The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[Paullus Scipio]

Fred wrote:-

The first is that the earlier Macedonian infantry probably included, in addition to traditional peltasts, some small number of troops with longer, thrusting spears. This is based on similar spearmen being present with the surrounding Thracian tribes (see Best's Thracian Peltasts and their Influence on Greek Warfare).

This all stems from a single fragment preserving an incident where Philip, IIRC. pursuing some Thracians is wounded in the leg by a Thracian (Triballi from memory?) and is wounded in the leg by a sarissa . We can't be sure that originally 'sarissa' meant anything more than 'long spear' until the Macedonian reforms. One cannot suppose that Macedonians too were so armed until the reforms, which may have lengthened existing 'longish' spears.....we can't even determine exactly the length of a Macedonian sarissa, let alone any predecessor from which it was derived ....

The other point is that the spearmen employed unsuccessfully by Arrhabaeus against Brasidas in 323 are described by Thucydides as being "Lyncestian hoplites" (4.121.3), thus suggesting that they were native Upper Macedonians. While we can't completely rule out his use of 'Lyncestian' as a generalized term, Thucydides seems elsewhere to be quite specific in noting the presence of mercenaries, including his comment in the very next sentence following (1.24.4) where he describes the approach of "Illyrian mercenaries." This leads me to think that it's at least somewhat more likely that the historian actually meant just what he wrote and that these 'Lyncestian' hoplites were spear/aspis- armed locals. Such a suppositon is important in that Arrhabaeus was a maternal ancestor of Philip II and both his experiment with providing skirmishers with heavy arms and the causes for its failure might have had a significant influence on Philip's own military reforms some 65 years later.

It is certainly possible that the villages/market towns of Upper Macedonia, might provide small numbers of Hoplites, but there is no evidence and it might seem a little unlikely.
OTOH, there is evidence from 6 C and later graves in lower Macedonia that Hoplite panoplies existed and were used by native Makedones( I forgot to mention this in the brief survey), perhaps by Aristocrats and their retainers, or townsmen see for example this newspaper report:-

Eighty warriors buried with their weapons and armor found in ancient graves at Archontiko dig.
Macedonian warriors lying at eternal rest for more than 2,500 years in the ancient graveyard at Archontiko, Pella, have
kept secret both their gold and the Greek character of Macedonia. An inscription in the Ionian alphabet on a 500 BC clay
vase is thought to be one of the most important finds of recent years, as valuable as the gold which adorned the fully
armed Macedonian warriors.
The inscription came to light during this year's excavation of the western graveyard of the ancient settlement,
whose name is still not known. It has yielded, so far, 396 tombs from the seventh to the early third century BC and more
than 5,000 finds. Among them are 80 gold-bedecked warriors dressed like heroes in their armor, and beside them their
wives, revealing that there were Macedonians in Pella two centuries before the time of Phillip and Alexander.
Their gold grave costumes, made by local Macedonian metal workers, bear witness to the wealth, noble origins, heroic
stature and leading role of aristocratic Macedonian families in the second half of the sixth century BC.

The warriors, buried in full armor, and their wives in gold funeral garments resembling their wedding dresses, indicate a
high living standard and social status, and provide valuable evidence of funeral rites and beliefs about the pursuits of the
dead.
Gold masks, breastplates, foil and other grave ornaments adorning clothes, shoes, helmets, shields, swords and spears,

Other reports refer to the helmets as mostly, if not all, of Illyrian types, remains of 'Argolic' shields and fittings from tube-and-yoke armour associated with 'organic' leather remains ( probably the corselet itself).