Macedonian Imperialism

Pierre Jouguet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136196508
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

Originally published between 1920-70, The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings:
* Prehistory and Historical Ethnography Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: * Greek Civilization Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: * Roman Civilization Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: * Eastern Civilizations Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: * Judaeo-Christian Civilization Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: * European Civilization Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5:

Part One
Alexander’s Conquest

Chapter I
The War of Reprisals¹

THE force of about 10,000 men which Philip sent into Asia had found a redoubtable opponent in Memnon of Rhodes, who commanded the Great King’s mercenaries.² At the beginning of Alexander’s reign, the Macedonians held only Rhceteion in the Troad and the great city of Abydos on the Hellespont, when Parmenion was called back to prepare for the departure of the great army. It crossed the straits in the spring of 334.

I Alexander’s Army³

It was the army which Philip had organized. We do not know its exact effectives. Alexander had left Antipatros 12,000 foot and 1,500 horse, to protect Macedon and to watch Greece. The troops which crossed into Asia with the King may have numbered about 32,000 foot and 5,000 horse.⁴ The phalangites or Foot-Companions (pezetairoi) formed the infantry of the line. Like hoplites, they wore heavy armour —helmet, greaves, a small shield, and probably a leather cuirass fitted with metal—and their offensive weapons were the sword and, above all, the sarissa, the long, heavy pike with which the line of battle bristled. In the time of Alexander this sarissa varied in length, according to the rank in which its bearer stood, for all or almost all points had to stick out beyond the front line. The longest, which could hardly be held except with both hands, seems to have measured about 18 feet. It is possible that the men behind the fifth rank, at the beginning of a battle, held their pikes upright. But at this period the phalanx was not yet the compact and rather unwieldly mass which it became later, when, to make up for the inferiority of the soldiers and to preserve its power for resistance and impact, it was always in close, deep formation, and, though still invincible in forward attack, when accidents of the ground did not break the line, it was helpless if a manoeuvre of the enemy succeeded in enveloping it or taking it on the flank. Philip and Alexander always managed to keep the phalanx mobile.

The phalanx was divided into taæeis, each probably recruited in a district of Macedonia. At first there seem to have been six or seven; the strength of the taxis is reckoned at 1,536; this would give a phalanx of between 9,216 and 10,752 men. The taxis, therefore, must have contained three pentacosiarchies of 512 men, subdivided into smaller units. The smallest was the file (stichos) of 16 men. But the intermediate divisions are less certain; from Arrian’s Anabasis, there seems to have been a company, called the lochos.¹ This may correspond to the taxis of the tactical writers, an unit of 128 men; this is approximately the strength of the lochos of mercenary armies like Xenophon’s Ten Thousand. Between the file and the lochos we may presume that there was a tactical division corresponding to the enomotia, but it is not mentioned by the historians of Alexander. It must have been a body of 32 men, perhaps arranged in four files of eight (the stichos being really a double file).² Only exceptionally did Alexander, by doubling the files, give his phalangites the formation of 16 men in depth, which became usual later. It is true that he arranged them in a compact mass (συνασπισμός) but sometimes each unit kept its independence and the space required for manoeuvring. Thus the Macedonian infantry of the line did not forget the example set by Epaminondas when he disposed his offensive wing in deep order, nor the teaching of the great tacticians of the 5th and 4th centuries, such as Demosthenes and Iphicrates. The lochoi sometimes charged in column (λόχοι όρθοι) the enomotiai in each marching one behind the other; these were the tactics invented by Xenophon. The taxeis of the phalanx were commanded by tried officers, some of whom were later to play a part of the first importance—Perdiccas, Ccenos, Meleagros, Amyntas, Philip, son of Amyntas, and later Polyperchon. Crateros, one of the chief men in the army, had commanded a taxis of the phalanx, and perhaps the whole phalanx.

The Macedonian infantry of the line had an important role in battle, but it was to the heavy cavalry of the hetairoi, or Companions, that Philip and Alexander entrusted the decisive attack.¹ Macedonia was a country of horsemen; on their great estates, the nobles practised horsemanship from their youth up. For a long time the cavalry was the main strength of the national army, when the properly Macedonian infantry was doubtless formed entirely of the unequal contingents levied by the nobles on their lands. But Philip, who gave the phalanx its powerful unity, no doubt also gave more cohesion and strength to the bodies of heavy cavalry. It may have been he who extended the honourable names of hetairos (Companion) and pezetairos (Foot-Companion) to his soldiers, the title of hetairos having been hitherto reserved for the nobles who surrounded the King and formed his Council.

The Macedonian trooper was armed with the helmet, the metal cuirass, the sword, and^ above all, the sarissa. He seems to have carried the shield only when fighting on foot. His horse wore only a blanket, and, like all ancient horsemen, the Macedonian rode without stirrups. The cavalry was divided into ilai9 recruited locally. At Arbela, eight are mentioned; Plutarch mentions thirteen at the Granicos. The total strength must have been 1,800 or 1,500 men. The whole cavalry was under the command of the Hipparch Philotas, the son of Parmenion. One ile9 that of Cleitos, son of Dropides, was called the Royal lie.

Macedonia supplied also regiments of light infantry. The name of hypaspists, by which they are called, originally applied rather to the arm-bearers of the Foot-Companions. But Philip, anxious to reduce the train and to have his troops always ready for action, had compelled his phalangites to carry their own victuals and arms; so one servant was enough for ten foot-soldiers, and there was only one for each horseman. The hypaspists then became the peltasts of the Macedonian army. They wore the short tunic and the large felt hat, the kausia,¹ and were armed with a small shield and a short spear. During the Asiatic campaign, the hypaspists were divided into chiliarchies, of which we hear of four. As in the case of the Companions, and perhaps of the Foot-Companions, a chosen body of them belonged to the Royal Guard (agema).

The light cavalry was recruited chiefly among the allies; but there were, no doubt, Macedonians also among the sarissophoroi, who were armed and dressed like the Pseonian horsemen, and performed the same service. We can imagine them, from the Thracian coins, with their trousers, leather-fringed cuirass, maned helmet, and spear. In battle, they had to prepare for and cover, by charging on the flanks, the attack of the cavalry of the Companions; on the march, they were used as scouts and for intelligence work. The same was probably true of the Thracian prodromoi, who formed with the Paeonians an effective of 900 horse. But of all the allies the Thessalian squadrons were the most numerous, containing 1,800 horsemen in all. The contingent of the other Greek allies was not over 600. All these bodies, divided into ilai like the Macedonian cavalry, were commanded by Macedonian officers.

The subject and allied peoples also supplied foot-soldiers. Diodorus mentions 7,000 Odrysians, Triballians, and Illyrians, armed as peltasts, in the manner of their nation. The infantry contingent sent by the Confederation of Corinth was as much as 7,000 men. Lastly, there were 5,000 mercenaries.

The army must have been followed by an artillery park and siege-engines. Alexander made use of light catapults which threw javelins (euthytona), machines for throwing stones (palintona), towers, and rams, and we know that his engineers aroused the admiration of contemporaries. The artillery and siege-train must, in some cases, have been a drag on the columns. Yet Philip had been at pains to cut down impedimenta, and Alexander had decided that his troops should live on the enemy country. For all that, the baggage-train must have been considerable. It included the army-servants and the waggons which carried arms and camp-gear, and later it would be increased by the soldiers’ wives and children. In such a long and distant expedition it was an unavoidable burden; but Alexander contrived to turn it to the benefit of recruiting.

The King always marched with the land army, and was accompanied by the Royal Pages (βασιλικοί παϊδες) recruited among the young Macedonian nobles. A Staff of ten officers, the somatophylakes, formed his Council. There were also body-guards, called sometimes somatophylakes and sometimes hypaspists, with confusing results. Lastly, the élite of the army formed the Guard, composed of a detachment (agema) of hypaspists, an ile of Companions (the Royal He), and perhaps also an agema of phalangites.

The fleet consisted of as many as 160 or even 182 ships, most of them of the latest type, for, though we still find triremes, there were many quadriremes and quinquiremes. But at first the Macedonians never felt that they were really masters of the sea, and Alexander’s communications with Macedonia were not certain until he held the coasts of Asia Minor and Phoenicia. The Great King had the ships of the latter nation on his side, and Alexander might always fear intervention on the part of the powerful Athenian navy.

The uncertain attitude of the Greeks and the inferiority of his fleet, were, without doubt, the greatest dangers which threatened him. But we must not suppose that the enemy whom he was to meet on land was to be despised. Persia could bring out against the Macedonians its multitudes of men and horses.¹ The figures given by the ancient historians are too high and too divergent to be even mentioned, and modern criticism has greatly reduced them. The Persian army was, however, far more numerous than the Macedonian force. At Issos, for example, according to the most moderate estimate, against Alexander’s 25,000 or 30,000 men, Darius could marshal 100,000. Only half took part in the battle.² Many of these troops were simply an undisciplined, ill-armed horde, but the Persian cavalry and, still more, that which came from Bactriana and Sogdiana, were excellent. There were warlike tribesmen from Hyrcania and Parthia. Best of all, there were the Greek mercenaries (10,000 at Issos). The two hundred scythed cars which Darius put into the line were an antiquated arm, which inspired no alarm among the Macedonians, but the elephants were a surprise.

Yet Alexander’s little army was to triumph over all these obstacles. It owed this to its organization, its dash, and its power of resistance; it also owed it to the military genius of its leader. The reigns of Philip and Alexander are a turning-point in the history of war, which had never before been conducted on so grand a scale. Not only was the theatre of operations of a size hitherto unknown, but no previous Greek army had sought and gained such decisive advantages. These were not the old battles, limited in effect, in which the victor was content to remain master of the field selected, and was unable to follow up his advantage to the end or to annihilate the forces of the enemy. Alexander gave military strength its full power; in developing the cavalry, he created not only the instrument of attack, but also that of merciless pursuit, which alone could turn defeat into rout. His forced marches are no less justly famous than his thunderbolt charges. Now, it is these latter which decide the fortune of the battle. At the head of his Companions, massed on the right and covered on the extreme right by the light cavalry and light infantry, the King hurls himself on the enemy’s centre. The right wing of the phalanx supports or renews the attack on the opposite line, while the left wing, which comprises the other part of the phalanx, some light troops, and the cavalry of the allies, advances more slowly, to hold the enemy’s right. Such, roughly, is the plan of a battle of Alexander. But his warfare is not made up entirely of battles, and the Macedonian army seems to have been as admirable in the marches which prepared for battles as in the battles themselves. Alexander unceasingly made his troops more and more mobile, and made wonderful use of his light corps. At the head of his hypaspists, his Agrianians, that incomparable corps of javelin-men, and the ilai of his light cavalry, he conquered the most inaccessible tribes by daring rai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE ALEXANDER’S CONQUEST
• PART TWO THE DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE
• PART THREE THE RIVALRY OF THE POWERS
• PART FOUR THE HELLENIZATION OF THE EAST. THE ORGANIZATION OF HELLENISM IN THE GRÆCO-ORIENTAL KINGDOMS
• CONCLUSION
• TABLE OF DYNASTIES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX