Parallel Lives

[dean]

Hello,
Just a very brief comment, you mention there being seven but is it not true that Pekuestas was given the title too because of him saving Alexander's life after the Malian arrow injury, making it "8"?
Best wishes,
Dean.

[agesilaos]

Yiannis, yes the pelte is a shield but it differs from the aspis which gives the hypaspistai their name although Hellenistic usage may have blurred any earlier distiction. I am not certain but I think the term crops up in Livy and Plutarch (Aemilius Paullus) so they may have retranslated a Greek term, I cannot recall it in Polybios. Also at this later stage the pezhetairoi have become two bodies, the leucaspides- white shields and the chalkhaspides- bronze shields these names retain the aspis root. I have a vague notion that hypaspist under Philip V denoted a high ranking officer possibly analagous to the 7 somatophylakes.It is correct that Peucestas made the 7, 8 but it is clear that his appointment is extraordinary. I suspect that there were seven becuse they took turns at actually guarding the roal personage and seven divides neatly into the Greeks' 28 day lunar month. Were they all meant to be guarding Alexander we should expect the Seven to be with him in the Malli town and to be punished thereafter for dereliction of duty, which doesn't happen.Hypaspist armament depends on two streams of thought those who believe that the figures on the Alexander sarcophagus depict hypaspists with Argive shields and thus precludes the use of pikes making them an elite hoplite force. Or arguments in the abstract that Philip was introducing new weapons and tactics with the sarissa as the only standing army the hypaspists rathere than the tribal levies must have provided his initial proving ground also there is nothing that the hypaspists do which isn't equally undertaken by 'the nimblest and fittest' of the phalanx.The clincher for me would be if there are any figures shown with the rimless Macedonian aspis on the sarcophagus I think the hoplites owe more to convention than representation.