The Makedonian phalanx -- why such depth?

[MeinPanzer]

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.