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hi
i find many books covering the armies from philip II, the diadochi and alexander the great.
but how did the armies look like before philip II? philip II invented the sarissa-wielding phalanx but how did they look like before him?
hoplites? peltasts? armed peasants with pitchforks?
i would like to hear your thoughts on this one.
Yves Goris
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Hi, I too have a few books from that period, but I do like Philip II of Macedon by Ian Worthington, he says that the Macedonian army was "made up of peasant levies who were untrained and poorly equipped" he also had the added problem on his accession where the previous King Perdiccas III was killed with 4000 of his men against the Illyrians in 360-359 bc so I assume hiring mercenaries early in his reign till he could train Macedonian army would be the norm. Philip was the first Greek ruler I think who saw the benefits of cavalry as an offensive weapon rather than a defensive one but he needed time and more importantly money to train his new army.
Regards
Michael
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Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
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There certainly isn't much material on the pre-Philip Macedonian military. Herodotus mentions Macedonians at Plataea in 479 B.C. grouped with troops from around Thessaly against the Athenians. These were likely cavalry with light-infantry support. Thucydides said that Macedonians were tardy and missed joining the Spartan campaign in Ambracia in 429 B.C. as part of the "barbarian" support troops (and thus probably light infantry). Thucydides' description of the Macedonian/Spartan campaign against the upland district of Lyncestis in 423 B.C. states that the Macedonian king Perdiccas' hoplites were not native, but rather local allied Greeks, making the Macedonians present cavalry/light infantry. All in all, it looks like the Macedonians prior to Philip's reforms, save for eventually developing lance-armed, heavier cavalry, seem to have been much like the surrounding Thracians. This would make their infantry mostly javelin-armed skirmishers with perhaps a minor mixture of other missile weapons and a few men armed with long spears (used to fend off horsemen at close range and called "sarisai" in Macedonia). The opposing Macedonian warlord in 423 B.C. (Arrhabaeus, maternal great-grandfather of Philip II) did field a body of "Lyncestian hoplites," which some have suggested were mercenaries. I have elsewhere proposed that Thucydides' specific identification of these troops as "Lyncestian" favors them having been Macedonian skirmishers equipped with heavy gear as a counter to the king's hoplite allies. If so, the experiment failed in that they were easily beaten by a phalanx commanded by the king's Spartan ally, Brasidas. It's also been suggested that Philip's brother Alexander II might have introduced some hoplites into the Macedonian army in the early 4th century and that Philip himself had a small bodyguard contingent of such spearmen before taking the throne. All of this plus his hostage stay in Thebes and an association with Iphicrates of Athens (an adopted brother and likely mercenary inventor of pike-armed heavy infantry for a failed campaign in Egypt) were probably key influlences on Philip's development of the Macedonian phalanx. Elsewhere, I have suggested that perhaps half of his initial heavy formation in 358 B.C. was composed of mercenaries (enough to replace the 4,000 men his brother had lost the year before). - Fred Ray
It\'s only by appreciating accurate accounts of real combat past and present that we can begin to approach the Greek hoplite\'s hard-won awareness of war\'s potential merits and ultimate limitations.
- Fred Eugene Ray (aka "Old Husker")
