Macedonian Phalanx Illustration

[drsrob]

Very nice, Johny! I like the diversity of gear and the fact that the phalanx isn't in perfect order.

There are a number of sources on Pontic armies in the first century BC, probably including Appian and Plutarch (I haven't read much on Mithridates' army though). They seem to have been of mixed pattern, with Hellenistic, Persian, Anatolian, and (towards the end) Roman influences.

Regarding the dress of pikemen, don't some of our ancient sources on Alexander mention his men adopting foreign clothes en masse somewhere in Bactria, Sogodia, or India? In any case, I expect that men would have adopted foreign garments piecemeal as ones in the Greek style became harder to find, so there was probably also gradual change over his campaign. I doubt Alexander's men could have gotten an adequate supply of clothing and shoes from Greece after they crossed the Euphrates, and most of their camp followers were barbaroi. In Hellenistic times, I expect most regular pikemen would have dressed in Hellenic styles.

Well, they say that Alexander re-equipped his pike-men with so-called half-armour at the Indus. The old sets were burned.
This suggest not variety, but rather uniformity.
The sources say that the half-armour covered the front and not the back. I find that unlikely. I suspect that it actually was an armour of the Type Alexander wears on the Alexander mosaic. Looking at the reconstrocked armour of the Alexander Sarcophagus (Nick Secunda, The Armies of Alexander the Great, Osprey), I noticed that you could interpret the 'light purple' of the armour as iron ant the light yellow as linen.
Doing that you'll see that all but one of the pike-men wear armour like that of Alexander. The odd one out then wears a fully iron cuirass (like that of Philip II, making him probably an officer.