pothos.org

My understanding is that there was a Hellenistic military tradition that placed the best troops to the right of a pitched battle, and was perhaps due to the nature of Hopolite warfare. (I believe an exception to the rule occured with the Theban defeat of the Spartans where the best were placed to the left). Would this tradition have carried on with the Macedonians? Presumably their best, the Companions and Hypaspists were always placed to the right! More importantly, and I guess the reason why I raise the question, is, would this right to left military mentality apply to the Phalanx of Macedon?, i.e, Coenus'battalion traditionally held the extreme right where as Craterus always the extreme left in pitch battles.
Would Coenus' men have been better troops than that of Craterus'.For that matter, was there a particular reason why the phallanx battalions were lined up as so in the three major pitched battles? there would I assume have been a battalion that was better than the other, it would only be human nature, wouldn't it?Why did Perdiccas hold the far right at Granicus, and then replaced by Coenus' battalion at Issus and Guagamela, was he relegated?My belief is, the two outter battalions were the best, that is, the far right(Coenus) and the far left(Craterus). There must have been some interesting group dynamics that existed in the phallanx, and rather than seeing it as 'one' I'm attempting to see what sort of dynamics would have existed.cheers!!

Oh yeah!, sorry bout this :)It has always puzzled me that Craterus had command of the infantry on the left, does this mean left of centre or left of his battalion? If the latter, what other infantry was on his left, apart from some light/auxillary troops? further more, who had command of the infantry on the right then? cheers!

Hi Smitty -What I would like to add, is that the "right" was not so much the position of the best, as well as the position of "honour".The position of the troops held in the highest esteem was always on the right. I recall that many military historians actually argued that the Thessalian cavalry under Parmenion was actually of a higher quality than the average Companion cavalry. However, Alexander couldn't afford to let the Thessalians take the right flank of the battlefield, because the Macedonian companions would have felt betrayed in their honour.This might explain why Parmenion was able to hold the Macedonian left at Issus against Nabarzanes and at Gaugamela against Mazeus - because due to the honour-system Alexander had to mass up his superb Thessalians at his left flank.Best regards -
Nick

NickGÇÖs point about honour is about right, but donGÇÖt get carried away with the idea that the Thessallians were better than the Companions, this is only in Diodoros, who is following Kleitarchos (who would also have it that the Thebans were the heroes of the seige of Thebes and that the Greek mercenaries worst the phalanx in any fair fight), he is not to be trusted.The order of the phalanx units and the different ilai has no implication for which was considered the best. Arrian, following Ptolemy who is copying Kallisthenes tells us that the order was decided by a list which was probably drawn up for each cycle by sortition. I xiv 6 for the cavalry and a reference I cannot find at the moment for the infantry, (notes lost in a pile of notes). That they did not just work their way through a set rota can be demonstrated by the differing relative positions of the phalanx units in each battle.Macedonian honour was such that even Alexander was forced to use an arbitrary disposition in order to avoid offending it and this extreme sensitivity to honour should be in the forefront of our mind when considering military matters. The asthetairoi cannot be GÇÿ the best companionsGÇÖ as such a designation would cause a mutiny!KraterosGÇÖ counterpart on the right must be Perdikkas and Ptolemy has suppressed his role, I think.

Thanks Karl, for clearing up the Diodorus influence here. Still, I think I have read the point about Thessalians in more than just one later study, so the influence of this 'suggestion' by Diodorus must have been quite great, isn't it?I like your analysis of more or less 'random' positions of many commanders to avoid the honour disputes!Regards -
Nick

My understanding is that the battalions are positioned identically at Issus and Guagamela and only at Granicus are their positions different.