The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[MeinPanzer]

All three versions of the Hellenistic manual make it clear that they are referring to the earlier tactical methods of the Greeks of Xenophon’s day, as well as later Macedonian practice, and that ‘heavy/close-order Infantry’ need not necessarily be Macedonian style, though this was considered the best. ( the manuals refer to sources pre-Macedonian such as Xenophon, Clearchus and Iphicrates)…Arrian: 32 “ Briefly and systematically I have given an account of the old Greek and Macedonian formations…”

Whilst, by Polybius’ day, ( the likely original source for the Hellenistic manuals), the ‘heavy Infantry/Hoplites’ were indeed “armed in the Macedonian manner”, such had not been the case earlier, and as I have noted the manuals claim to be ‘generic’ and cover earlier ‘heavy infantry’

Aelian and Arrian do refer to earlier sources, and they do discuss hoplites as well as phalangites, but as I wrote before, it is widely recognized that they combined and altered earlier sources (i.e. adding in commentary on Roman cavalry alongside discussion of Hellenistic types). Asclepiodotus never mentions any offensive weapon for the heavy infantry other than the "long Macedonian spear." Please point out where Asclepiodotus (and not Aelian or Arrian) makes clear that he is writing about any sort of heavy infantry other than phalangites.

note also that the Macedonian shield is here called ‘aspis’, clearly meant in the generic sense of shields, rather than specifically ‘Argive aspis’, obsolete by Polybius’ day….

As I have already noted, aspis was a generic term, and could refer to both the Macedonian shield and the Argive aspis.

Stringent tests while optimum, are not necessary to determine ‘basic’ facts – and the test I suggested earlier is sufficient to establish the necessity of a porpax, and consequent impossibility of using a rimmed ‘Argive aspis’ with sarissa…

Such facts, no matter how "basic" you may think them to be, need to be established through proper tests, and not just supposition.

…the Pontic Pharnakes shield in the Getty museum does not, in fact, have a diameter of 80 cm ( see below) and the smallest rimmed Argive aspis is about 82 cm.

Your variation is rather loose, and the size range is not as broad as “60-80” cm.The sizes are in fact as follows:-
The Hellenistic manuals : “8 palms” = 66 cm
Dodona (fragmented) : diameter unascertainable
Begora (fragmented, illustrated above) : 66cm
Dion (fragmented) : 73.6 cm
Staro Bonce (3 x fragmented) A) 73-74 cm; B) 72 cm (estimated); C) 66 cm (estimated)
Pergamum (intact); 66 cm
Pontus; 71-73 cm (NOT 80 cm, which is the diameter of the whole thing as displayed in the Getty museum – see photo- including the splayed out triangular pieces and tabs, which originally were bent over the rim to hold the facing in place)
Iconography:
Ptolemaic shield mould: 70 cm ( see attached photo)
Venice ‘life size’ sculpture from Egypt ( illustrated above) : 70 cm
Aghios Athanasius: white; 66 cm aprox; red and blue; 70 cm aprox on main frieze; on entrance 70 cm aprox ( see attached)
Stele of Nikolaos son of Hadymos: ( see attached) 70 cm aprox – note from shield position – flat, extended to left, raised – that it is almost certainly being held by a porpax.

All this demonstrates that the ‘Macedonian shield’, as used by ‘sarissaphoroi’ was around 70 cm (66-74 cm), as Katerina Liampi noted in her study; rimless, concave, and apparently getting more dished over time. The smallest diameter for an extant ‘Argive aspis’ is around 82 cm, and some are over 90 cm.

Firstly, the shield of Pharnaces differs between 79.8 and 81.4 cm in diameter in its current state (Paul Bernard, “Bouclier inscrit du J. Paul Getty Museum au nom de Pharnace I, roi du Pont,” in Bulletin of the Asia Institute 7 (1993): 11), with the former number measuring the diameter between dags, and the latter between the tabs on the axes. The actual diameter, when these were folded in (as on the Pergamon shield), is 78-78.5 cm.

Secondly, only the first calculation for the shields from Staro Bonce (73.4 cm) is worth anything; the other two are too fragmentary to give any sort of useful estimate.

To these I might add:

The painted shields from the Katerini tomb: 72 cm.
The shields in relief from the tomb at Vergina: 70 cm.
The tomb of Lyson and Kallikles: 75 cm.
The shields in relief from the Veroia monument: 73-76 cm.
The tomb of Spelia in Eordaia: 69 and 72 cm.
The shields in relief from Archontiko: c. 62 cm.

What source are you using for the Venice shield's size? My source (Polito's work on weapons friezes) gives a size of 68 cm, not 70.

Non-life size iconographic sources are not of much use in this debate, unfortunately, as estimates can vary widely: compared to your 66-70 cm for the Agios Athanasios shields, Chatzopoulos estimates their size relative to the individuals as 71-86 cm!

So, we can do a final tally of the "hard" numbers:

Vegora: 65.6 cm
Dion: 73.6 cm
Staro Bonce: 73.4 cm
Pergamon: 66 cm
Pontus: 78 cm
Shield mould from Memphis: 70 cm
Venice relief: 68 or 70 (?) cm
Katerini: 72 cm.
Vergina: 70 cm.
Lyson and Kallikles: 75 cm.
Veroia: 73, 74, 76, 76
Spelia in Eordaia: 69 and 72 cm.
Archontiko: c. 62 cm.

Sizes thus are: 62, 65.6, 66, 68 or 70, 69, 70, 70, 72, 72, 73, 73.4, 73.6, 74, 75, 76, 76, 78.

The spread is almost exactly between 60 and 80 cm, though with an obvious concentration around 70 cm. When these are lined up with the range of sizes for Argive aspides, you get a nice spectrum running from 62 cm all the way up to 100+ cm.

As I have said, we can be quite precise about THE Macedonian shield ( see above); the diameter varied only between very narrow limits due to the size of the forearm ( itself clearly implying use of porpax). Further, these shields were not of widely different sizes, some rimless, some rimmed. The existence of shield moulds such as the ptolemaic one ( see attached) shows that these were 'mass produced', as does the fact that Ptolemy could despatch thousands of shields at a time to a Greek state to re-arm, also implying a high degree of standardisation and mass production. ALL the evidence is quite consistent.

Once again, this view is not borne out by the evidence. And we know that shields were mass produced, and yet on the Pydna relief and the Pergamon battle plaque, we see that almost no two shields are alike, with some possessing rims, others none, and varied decoration. There is thus much room for variety even with mass production.

As to the idea that a rimmed ‘Argive aspis’ was used with the sarissa, you are relying on a single use of this by Pausanias, writing nearly 300 years after the event, and the probability is that he was mistaken, and his source said simply ‘aspis’, which we have seen from the manuals could be used to describe the Macedonian rimless shield. This likelihood is heightened by Plutarch’s description ( 50 years or so before Pausanias) of the re-arming, for he uses ‘aspis’ only.

I will simply repeat what I wrote before:

Plutarch writes that Philopoemen equipped the infantry with aspis, sarissa, helmets (kranesi), cuirasses (thoraxi), and greaves (periknemisi). Pausanias mentions Argive aspis, long spear (dorasi megalois), cuirasses (thorakas), and greaves (knemidas). It's quite clear that they are both drawing on the same source relating the statesman's life (as also do Livy and Justin), only Pausanias is breaking down the individual pieces of equipment for the reader of his day. That source is, of course, Polybius, who personally knew Philopoemen and was obviously an experienced military man himself. So, Pausanias' source is certainly sound, and it becomes a question then of accounting for the differences between the two accounts, and in this case, as you yourself have noted, nothing is mutually exclusive between them: aspis can refer to the Argive aspis, or to the other round shields in use in the third century.

This is not a case of Pausanias assuming that aspis only referred to the Argive aspis: in 1.13.2, he quotes an epigram that calls Macedonian shields captured by Pyrrhus aspides. The only other time he uses the term Argive aspis, he refers to a monument decorated with them, but it is clear that he specifically mentions their type because the battle it commemorated was supposedly the first in which that type of shield was employed (2.25.7), so he is careful to use this term - elsewhere he uses aspis dozens of times to describe Argive and non-Argive shields in varied contexts without qualifying it. The only difference which needs to be accounted for is the lack of mention of helmets in Pausanias, but this is probably because it was obvious that the hoplites had used helmets before the reform, so it didn't need to be mentioned like the other elements of the panoply which were changed or added did. So, there is no reason to doubt Pausanias' testimony in this case.

As to the reference to Cleomenes teaching the Spartans to use the sarissa and “to carry their shields/aspides by a strap/ochanus instead of by a fixed handle/porpax”, this does not necessarily mean in battle, and one definition of ‘aspis’ is a shield with a porpax – there is no implication that porpaxes were dispensed with. To muddy the waters further ‘porpax’ is a generic handle ( and can be used of part of a horse’s bridle for instance), not just armband, so the reference could be to the handgrips of ‘thureoi’ for all we know!( if Sparta went through a ‘thureos’ stage like other states ).

This is an incredibly tortured reading. The translation is "he raised a body of four thousand hoplites, whom he taught to use the sarissa with both hands instead of the doru and to bear the aspis with ochane, not with porpax." The implication is quite clear that he is referring to how the men fought with these pieces of equipment. Where do you find that a definition of aspis is "a shield with a porpax"? LSJ simply defines it as shield, without any specific qualifications. And finally, porpax only ever refers to the armband inside the Argive aspis, and not a grip, so the statement is clear.