10-29-2007, 09:07 PM
Quote:What's the original Greek for "contracted" and "inside the weapons"?
Indeed.
It is NGL Hammond's translation (Philip of Macedon) and he mentions only eneklinen (incline) which he relates as "retire". "Refuse" may be another word.
If the Greek is not specifically identifying a weapon - and I suspect that it does not, hence 'weapons' - then, again, it is my argument that the most likely weapon offering this protection is a fifteen ot eighteen foot pike. Sarissa heads - in poor preservation - have been excavated at Chaeronea.
There is another passage from Diodorus that provides an interesting insight (19.43.4-6):
Quote:Antigonus divided his cavalry into two bodies with one of which he himself lay in wait for Eumenes, watching for the first move; but the other he gave to Pithon and ordered him to attack the Silver Shields now that they had been cut off from their cavalry support. When Pithon promtly carried out his orders, the Macedonians promtly formed themselves into a sqaure and withdrew safely...
That the cavalry would, on this account (Hieronymus), would eveidently refuse to approach the sqaure is rather suggestive. It implies strongly that these men were protected by something more than the seven to eight foot dory. Antigonus' cavalry, at this stage, had complete control and even a literal "half" would see the old buggers seriously outnumbered.
It is redolent of another retreat from another Eumenes and his Roman allies some 127 years later. Unfortunately for Antiochus' phalanx, they retired with their elephants within the sqaure.
On an earlier point, royal hypaspists carrying the sarissa on guard, Arrian 4.8.8-9 comes to mind. "Other" sources say he grabbed a "pike" from a guard. The guard is not likely to have been one of the somatophylakes but rather a royal hypaspist. There is another but I'm buggered if I can pull from my memory.
Funnily enough, Diodorus - who regularly mixes his technical terms - in book sixteen refers to the hypaspist guards of philip as "doryphoroi" - just to confuse matters.
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
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
