a word) that we moderns utilise is just that: crap. We rigidly apply our take on what the ancient Greeks wrote because it suits our sense of regimented (pun intended) order. That we refer nowadays, in strictly military terms, to particular units and divisions of armies with particular functions is our fetish. It does not follow that the ancient Greeks suffered the same fetish.

Many of the terms we insist on being translated literally were, for the ancient Greeks, rather more fluid. To quote a friend (‘Agesilaos’):

The Greeks just did not appreciate technical precision only the sound and rhythm of the language, something alien to us.

The ancients’ use of terms was rather more “interchangeable”. Hence we have “hoplite” for Macedonian phalangites or “somatophylake” for hypaspist and “synaspismos” for a phalanx when, if we insist on “proper terminology”, it should be “synpeltemos” or some such claptrap.

While caution must obviously be exercised when interpreting Greek military writing, this is a reductio ad absurdum. The Greeks clearly did appreciate technical precision, but it depends on who is writing and in what context. One could just as easily argue in the future that people today "just did not appreciate technical precision" because, for instance, people commonly call assault rifles machine guns in writing. Doesn't mean that a manual written by a military veteran is somehow invalidated because some are ignorant of military terminology. And, tellingly, in all three of those cases, those are interchangeable terms for a reason. A phalangite was a hoplite to the ancients, just one that fought in a Macedonian phalanx and not a regular phalanx; we are the ones who take the term hoplite to be something that it's not. Hypaspists were bodyguards, and so using the two terms to refer to the same unit is by no means unclear. Finally, synaspismos refers to bringing shields together - without any sort of reference to what shields are being referred to. Peltai were aspides, just a specific kind.

Quote:In any event, were are in an age of small production. Johnny Schumate’s depiction of the Macedonian phalanx – where any number of equipment variations are apparent – is surely on the money. There were no Chinese mass production edifices here.

I sometimes think that we apply our modern technical fetishes to the ancient Greeks in the way some do modern morals.

If anything, I think that depictions like Johnny's are lacking in variation - for instance, IIRC his depiction of the phalanx showed all the men wearing red tunics, whereas they almost certainly would have worn a variety of colours. However, the ancients were clear in what was consistent among units, and that was almost always their shield types. Shields wouldn't have been cookie-cutter products, but I think we can trust Hellenistic authors with military experience in differentiating between a pelte and a thureos (and while thureoi are sometimes shown as being fairly small, we never see what could be termed intermediate shields between the two, so I don't think an argument could be made for a "spectrum" of shield shapes at this time ranging from the pelte to the thureos).

Quote:Also I have my doubts that there was a general transition from light troops with small round pelta to oblong thureophoroi. There were many oblong shields in both thrace and the east. Surely various light troops would have been armed with them. I think the "appearance" of the Thureophoroi simply marks the wide-scale adoption of the specific scutum-esque shield of the west (Not just invading Celts, but from Italy and Adriatic as well).

We know of one kind of oblong shield being in use in Thrace perhaps three quarters of a century before the Galatian invasion, while from the east the only oblong shields I can think of being in use around that time is the gerrha of the Persians. Most of our evidence from the Near East points to round pelte being used in 4th c. BC or so, as for instance on the Canakkale sarcophagus, or the Konya stele.
Ruben

He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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#52
Quote:We know of one kind of oblong shield being in use in Thrace perhaps three quarters of a century before the Galatian invasion, while from the east the only oblong shields I can think of being in use around that time is the gerrha of the Persians.

Those Thracian shields are what I was thiking of in particular. I have opined previously that Iphicrates famous reform might have been a Proto-thureophoroi rather than a Proto-sarissaphoroi since a 12' non-tapered spear can be used with one hand and has roughly the reach (6') of an 8' counterweighted doru held at one third from the sauroter (5.3'), but is nothing like a sarissa. That whole "symmetrical" shield thing could be describing an oval thracian shield. Also, I have yet to find a description of the Egyptian shields that Xenophon mentions you can push against with your shoulder, but these seem likely to be oval- perhaps oval on top and squared at the bottom as in earlier shields form egypt.
Paul M. Bardunias
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A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
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#53
Quote:Those Thracian shields are what I was thiking of in particular. I have opined previously that Iphicrates famous reform might have been a Proto-thureophoroi rather than a Proto-sarissaphoroi since a 12' non-tapered spear can be used with one hand and has roughly the reach (6') of an 8' counterweighted doru held at one third from the sauroter (5.3'), but is nothing like a sarissa.

This could be, but the only examples of this kind of shield that I am aware of (the Kazanluk and Alexandrovo frescoes and the find from Kyustendil) appear toward the second half of the 4th c. BC, well after Iphicrates' reforms.

But why do you think that the Iphicrateans' spears could not be anything like a sarissa? The smallest a sarissa could be is 12 feet, which would means that there is no reason given Diodorus' statement that the spears of the Iphicrateans and the smallest sarissae could not be interchangeable.
Ruben

He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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#54
Quote:But why do you think that the Iphicrateans' spears could not be anything like a sarissa? The smallest a sarissa could be is 12 feet

I tend to believe in minimal "revolutions" and staged evolutionary progression. The 12' sarissa appears rather late if I recall, and a 12' spear can be held with one hand. What is the precedent for holding a spear with two hands and why do it with the bare minimum of spear length that requires a two handed grip? To me a shift like that requires a pressing need- like a shaft length beyond what could be weilded in one hand.

So we have Iphicrates who wants to turn peltasts into hoplite equivalents. It seems to me that the most simple transition is that he takes the simple, non-tapered longche used by many barbarians and simply makes it long enough to reach the same distance as a doru. We often forget that the doru was a very long spear in its own right, moreso if as many believe it was tapered and rear-balanced. The light shields that they are using are not sufficient to fight in othismos (of whatever form), so there is no need to use the Laconian short sword which I think was designed for this and was en vogue at the time. Thus he reverts to the longer sword- double the short sword's length. He ends up with men who are capable of spear-fencing with a hoplite and light enough to get out of the way if they push to closer quarters. If I asked you what he did prior to any knowledge of the Macedonian sarissa, you would probably assume something like this and not a radical switch to a two handed grip.

The Macedonians on the other hand appear to introduce the sarissa along with a novel close order if we trust that reference to him being inspired by the defense of the ships in the Illiad. A dense formation would maximize the benefits of a sarissa. Perhaps it was the 1.5' spacing, for hoplites are in a state of synaspismos at anything under about 3'. The longer sarissa requires a two handed grip and makes better use of the length than a spear that could be gripped in one hand. Why lose the mobility of the shield arm for the minimum gain in length when adding a few more feet does not make a 2 handed spear any more unwieldy?

Of course if Iphicrates doubled the length of the doru, which is possible, then I would not agree with me :wink:
Paul M. Bardunias
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A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
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#55
Quote:While caution must obviously be exercised when interpreting Greek military writing, this is a reductio ad absurdum. The Greeks clearly did appreciate technical precision, but it depends on who is writing and in what context. One could just as easily argue in the future that people today "just did not appreciate technical precision" because, for instance, people commonly call assault rifles machine guns in writing.

Clearly I have overstated the point (the line quoted lifted from a longer letter). I agree that there were technicalities that the Greeks (ancient) used. My view is that we, in an age of utter precision and with the comforting need to label and box in everything ‘just so’, apply a precision to words – or concepts – that the ancients would not see necessary.

Actually, I don’t know that that makes my view much, if any, clearer. Perhaps to quote Peter Green (Ancient Bearings p 257):

Quote:Historians, through their successive and partial recreations of past culture, build up, layer by layer, a multifaceted image or icon of the Greco-Roman complex from which all Western civilisation is, ultimately, derived. Our grasp of that civilisation, depends, in the last resort, on successive acts of translation or interpretation. Yet each generation’s interpretation differs: every reading is made from a “distinctive angle of vision”.

Quote:And, tellingly, in all three of those cases, those are interchangeable terms for a reason. A phalangite was a hoplite to the ancients, just one that fought in a Macedonian phalanx and not a regular phalanx; we are the ones who take the term hoplite to be something that it's not. Hypaspists were bodyguards, and so using the two terms to refer to the same unit is by no means unclear. Finally, synaspismos refers to bringing shields together - without any sort of reference to what shields are being referred to. Peltai were aspides, just a specific kind.

Absolutely. We, indeed, are the ones (well some of us) who apply such rigid technicalities to a word such as ‘hoplite’. Apside is another. Clearly Polybios is happy to describe Hellenistic phalanxes executing synaspismos: a shield is a shield is a shield. The same might also be said for hypaspist (I believe I have elsewhere): modern love of technical specificity should not render that as ‘80-100cm aspis carrier’. Peucestas, in India, was clearly performing his duty “bearing the king’s shield” (that of Troy).

You are correct with somatophylake. The ancient sources render this term for hypaspists (Diod. 16.93.3; 93. 9; 94.4 for example where Pausanias is described as somatophylake when he is clearly a ‘royal’ hypaspist) and paides basilikoi (17.65.1) where 50 ‘pages’ are somatophylakes. As well, we are familiar with its application to the king’s senior ‘counsel’ or adjutants. All are linked by the one aspect of their roles: protection of the king.

Interestingly, whilst on hypaspists and hoplites, Arrian regularly refers to the Macedonian ‘phalangite of the line’ as ‘hoplite’. He only rarely (by comparison) utilises the term pezhetairoi and, when he does it is in places one would not expect to find them such as his encounter with Diogenes when accompanied by his hypaspists and “foot companions” (pezhetairoi). Evidently if Alexander took along the regiments of the phalanx he will have blocked Diogenes’ sun!

So, to illustrate, one might dogmatically state that, technically, somatophylake refers to the king's seven adjutants. Such dogmatism would result in there being another fifty of them being sent to Alexander and that Lysimachus and Perdiccas were of "the seven" at the time of Philip's murder.

To quote Vinnie Barbarino: "I'm so confused..."
Paralus|Michael Park

Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους

Wicked men, you are sinning against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander!

Academia.edu
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#56
Paul B. wrote:
Quote:I tend to believe in minimal "revolutions" and staged evolutionary progression.

....does this mean that we all generally accept that the development of the Greek Phalkanx was largely 'evolutionary', as I postulated earlier ? The only development that perhaps could be termed 'revolutionary' was the adoption of the 'Argive Aspis' which occurred, most likely, in the 8 C BC, or, as some prefer, mid 7C BC.
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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#57
Ruben wrote:
Quote:The smallest a sarissa could be is 12 feet, which would mean that there is no reason given Diodorus' statement that the spears of the Iphicrateans and the smallest sarissae could not be interchangeable

....where do you get this from? Nowhere that I am aware of is the sarissa described as this short......have you in mind that Macedonian 'prodromoi' ( scouts) were nicknamed 'sarrisaphoroi'?
The slangy-minded Greeks and Macedonians were as fond of nicknames as we are.......and in that case sarissa might not be a specific weapon (infantry pike 18-24 ft long), with the name mis-applied as a nickname, but instead, as Paralus has suggested, be a more generic 'extra-long spear' and thus anything longer than a 'dory'......except that a 12 ft cavalry spear had a specific name - 'xyston' !

Accordingly, I think 'sarissaphoroi' was just a loose use of the term as a nickname for the 'xyston' armed 'mounted scouts' ('prodromoi')

It is possible that the 'sarissa' was of Thracian origin, and adopted by Philip from them......
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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#58
Coming back to the subject of 'medium' troops I believe their evolution broadly ran thus.......

They first appeared during the Peloponnesian war when Thracian tribal 'peltasts' were hired. They were essentially loose order javelin or longche (dual purpose short spear) armed, but thanks to their shields had a distinct advantage over 'traditional' light troops(psiloi) who were generally servants, shieldless, armed with darts/javelins, or slings or hand-thrown stones, and who undertook the role of skirmishers in 'Hoplite/Phalanx warfare'.

With their shields being 'light' and their shorter spears, loose order and less drill/discipline however, they generally could not stand up to 'heavy' infantry. They were thus 'medium' infantry, and almost invariably 'mercenaries'. Greeks quickly filled this role of 'medium' infantry as well, and down to Alexander's time we hear of both Thracian and Greek 'peltasts', almost always mercenaries.

From time to time , efforts were made to improve the 'hand-to-hand' abilities of peltasts by providing them with swords ( the Thracian Dii tribe used machaira, for example), or thrusting spears ( e.g. Iphicrates 'reforms'), but they were essentially skirmishing troops against heavy/line/phalanx infantry and used for all the traditional light infantry roles, and gradually replaced 'psiloi' except for specialists such as slingers. In places where Hoplite warfare did not 'catch on' ( largely due to lack of poleis/cities) such as Illyria, Thrace, Epirus and Macedonia ( despite it's close ties to Greece) the typical tribal warrior was a peltast. Hoplites did appear in Macedonia, with Greek colonists and poleis/cities, and ultimately 'sarissaphoroi', whom I believe were traditional Macedonian peltasts, armed with 'pelta' and 'longche', but who adopted 'sarissa' and close order drill for pitched battles under Philip.

In the third century BC, following the Gallic invasions, largely defeated by peltasts rather than phalanxes, we see the widescale adoption of the 'thureos'/celtic shield ( even though large oblong shields are known previously among Illyrians and Thracians to a degree) and the city-states adopt 'Thureophoroi' as a combined Hoplite/peltast, but they are not a great success as 'heavy infantry' leading to the adoption of the 'Macedonian manner' for citizen 'heavy infantry', and leaving mercenary 'Thureophoroi' as the replacement for both mercenary hoplites and peltasts ( whom we hear no more of, in their traditional role, in Hellenistic warfare)

The disappearance of the traditional peltast in the hellenistic kingdoms and city-states ( though tribal peltasts still existed) , in turn led to the use of 'peltast/peltophoroi' being used as a term for those troops still carrying 'peltai' - namely professionals/citizen troops armed 'in the Macedonian manner'......
Thus the term 'mistophoroi'/wage-earners/mercenaries comes to mean in a generic sense 'thureophoroi', though there were also specialist mercenaries too, such as Cretan archers or Tarentine cavalry.......

Now I know I have made a number of generalisations here, which can be disputed, but I am simply trying to provide a general background for those readers of the thread not into the minutiae of Hellenistic troop types......
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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#59
Quote:In the third century BC, following the Gallic invasions, largely defeated by peltasts rather than phalanxes, we see the widescale adoption of the 'thureos'/celtic shield ( even though large oblong shields are known previously among Illyrians and Thracians to a degree) and the city-states adopt 'Thureophoroi' as a combined Hoplite/peltast, but they are not a great success as 'heavy infantry' leading to the adoption of the 'Macedonian manner' for citizen 'heavy infantry', and leaving mercenary 'Thureophoroi' as the replacement for both mercenary hoplites and peltasts ( whom we hear no more of, in their traditional role, in Hellenistic warfare)

You forget the wildly successful transition from Hoplite to Thureophoroi, who go on to conquer the known world, that occurred in central Italy. :wink:
Paul M. Bardunias
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A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
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#60
True ! ....but the evolution of warfare/troop-types in the Italian peninsula is an entirely different ball-game ! Here, we are concerned with the Makedonian way of warfare, unless we want to digress mightily !!!! :? ) D
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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