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I have to agree with Marcus; the Greek merely states...'those of Amyntas son of Andromenes, then the troops under Philip the son of Amyntas.'epi de he Amyntou tou Andromenous, epi de on Philippos ho Amyntou herche.There is no indication that the two Amyntais are synonymous and I think it unlikely on the grounds that it would give that family too much of a power base. There do seem to be two Orestid phalanx units viz that of Perdikkas and that of Krateros, there was no family link here though, indeed they may represent different and therefore rival branches of the defunct Orestid Royal House.

Hi Karl,whether or not Philip was the son of Amyntas son of Andromenes is not important at this stage, although I still maintain,the passage and conclusion in Arrian are correct. Whats very significant here is that Diodorus claims Attalus, son of Andromenes led the battalion from Stymphae.We know that Amyntas, died from a stray arrow wound shortly after the Philotas affair, logically,Simmias, his brother, would have taken over the position as was the case at Guagamela whilst Amyntas was back home recruiting. We hear no further of Simmias, whether he also met with an untimely death, or more likely, was shipped back home as a result of ATG deciding all troops no longer of military age were to go home.Regardless the outcome, Attalus was made commander of a battalion, which battalion?, I think we can safely say, that of his older brothers Amyntas.

Now then!Polysperchon is described by Arrian(Indica) as commanding a battalion from Stymphae also. If so, what battalion was Attalus commanding?, a contemporary commander of the time. More so, Polysperchon was commanding a battalion at Guagamela as was Simmias, son of Andromenes.Now for a few coincidentals,
(1) Amyntas, son of Andromenes commanded a battalion next to Philip, son of Amyntas!
(2) Simmias, son of Andromenes commanded a battalion next to Polysperchon, son of Simmias!
(3) Both these battalions have been refered to as battalions from Stymphae.
Quite a coincidence I think!Further more, (you may laugh), the Ptolemy that commanded the very same battalion of Philip and Polysperchon at Issus, was...Wait for it!! Ptolemy,son of Philip,son of Amyntas!... and that Arrian has confused him with Ptolemy, son of Selucas. I have my reasons for beleiveing so, but i'll leave that for another time.In any case, If I were to write a novel on ATG, it would be through the eyes of the Sons of Andromenes!! But fear not, my spelling and diction are so bad, I can assure you this will never happen.just my thoughts, cheers!

It's a great temptation in genealogy to try to tidy up links, by saying that because two people have the same name, they are identical. In older societies, where there were relatively strong rules about the naming of children - first son named after the paternal grandfather, second after the father or maternal grandfather, later sons after uncles , etc. it was very likely that there are many cousins and second cousins with similar names. Your name served to remind others who you were related to, not to differentiate you from your cousins. So, members of the royal families gave their children royal names (Philip, Amyntas, Perdiccas, Alexander) to remind people that they were royal - so it isn't surprising that there are many people with similar names.In my own family history, I had an ancestor named Percival Chandler who lived in a small English village of maybe 20-30 families around 1700. You would think that this was a slightly unusual name, and so easy to trace - and yet it transpired that there were six Percival Chandlers living in the village at the time - each family in the large extended family group named a son Percival , so they had to use nicknames to sort them out.I think it was the same in Macedonian times, without the luxury of surnames to help to differentiate people. Curtius lists 8 separate Amyntas, and 6 PhilipsSusan