The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[Paralus]

More digressions? Bugger !

Why must anything not conducive to your view be prefaced by such dismissives as "more digressions"? You yourself raised this question - sorry - digression. The armamnet of the hypaspists has, in fact, been part of this thread the "pre-Philip army" has not.

You bet wrong. Arrian, Anabasis 4.8-9

You misunderstand ! I was betting that, amongst the plethora of weapons referred to in our various sources, not only is 'longche' the most referred to (including Arrian), but also the most likely for the purpose, as opposed to a 'sarissa'.

Hmmm...

Arrian says 'longche' in one version, 'sarissa' in another - but we can't even be sure who these 'guards' are, let alone the weapon used! How can this be evidence of anything? ( and I'd bet it was a 'longche'.....).

The parenthetic comment can hardly refer to "evidence of anything"; rather it seems clearly to refer to "but we can't even be sure who these 'guards' are, let alone the weapon used".

Nor do we know if Arrian is quoting his sources word-for-word - we have only Arrian's words.

Surely you are not serious? I can't ever remember anyone suggesting that we ought not to take Arrian for what he says because he may not be reproducing a source verbatim! Indeed, if we take Arrian at his word, he likely never reproduced verbatim his source material: he was the writer of his times! If I were suspicious I might suspect that such a question is raised to cast doubt upon the notice of "sarisa" as possibly not verbatim. If I were supicious.

What is clear is that we know neither who the Guard in the incident was, nor what the weapon was.

Your intransigence is difficult to understand. The weapon is described twice: sarissan and sarisei. As for the guard...

The weapon is clearly referred to as a sarisa - twice.

Err, not in your quote it isn't ! His first version has a 'longche' snatched from a 'somatophylakes'. "according to others" it was a 'sarissa' taken from a 'guard'/phylakes (Arrian does not say a 'hypaspist', the guard might even be an ordinary 'sarissaphoroi' from one of the 'Taxeis') [...] Is Aristobulus the source of the 'longche/somatophylakes? Or is he one of the "others"? According to Arrian; "Aristobulus does not mention the occasion of the drinking bout", so he is NOT the source of Arrian's primary version. Arrian does not even say if Aristobulus is one of the "others".
In Arrian's words: "Accounts of this incident differ".

I have adressed all of that above; you ignore it or have not read it properly (the last English sentence in the Arrian quote did not cut & paste correctly which doesn't help - it has been rectified). Clearly it is Aristobulos reporting the sarisa use as everything which follows his name is his testimony - as Arrian makes plain: "Aristobulus does not say whence the drunken quarrel originated [...] He adds that Clitus could not control himself, but went back again..." This is Aristobulos' testimony ending with the running through with a sarisa. Whose else can it be?

Three groups had the responsibility for the guarding of the king: the paides basilikoi, the somatophylakes and the hypaspists. This is, outside of yourself, not questioned. Clearly identified are a somatophlyake and an "ordinary" guard - at the door. The paides basilikoi are refered to as the pages and identified as such in Arrian. This guard is generally accepted as being a hypaspist. You would suggest that rather than one of the groups who were tasked to guard the king we have an average phalanx grunt? That, if I might say, is a real stretch.