The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[MeinPanzer]

It was the Aetolians success with missile armed peltasts/psiloi, and the relative failure of hoplites against the dreaded Gauls that likely caused a switch in the armament of citizen Militias from hoplite to a peltast-type 'intermediate' infantry

Certainly over-simplified reasons are to be generally avoided, but the Argive aspis/dory armed Hoplite Phalanx had been the mainstay of the armies of the poleis for the best part of 400 years or so. From 338 BC onward, they had been beaten by Macedonian phalanxes,( which rarely consisted of purely 'sarissaphoroi') but this did not prompt a change of armament, as Fred has pointed out. However, something else DID prompt the gradual abandonment of traditional hoplite panoplies shortly after 279 and that can only really be in response to the Gallic invasions. What other reasons can you suggest, especially as the change involved adopting a Gallic shield/thureos? ( The other change being adopting 'longche'/javelins ) - it looks very much as if armies were being 're-shaped' to fight Gallic invaders.

Responding to your earlier post quoted above, what was the "relative failure" of the hoplites against the Galatians? The hoplites stationed at Thermopylae were if anything greatly successful against the Galatians (Pausanias 10.21.3-4). When we do hear of hoplites failing against Galatians in an isolated engagement, it is explicitly stated that this happened "owing to the number and desperation of the Gauls" (Pausanias 10.22.6). The failure of the Greeks was allowing the Galatians to find a way around Thermopylae - a weakness that had nothing to do with the hoplite.

I believe the adoption of the thureos, which happened very likely first in Aetolia (but at what time before the 250s is unknown), was due to ease of construction and the overall flexibility of the arm. However, I don't think that the defeat of the Galatians by the Aetolians inspired them to adopt it - if anything, the weakness of the Galatians to missile fire was an indictment of the shield, which failed to provide ample protection (10.22.6).

The Boeotians seem to have been the first, shortly after 279 BC.(judging by several inscriptions, and tomb reliefs). However, by 245 BC, no more Gallic invasions having materialised, they switched to 'Macedonian' armament, having become an ally of Macedon.

If the Boeotians made the switch "shortly after 279 BC," then please produce an inscription or tomb relief which attests to the use of the thureos dating to before 250 BC.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that the use of Tarentine mercenary cavalry ( most likely) spread the use of cavalry shields into the Greek/Hellenistic world. These were originally (4 C BC) slightly concave, apparently 60 cm or so diameter judging by 4 C BC coins, but rapidly grew in size. They could be ribbed/single grip ( like Gallic or Italic shields) or smooth faced, with porpax and rim - like a smaller Argive aspis. Even full sized aspides seem to have been used in the 3 C BC. Finds in the 3 C BC, especially the 'hybrids', are just as likely - perhaps more likely - to have been cavalry shields.

It is known now, thanks to a paper presented by Pierre Juhel at the Second International Conference on Hellenistic Warfare, that the cavalry thureos (and among cavalry thureos seems to have been used as a general term to refer to oval as well as large round shields) was adopted already by 277-6, before Pyrrhus returned from Italy. A Delian inventory list mentions a hippikos thureos epichrusos dedicated by "king Ptolemy, son of Lysimachus," who could only have made the dedication between the years 277 and 276 when he reigned as king. Thus, the adoption of shields among cavalry was brought about by Galatian influence. There are two different types of cavalry shield: thureos-like and aspides. What evidence do you have that the large round cavalry shields employed in the Hellenistic period were single grip? I don't think I know of any evidence other than for such shields having porpakes and antilabai.

However, how do you account for, for instance, the shield carried by one phalangite on the Pergamon battle plaque, which is large, deeply dished, and possesses a small rim? That is certainly not a cavalry shield.

This is certainly hypothetically possible, but I can't think of any examples of this use of trophies to equip armies in the Greek literature.

These aren't trophies, these are either votive offerings or, more likely, dedications made to the state with the explicit purpose of arming citizens. Usually these citizens were ephebes, but they could also be poor individuals or even mercenaries. These were kept all together in temple treasuries.

Furthermore shields, being largely organic materials, would quickly deteriorate and be unusable in not much more than ten years give or take.

Hardly - of the 1,000 shields Pasio dedicated to Athens during the Corinthian war, 778 were still preserved in good condition on the Acropolis over twenty years later in 369/8 (IGII2, 1424a, l. 128-9 and 139-40), and it's likely that the others were used by the state for equipping war orphans and others. In 362, there is one entry from the Chalkotheke listing 956 shields, and the exact same number of shields is recorded again in 350 (IGII2, 120, l. 33-4; IGII2, 1440, l. 46-7). These are just the most plentiful examples - there are others from Athens and Delos attesting to shields being held in good condition for decades.

Also the Greeks had a well-known aversion to such 'sacrilege', as the Phokian War attests. We hear of new shields being supplied, but not use of old ones.The only example of this that springs to mind is Roman use of captured Gallic trophy shields and gear to equip the 6,000 'volones' in the immediate aftermath of Cannae - but these had been captured less than 10 years before.

The outrage of the Phocian war was that an international sanctuary was seized and its treasuries drained for the gain of a single state. Ordinarily, Greeks did not see removing money or arms from their own temples as sacrilegious, especially since arsenals like the Chalkotheke were mixed with other dedications in temples and accounted for by the treasurers as if dedications. The arms supplied to war orphans and ephebes had to be stored somewhere, and just as the "emergency fund" of the state was to be found in the Acropolis (Thucydides 2.13.4), so too were arms. We, for instance, hear of 318 cases of arrows stored in the Hecatompedon and Opisthodomos IGII2, 1424a, l. 121-2) which certainly seem to be stored arms and are not listed as dedications.

Also, why would you take off porpaxes? I don't believe the idea of shields simply slung from the neck ( an incredible encumbrance, and body armour does this job much better), but even if this unlikelihood occurred, why remove porpaxes and render them completely useless for when it came to swords and hand-to-hand?

Because if you needed to arm hundreds of men on a budget, aspides without porpakes but with telamones are better than no shields at all. It may have been thought that it wasn't much necessary for those in the rear ranks to be equipped with porpakes anyway, because if they were caught in hand-to-hand combat, chances were that the porpax would be of little help.