Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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Paralus
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Post by Paralus »

amyntoros wrote: Unless of course, by late 360's Heckel really means the early 360's because of that darn backwards calendar. But that doesn't seem likely - or does it?
Late as in early 360s indeed. It is the time progression that is the factor: we are progressing backwards to the present. Therefore the late 360s are the those years at the early part of a "normal" decade!
Fiona wrote:
marcus wrote:
The thing is, we don't know in what capacity Perdiccas served prior to Alexander's accession. He was one of the "guards" who cut down Pausanias after the assassination of Philip - which probably means that he was one of the hypaspists (he certainly wasn't a somatophylax). Whether he had previously served in the cavalry would be pure speculation, with no evidence.
Just going off at a tangent, here, but do we know that the guards would be the same in peacetime as in battle? I was just wondering whether there might have been a permanent palace guard, who might have been on duty at the wedding festivities. Perhaps it might even have been the pages? But then, if senior pages were serving as hypaspists anyway, that brings us back to where we started.
Perdiccas was, at Philip’s assassination, a “guard”. As he was not appointed as a “confidential bodyguard” or somatophylake until later in Alexander’s reign, he will, almost certainly, have been a member of the royal hypaspists or pezhetairoi if the term was still in use.

The guards units furnished the court guards. Arrian refers to them with different terminology in different passages but “guards” is the common word: “shield bearing Guards”; “his Guards” unit and the agema of the hypaspists are some. He also calls them somatophlyakes . Diodorus confusedly refers to the pages as somatophylakes as well as calling the hypaspists doryphori (spear bearers).

Nothing like clarity.

Either way, the paides basilike (the pages), the royal (or agema of the) hypaspists and the somatophylakes performed the king’s guard duties. The “rostered” hypaspists will have been stationed in and about the king’s tent or “pavilion” and also the palace.

The royal hypaspists will indeed have moved on to the companion cavalry and certainly it furnished infantry commanders. Prior to serving in thr royal hypaspists, the page will have been on horse – until he “filled out” as Heckel observes. As sons of the nobility, horsemanship will likely have been second nature. Hence we find the great infantry commander of Alexander’s anabasis, Craterus, killed whilst leading the cavalry against Eumenes in 321.
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Post by agesilaos »

Of relevence too, may be the position of Koinos at the battle by the Hydaspes, to whit he is a cavalry commander leading his hipparchy in the actual fighting yet he still holds a phalanx command, that being filled by a SUBSTITUTE not a replacement. The same may hold for Perdikkas. As usual the situation was fluid and very much on the whim of the king rather than hide-bound by the rules we moderns would like to see (they would make filling in the gaps so much easier). Were the Macedonian army run along such lines we might expect Philotas to have received a verbal warning in Egypt and so only being due a written one n Phrada! Unless his offence counted as gross misconduct...there maybe more to this than I suspected :wink:
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Post by Paralus »

agesilaos wrote:Of relevence too, may be the position of Koinos at the battle by the Hydaspes, to whit he is a cavalry commander leading his hipparchy in the actual fighting yet he still holds a phalanx command, that being filled by a SUBSTITUTE not a replacement. The same may hold for Perdikkas. As usual the situation was fluid and very much on the whim of the king rather than hide-bound by the rules we moderns would like to see (they would make filling in the gaps so much easier).
I'd forgotten Coenus. Another example indeed.

Yes, I too don't think things were – pardon the pun – etched in stone. There will have been a "normal framework" of progression or education that the sons of the nobility followed – as much as for “bonding” to the throne as anything else, one suspects. That progression from page to hypaspist and from there to cavalry or infantry command makes an inordinate amount of common sense to me.

Things, too, will have changed with the circumstances such as a mobile court - constantly on a war footing - which attended Alexander on his anabasis. The court was no longer comfortably ensconced within the confines of Macedonia. How I’d dearly love a record of what transpired under Antipater as regent in Macedonia. We assume that the norms applied and that pages were sent to Alexander in the east (as we’ve attested). What of the “court”: in Pella?

As you say, where a particular noble went after the royal hypaspists most likely was up to the whim of the king. The king could advance or remove any individual (and did: Philip with Pausanias who he “advanced amongst the guard” – again, likely royal hypaspists) as he saw fit. Aside from what appears to be the normal practice of regional commanders for regional troops (as this will be how those levies fought in the past), the king appointed as he saw fit – a trend that carried beyond the regional connections after Gaugamela.
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Post by jan »

Heckel does also emphasize that Plutarch too had to add that seasoned generals were also stationed alongside Alexander for that battle, implying that Philip was seeing to it that his heir to the throne had quality help alongside him. I am not sure if that means Philip had doubts or what...or just simply wanted the honors to go to seniors as well as his son. If honors occurred...I believe that Alexander truly wanted to impress his father with his military prowess and probably did not really appreciate the need for the seasoned generals...wouldn't you think?

Had Alexander been a common man he would not have had quite the authority, would he have? Meaning that probably Craterus was right after all in always valuing his role as King.
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Post by Paralus »

Thought to repost here while reading (Plutarch's Pelopidas) for something entirely different.

Amyntoros has run up the passages and alluded to them time and again. The Diodorus version only really makes sense as an infantry enounter. Once one accepts that, the crucial literary source is Plutarch's off hand notation on the defeat of the Sacred Band on this battle in his Pelopidas (18.5):
It is said, moreover, that the band was never beaten, until the battle of Chaeroneia; and when, after the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the three hundred were lying, all where they had faced the long spears of his phalanx, with their armour, their bodies piled one upon the other...
Perhaps Alexander led a mounted phalanx with sarisae??
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

Post by SpartanJKM »

Perhaps Alexander led a mounted phalanx with sarisae??
Yes! This is worth consideration, Paralus; I was scouting to see if someone mentioned Plutarch's specific wording that the Thebans lay slain after facing the long spears of Philip's phalanx, and I apologize if somebody mentioned it earlier and I missed it.

I agree with the basic assessment that Philip designed his phalanx to pin an enemy and enable his cavalry to strike at viable points; the Achaemenids deployed infantry and cavalry, as did Thebans before Philip, but he co-ordinated the two arms with far more conjunction.

The Companion Cavalry were armed to strike enemy infantry - infantry whom often already had come into contact with the Foot Companions or perhaps auxiliaries- with the xyston, which replaced a hitherto common cavalry javelin, and Arrian in his Tactica apprised us that the wedge formation of cavalry was adopted for use by Philip - and indeed states the cavalry wedge is viable for attacking all enemy formations (Tactica 16.6-8, corroborated by Aelian and Asclepiodotus, one of them with additional language involving how the wedge could exploit gaps in an enemy's formation, and in wedge formation, units (ilai) could maneuver independently). We also read from Arrian of the xyston in action at the Granicus, but that he tells us it was Philip who adopted the Thracian-style wedge formation for the Macedonian cavalry, I feel that this cavalry thrusting lance was almost certainly part of Macedonian arms in 338 BCE (unless he introduced the weapon and wedge tactic amid the last two years of his life, which did include the dispatch of an expeditionary force to Asia Minor), if not at the beginning of Philip's reign, whereby emergency measures could be effected against the Illyrians and other neighboring threats, but not evolutionary reforms which entailed more time and finances.

The axiom that cavalry charges could not break an infantry line need not be taken as an inflexible principle; charging horsemen could surely not make headway against Swiss pikemen, but the wedge formation of xyston-wielding well-drilled Companions rupturing a solid line of Theban crack hoplites armed with 7ft spears of the 4th century BCE does not strain credibility, IMHO. It's possible that Diodorus' words can denote that the Theban solid front was initially ruptured by the sarissai of the well-drilled Foot Companions (pezhetairoi), and the gaps we read of were subsequently exploited by the Companions (hetairoi).

The remarkable tactical capacity of the Macedonian army in action comes into detail with Arrian in 335 BCE, amid Alexander's first campaigns as king; it was less than a year between Philip's assassination and Alexander's accession, and that period was rife with violent internecine and upheaval, thus Alexander could almost certainly not have substantially built the great army (other than some fine-tuning and continued training). It was Philip who built this balanced army, and by the time of Chaeronea he had been doing it for upwards of two decades.

The plain at Chaeronea was no more narrow than that at Issus, it seems, hence if there was no room or practicality to flank the enemy on either of their flanks (the allied Greek deployment was sensibly defensive with both ends anchored against natural boundaries to prevent Philip from doing so, thus this suggests they took the Macedonian cavalry in mind), cavalry could certainly be deployed (2,000 were there, as we read from Diodorus) and utilized commensurate to exploiting gaps opening up in the enemy's line - thus Diodorus' wording that Alexander 'forced his way through the line'. Alexander could not have used his cavalry with any efficacy against the Triballians three years later in the Shipka Pass, but he certainly could here on this plain.

Indeed, I'm with all of you!! It is tantalizingly frustrating that, albeit that it is a certainty that Philip forged this great army (the sarissa and xyston, surely the former, constituted what Diodorus described as the 'suitable weapons of war' Philip devised for his men as of 359-358 BCE), we are told nothing by the extant sources of how and when he intricately went about it.

Despite the lack of the word 'cavalry' being mentioned by any ancient extant source amid the action at Chaeronea (in this case, I feel the aphorism 'the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' applies), these sources were tertiary ones; if we had a precise account of Chaeronea by, say, Polybius or Tacitus, and no mention of cavalry by the likes of them, then jettisoning away from such accounts to include cavalry with revisionism at Chaeronea would not be feasible. For what it's worth, Diodorus does not mention the word 'cavalry' in his description of Pelopidas' victory over the Thessalians at Cynoscephalae in 364 BCE - but Plutarch does.

IMHO, Prince Alexander was at the head of the Companion Cavalry (along with the likes of Parmenio and Coenus et el) on the Macedonian left wing at Chaeronea, and they succeeded in slicing through - quite possibly in wedge formation - a ruptured Theban front created by the pezhetairoi.

Thanks, James :)
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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For some reason, this post keeps disappearing so I am replying to in the hope that it will not disappear.
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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Hi Alexias.

My apologies - I kept editing the post with minor points and corrected grammar. I'll leave it now.

I will state my agreement that Alexander's supposed pivotal role as the leader of the Macedonian left wing at Chaeronea may be exaggerated, as that would make for the kind of heroic image he would want for posterity, but that doesn't change the plausible scenario that the Thebans were routed by the phalanx and Companions (indeed - Diodorus' 'companions' does not indubitably distinguish horse or foot) in concert: to reiterate, the rupture of the Theban front and gaps this caused along their front ranks was likely effected by the sarissai, and the wedge-charging hetairoi exploited the gaps wielding their cavalry lances; a solid infantry line, after being rendered unstable, could indeed be successfully overcome by elite cavalry such as these which Philip had developed.

Thanks, James :)
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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Ah, right, we were beginning to wonder if you were a spammer!
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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SpartanJKM wrote: IMHO, Prince Alexander was at the head of the Companion Cavalry (along with the likes of Parmenio and Coenus et el) on the Macedonian left wing at Chaeronea, and they succeeded in slicing through - quite possibly in wedge formation - a ruptured Theban front created by the pezhetairoi.
Hi James.

Fascinating this has come alive after all these years. The problem with that interpretation is that the cavalry has to, somehow, make their way through the Macedonian phalanx which is engaged with the Theban hoplites. I can't see that as being likely for it would mean serious gaps in the phalanx itself - something hoplites as well trained as the Sacred Band would not fail to exploit. If Alexander has led a cavalry assault on the Sacred Band it must be front on or from the flank. Hammond (Philip of Macedon) proposes that Philip's feigned retreat on the right, resulting in the Athenians breaking ranks (so to speak) pursuing him, created a gap as the line edged left to close the gap. Into this rode Alexander. This raises the same issue: if the allied phalanx drifted left and the Sacred band remained in position, the Macedonian cavalry would need to get past its own infantry unless we assume the Macedonian line did not extend the to the Sacred Band.

The problem is that Diodoros' language is very much that of an infantry description. The language should not be pushed too far though for the Sicilian is not writing anything like a technical description and is describing the battle in what amounts to shorthand. In any case, a cavalry "charge" (nothing like the pell-mell sprint seen in Stone's Alexander) might well have been successful. In this regard a recent paper by Matthew Sears and Caroline Willekes Alexander’s Cavalry Charge at Chaeronea, 338 BCE makes out a quite reasonable case. Also interesting is John Ma's paper Chaironeia 338: Topographies of Commemoration which turns the "received" view of the battle on its head while examining heads (literally). The case for an infantry rather than a cavalry battle is made by Rahae (mentioned earlier in the thread) as well as Buckler and Beck in chapter seventeen of Central Greece and the Politics of Power in the Fourth Century ("A Note on the Battle of Chaironeia"). If you don't have access to those above, I have them should you want to read them - just send me a PM.

And, lastly, Plutarch writes in that quoted passage that the Theban dead lay where they had fallen facing ταῖς σαρίσαις ("the sarisai"). Now, as Agesilaos once humorously remarked on the Macedonian cavalry xyston (to paraphrase): "that ain't no spear; it's a bloody sarisa!"
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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Thanks for responding Paralus.

Indeed, when I found this thread I didn't realize initially how old it was, hence the absence of any mention as source-material of the recent biographies of Philip II by Ian Worthington and Richard A. Gabriel.

Thank you for the references: the article by Sears and Willekes was familiar to me, but couldn't recall from whom it came - my wording of "Swiss pikemen" and "jettisoning" from the fountainhead of source-material was influenced by my glancing of the article not long ago.

I have not seen Rahe's article, which this thread appears to draw on in support of an infantry clash at Chaeronea, but I do have the fine book by Gaebel, who references Rahe; with regards to our subject, I feel they are too rigid in opining that cavalry could not break a solid infantry line, which I feel is more a true dynamic than not, but the wedged Macedonian ilai could with proper precision - and I think they did break the Boeotian line in concert with the pezhetairoi.

Sometimes I remember not, in discussing this battle, that the Sacred Band was a crack unit of 300 men - comprising around 2% of the Greek allied right wing in this contest; they seem to be mentioned more often than such a statistic would merit, and I include myself getting wrapped up in such a detail! When I mention 'Thebans' without specifying the Sacred Band, I mean the Boeotian/allied line of some 15,000 hoplites (Demosthenes tells that the allied states other than Athens and Boeotia - which includes Thebes for the latter - furnished 15,000 infantry, cf. On the Crown 237).
...The problem is that Diodoros' language is very much that of an infantry description. The language should not be pushed too far though for the Sicilian is not writing anything like a technical description and is describing the battle in what amounts to shorthand. In any case, a cavalry "charge" (nothing like the pell-mell sprint seen in Stone's Alexander) might well have been successful...

I agree that Diodorus' description reflects 'theatrical' journalese rather than a genuine military account (I wonder if Hieronymus ever wrote a description of Chaeronea?), and he never writes the word 'infantry', either, if I may express a little pedantry. But that he tells us that Philip stationed his most seasoned generals - viz. Parmenio, Antipitar, Coenus, Attalus - with Alexander, does not make for an infantry battle per se on the Macedonian left/Greek allied right. These were cavalry commanders of an army which relied on a supremely forged cavalry striking force, and they wouldn't have been sent over there with the prince to command infantry, and on top of that, the outnumbered and more lightly-armed (other than a sarissa per se) Macedonian phalangitae (following the abridged work of the substantial but lost works of Pompeius Trogus on this backdrop by Justin) could not succeed without the cavalry with them: upon deployment, Philip needed to extend his line across the Greek allied front, lest get enveloped, and he could not do this against a numerically superior force forming a static line of defense with, presumably, eight ranks of heavy infantry without his cavalry, which I didn't mean to imply were placed behind the Macedonian phalanx. Diodorus explicitly tells us that the contest was hotly contested at the onset, meaning loosening and breaking the Greek allied line was no child's play, but doesn't express anything drawn-out after Alexander ruptured the solid front line ('corpses piled up'), thus a plausible, IMHO, much speedier dynamic the course of the battle took after the Boeotian/allied line was perforated could not have been the action of infantry against infantry; the Boeotian hoplites and other allies along the allied right wing could have fallen back into a retreat without being so demonstrably defeated.

An interesting detail, though: Diodorus' use of the word 'companions' amid his description of the battle - in looking at the juxtaposed ancient Greek text in the Loeb Classical Library - is not the same as hetairoi (ἑταῖροι). If it had, boy, such a detail would have perhaps sealed the scholarly debates from the beginning!!

The Greek allied army of hoplites pursued a defensive policy; they adopted a sound defensive line extending nearly two miles across the plain, with both wings anchored by not only nature's obstacles to prevent any envelopment, but by efficient water-supply for both wings, as well as secure lines of withdrawal/retreat and communications southwards through the foothills of the Kerata Pass, which was actually utilized by the Athenian-led side (this line of withdrawal did become less secure for the allies and Boeotians extending further north-eastwards towards the Cesiphuss River). They seemingly could hold Philip up for months, and he had already made attempts with diplomacy.

Outnumbered by perhaps 20%, the initiative lay with Philip - a frontal infantry assault alone with the phalangitae upon the Greek lines would not have worked, IMHO; despite the advantage of reach/initial contact of the sarissai over these hoplites, the latter had the advantage of numbers of soldiers and, with their oblique line inclining forward to the left (south-westwards), the added advantage of protecting the unshielded right-hand side of each hoplite - thus utilizing a traditional superiority of the heavy Greek hoplites in concert (cf. Hammond, Studies in Greek History, p. 543). This solid line could be pierced at some points by the sarissai, but not enough to be loosened up inexorably and exploited to effect total defeat of them by the pezhetairoi.
...The problem with that interpretation is that the cavalry has to, somehow, make their way through the Macedonian phalanx which is engaged with the Theban hoplites. I can't see that as being likely for it would mean serious gaps in the phalanx itself - something hoplites as well trained as the Sacred Band would not fail to exploit...

Well, the Boeotians and the Sacred Band were not akin to later Roman maniples, and exploiting the above scenario would entail breaking their ranks. Indeed, the elite Sacred Band could effectively act as one and exploit any pre-arranged lanes intended for the Macedonian cavalry to get by their infantry, but they would become, presumably, isolated and pounced on by the Macedonian cavalry coming from the opposite direction in those very lanes before they could do too much harm to the phalangitae. But that was never my thinking: if the Macedonian cavalry had been stationed behind their infantry, this would constitute a superior Greek allied front of extension, which would greatly disfavor the Macedonian left wing.

The words of Plutarch and Justin signifying the the Sacred Band and 'Athenians' being killed from the front can indeed mean they were killed by infantry wielding sarissai, but it doesn't negate cavalry action; Justin wrote 'Athenians', who faced only Macedonian infantry on the Greek allied left wing, but that he also wrote they were 'far superior in numbers of soldiers' could very well be that he meant the entire Greek army, which would be in sync with Plutarch. Alexander and the seasoned generals perhaps deployed some infantry units across from the Sacred Band in an attempt to fix them in place so they could not interfere with the left flank of Alexander's ile, if we accept the story that he directly faced the Sacred Band (perhaps true, but perhaps percolated down to us ben-trovato), and perhaps they were few enough and isolated enough on the very right end of the allied line that a preponderance of phalangitae could destroy them as they stood their ground.

I feel that, along the Macedonian left wing, the pezhetairoi and hetairoi were interspersed (not necessarily in a perfectly balanced manner), brigaded in their taxeis and ilai (the 256-man syntagma could even comprise independent units of lochoi of 64 footmen, and the cavalry wedge comprised 120 horsemen); this could afford the mobility needed to loosen up and hopefully break the stout Greek hoplite lines. The gaps appeared and the cavalry wedges could strike at angles, and even direct strikes upon the hoplites would not be futile in slowly breaking the rigidity of the Boeotian/allied line, and they (mainly the pezhetairoi) did eventually stove it enough at points (the 'gaps' from Diodorus) conducive to cavalry infiltration at these points, rendering a tough fight into a catastrophe for Greek allied force.

Hammond's theory of the substantial gap in the Greek line between their wings for Alexander to exploit with cavalry, which Philip created by luring the Athenians left-forward is tantalizing, and reflects his awe-inspiring erudition and fertile thinking (along with the great Bosworth), but it's plausibility rests on a 'forensic' 'analysis of the dynamics of an expanding infantry line' (cf. Gabriel, Philip II of Macedonia: Greater than Alexander, pp. 220-221), and it's certainly good for thought. Whether that specifically occurred or not, the Greek allied left was defeated by Philip by luring them out of their position to loosen them up and crush them in a precise counter-attack (no cavalry here), and the action on the other end resulted in the Boeotian/allied line attacked and slowly pierced enough by pezhetairoi and hetairoi, with the latter wheeling into gaps opened up primarily by the sarissai, which could result in relatively swift envelopments.

True, however - too much thinking and imputing could be counter-intuitive. We'll never know for sure.

Thanks, James :)
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

Post by sean_m »

Paralus wrote:And, lastly, Plutarch writes in that quoted passage that the Theban dead lay where they had fallen facing ταῖς σαρίσαις ("the sarsisai"). Now, as Agesilaos once humorously remarked on the Macedonian cavalry xyston (to paraphrase): "that ain't no spear; it's a bloody sarisa!"
Yes, while its possible to explain away the evidence by special pleading (a phalanx can be any "battle line" or "arm", the prodromoi used sarisai) the ancient sources suggest that Alexander did not lead the cavalry. While they are not the best sources, I don't think we should dismiss them because this does not fit out idea of Alexander's personality or how he fought different enemies as supreme commander a decade later. Weak evidence is not no evidence.
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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It is also possible that the surviving accounts draw on South Greek writers with the usual ideas about which soldiers should be glorified (rich Greek hoplites) and which ignored (barbarians and anyone who does not own land!) ... but again, this weakens the evidence that Alexander fought on foot, rather than providing evidence that he fought on horseback. It might be worth looking at the aftermath of the battle for famous writers who presented the battle as the last stand of the Athenian demos against barbarian tyranny, because glorifying the hoplites was a tactic which aristocrats used to keep enough voters on their side. (Quite a few men could at least aspire to being hoplites, and by his day the Athenians even subsidized training and equipment, whereas only a few could afford a warhorse).
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Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

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sean_m wrote:It is also possible that the surviving accounts draw on South Greek writers with the usual ideas about which soldiers should be glorified (rich Greek hoplites) and which ignored (barbarians and anyone who does not own land!) ... but again, this weakens the evidence that Alexander fought on foot, rather than providing evidence that he fought on horseback.
Yes, I tend to agree. While much is made of the "mirage Spartiate", many seem not to see the mirage of the "men of Marathon". Athenians, judging by the mentions in our few sources (debate at Sparta prior to war for example) must have bored the living daylights out of other Greeks regaling them with memories of Marathon! I believe it was Peter Green who wrote - with respect to Chaeroneia - that yet once again the men of Marathon marched to battle, the Athenians having learned nothing over the last 150 odd years. He was referring, of course, to Athens' naval abilities which, while not at the peak of the 430s, might have caused Philip some severe problems operating behind him in the manner of Peloponnesian War. Despite the empire delivered by her navy, Athens still revered the hoplite.

The whole thing is still open to debate in my view. Ma casts doubt on the entirety of the seeming modern consensus on the battle. The problem is that the source material is sorely lacking but, even so, it is difficult to outright dismiss Plutarch's remark about the Sacred Band and the sarisas. Markle contends the cavalry used the sarisa but that is an unwieldy thing on any imagining no matter that a man can sit a horse and hold it. Ma writes that the (Theban?) hoplite bones show trauma to legs as well as heads. There are only two skulls, one with the face cut off and one with a hole claimed to be a sarisa butt spike wound. Each time I read Diodorus though, I'm forced to agree with Rahae: it sounds very much like an infantry battle.
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Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2009 11:16 am

Re: Did Alexander command the PHALANX at Chaeronea?

Post by Alexias »

Please see SpartanJKM's earlier post which was awaiting approval.
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