The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[Old Husker]

You make an excellent point regarding this particular engagement; indeed, by "here" I was referring to Alexander's European campaigns in general rather than the specific action at hand and should have so qualified my remark. Your take might well be absolutely correct, making this something of a 'freak' engagement in Alexander's canon. My personal approach to reconstruction has always included a bias toward modeling upon better documented analogs when faced with a dearth of hard data (a habit grown out of my past career in geology). This takes the position that 'absence of proof' is not 'proof of absence', at least where what otherwise appears to be common practice is concerned. Indeed, failure to mention the participation of light infantry that must have been present in a battle was extremely common among those writings I've previously studied regarding the 5th and early 4th centuries B.C. (including Diodorus, who was reflecting sources more contemporary with the events being retold) - it seems that the poor foot skirmisher rarely got any literary attention unless he played a particularly prominent role, more than simply doing his usual job in victory or screwing up royally in defeat. In this case, I'm just guessing that Alexander would have done what he usually did, both in terms of composing his forces and how he used them. Mind you, one critic of my work has suggested that this pragmatic methodology makes my more speculative reconstructions about as exciting as a "weather report" - a characterization that I won't deny (hopefully, these dull projections of highest probability are interspersed with enough better documented and more exciting 'storm stories' to keep a reader at least semi-awake). All this having been said, the alternative interpretation that I've posed is just a 'guess', and even a 'best guess' is still no more than that and often wrong. - Regards, Fred