Alexander as gay icon

[Taphoi]

We hear (in other sources) of “500 argyraspids” standing guard. It is not to be presumed that Alexander always took, at a minimum, a chiliarchy of hypaspists.

In fact chiliarchs (commanders of 1000 men) and pentakosiarchs (commanders of 500 men) are mentioned as attending on Alexander at his deathbed (Plutarch, Alex 76.3 and Arrian, Anabasis 7.25.6) - this comes from the Ephemerides. Hence we have evidence for units of 500 and 1000 men in Alexander's army, but never 700 men. That is one of the reasons that the specific figure of 700 begs explanation.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[Paralus]

There could be any reason for the number 700. We do not know if it is accurate or a figure that looked good or was meant to be 750. Generally Arrian mentions "the personal guard" the "guards" or both. Where numbers are indicated it is almost always "one battalion of the guards" or "half the Guards" or some such.

Other instances, though, are more clearly indicating a distinct troop. The siege of Tyre I have already mentioned. Another, on the Thracian campaign in book one, mentions that Alexander took charge of "his personal (or royal) guards and the rest of the Guard regiments...” in my De Selincourt.

There are others but they will need to wait until I get home from the office.

Addition 1:

Right, that achieved and whilst waiting for pizza, there are another couple. Before going into to those I should re-state (from another earlier thread) that the sources (Arrian in particular) seem to use three terms almost interchangeably: hetairos, somatophylake, and agema of the hypaspists (I should add doryphoroi as well). Leonnatus is variously described as being “taken into the King’s personal bodyguard” (Arr. 3.5.5) in a context where the seven is meant. Prior to this (Issos) he is hetairoi where, clearly, that is what is meant. Later (during the prostration episode) as hetairos again. Diodorus describes him as somatophylax at Philip’s murder. Confusion reigns.

In the Thracian episode (above) it is clear that the royal hypaspists are meant. Further, it appears Alexander is leading infantry on foot. A similar situation is found in the assault on the unsuspecting Uxians. Here again Alexander (Arr 3.17.2) “with a force consisting of his personal guard (somatophylakes), the remainder of the guards….”. There is no good reason for “the remainder of the Guards” unless the “personal guard" are part of that overall group.

The operations at Thebes also support this. Here, after Perdiccas gets into the town, Alexander “sent his archers and the Agrianians through the breach in the palisade” but he “kept his personal guard and the remainder of the Guards outside” (Arr. 1.8.3). Later those archers are described as seeking the protection of “Alexander’s Guards and the remainder of the Guards”.

As I say, and Heckel argues, Ptolemy evidently referred, on occasion, to the royal hypaspists as somatophylakes.

Addition 2:

Just on chiliarchs and pentokosiarchs, the games related by Curtius at Sitakene are generally agreed to have demonstrated this change in the hypaspist structure. Those so rewarded are either chiliarchs or pentokosiarchs. I'd imagine that also there commaders of 250 or so (lochagos) so as to preserve a chain of command down to file leaders / closers etc.

This then leads to discussions about the positions of those winners. Evidently Antigenes, by the end of the reign, was a chiliarch at minimum. His command (likely of a chiliarchy rather than the phalanx) at Hydaspes, his involvement in the murder of Perdiccas, his supposed "co-command" of the argyraspids and his satrapy point to a fellow who'd risen somewhat.

[kurnigandy1]

For anyone questioning Alexander's sexuality I can only refer you to W.W. Tarn's Alexander the Great vol. 2, "The Sources," (Chicago: Ares, 1948), Apendix 18: Alexander's Attitude to Sex, p. 323- "There is then not one scrap of evidence for calling Alexander homosexual." It is important to remember that Tarn was the epitome of source critique. He even admitted that he hated to write the historiography, but found it necassary to "straigthen the matter out."

[marcus]

It is important to remember that Tarn was the epitome of source critique.

Rather, he was the epitome of spinning the sources to provide him with the answer he wanted.

ATB

[Paralus]

Rather, he was the epitome of spinning the sources to provide him with the answer he wanted.

He certainly was the epitome of "straightening out" the nasty bits of acquiring a world empire. All that invading, killing and subdugating was, in fact, civilising, Hellenising and the bringing about of one nation, one world under the benevolent philospher-in-arms.

[marcus]

Rather, he was the epitome of spinning the sources to provide him with the answer he wanted.

He certainly was the epitome of "straightening out" the nasty bits of acquiring a world empire.

You are more generous than I am, Paralus.

ATB

[kurnigandy1]

I have noticed recently that there are new "schools" of thought surrounding Tarn, especially his Narrative, notwithstanding Ptolemy as a(n) [only] source- and of course, we need not forget Aristobulus. This would probably make a better discussion topic, instead of being buried underneath useless rhetoric concerning Alexander's sexuality and Stone's horrific rendering of Alexander.

[amyntoros]

I have noticed recently that there are new "schools" of thought surrounding Tarn, especially his Narrative, notwithstanding Ptolemy as a(n) [only] source- and of course, we need not forget Aristobulus. This would probably make a better discussion topic, instead of being buried underneath useless rhetoric concerning Alexander's sexuality and Stone's horrific rendering of Alexander.

I would hesitate to say that any particular discussion or topic is better than another, nevertheless, as I'm not familiar with any new schools of thought surrounding Tarn's Narrative I'd welcome hearing more about it. Please feel free to start a new thread on the subject if you'd rather not continue it here. As for the topic at hand, as far as I can tell most scholars continue to share similar views about Tarn's Appendix on Alexander's sexuality. The following from a new article, Alexander's Sex Life by Daniel Ogden in Heckel and Tritle's Alexander the Great: A New History.

The problem of Alexander's sex life first came to the fore in English-language scholarship over half a century ago, in 1948, when the great W.W. Tarn included an extraordinary appendix entitled "Alexander’s Attitude to Sex" in his biography, Alexander the Great. The appendix was in some ways old-fashioned, but in other ways rather ahead of its time. It was old-fashioned in that the Victorian Tarn (his more casual detractors give less attention than they should to the fact that he was born as early as 1869) strove, understandably, to preserve an image of Alexander that those of good Christian family values could continue to admire. So despite copious and lucid prima facie indications in the source tradition that Alexander enjoyed numerous affairs both homosexual and heterosexual, and also that he practiced polygamy, Tarn strove to project him rather as a man who found the necessity for sex tedious and regrettable, but who was securely heterosexual when necessity called, and disinclined to extramarital adventure. But, for all of this, Tarn may be considered ahead of his time for his implicit assumption of the importance of Alexander's sexuality for the understanding of the man and his achievements.

Tarn's attempt "to straighten the matter out" and to close the question down was to have the opposite effect to that intended. This was not simply because the time for the question of Alexander's sexuality had come and Tarn's discussion bestowed a counter-productive legitimacy on the subject, but it was also because Tarn's strength of feeling led him to compromise his own remarkable philology in striking fashion. The mishandling of evidence and argument alike conferred a rare notoriety on the appendix, which has been particularly celebrated since Badian's dissection of it in 1958, the year after Tarn's death, in an article subtitled "a study in method." Then Tarn's regretted subject received a further fillip in the late 1970s, as the sexual liberation of the 1960s belatedly arrived in the world of Classical scholarship. Ground-breaking and popularizing studies of sexual codes of practice in the ancient world, starting with Dover's seminal Greek Homosexuality, conferred new legitimacy on the study of Alexander's sex life and seemed to offer new possibilities for insight into it. And it is against the context of these that investigations of Alexander's sexuality, almost inevitably inconclusive ones, continue to be published.

Best regards,

[Paralus]

Agema is perhaps best translated as "regiment" by analogy with its Latin equivalent agmen and also because Diodorus is explicit that the the Palace Hypaspists, who are presumably the Royal Agema of the Hypaspists, were 1000 strong (from other refs too it looks as though the hypaspists comprised three regiments, each 1000 strong) [...]

This does make me wonder whether Roman military terminology (agmen and ala) are being retrospectively applied to Alexander's units by our Roman era sources (particularly Arrian).

No, I’d think it Greek on balance – agema at least..

“Agema” is used by Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 13.6) in describing the “lead” element or “division” of the Lacedaemonian phalanx led by the king. Also the “Amphipolis Regulation” (and its corresponding inscription at Cassandreia) clearly delineates the “agema” from the rest of the “peltasts”.

Such agemata are also attested in the Seleucid armies (and in Polybius describing Antigonid armies) where they almost certainly form a part of the argyraspids (often misrepresented as 10,000 strong) as with the Antigonid version (and the rest of the peltasts) above.

[Taphoi]

“Agema” is used by Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 13.6) in describing the “lead” element or “division” of the Lacedaemonian phalanx led by the king. Also the “Amphipolis Regulation” (and its corresponding inscription at Cassandreia) clearly delineates the “agema” from the rest of the “peltasts”.

What I am actually objecting to is the idea that agema is the name of a particular unit in Arrian rather than a general military term that he uses to describes various units and sub-units in different contexts. I am happy to agree that the word is used to mean something like "leading ranks" in Greek sources from before the Romans became important. The derivation would be from the Greek verb ago, meaning "to lead on". It appears, however, that the obvious equation was drawn in Roman times between agema in Greek and agmen in Latin. Some modern dictionaries point out that they are virtual synonyms in Roman period sources. Agmen derives from the Latin verb ago, which means "to drive on", but in military contexts it means a main body of an army or a regiment or a phalanx, which is subtly distinct from the early Greek usage. Arrian seems to use the Greek word agema in the same sense as agmen in Latin. At least this translation seems to make perfect sense, whereas the idea that there is a single unit called the Agema in the Macedonian army does not seem to make any sense of what Arrian writes: he talks about the agema of the hypaspists in some cases (3.11.9) and of the agema and the hypaspists in others (1.1.11). In Anabasis 5.13.4 we have an agema of cavalry, a royal agema of infantry and a set of royal hypaspists all in the same paragraph! Agema should be translated as "main body" here, not the name of a particular infantry unit.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[Paralus]

The term agema was clearly utilised, in Antigonid armies (as well as Seleucid), as a distinct unit for both the cavalry elite and the infantry elite. Polybius clearly makes the distinction and he has not "Romanised" the word as the Amphilolis Regulation (and its copy at Cassandreia) show:

Hatzopoulos L’organisation de l’armée macédonienne sous les
Antigonides. Problèmes anciens et documents nouveaux, 153-160, 2 I. side B, l.8-12:

Of those recruited in the agema the oldest are to be forty-five years of age, unless
some of those up to fifty years are judged to be fit to perform service in that unit. Of
the peltasts (the oldest are to be) thirty-five.

Juhel and Sekunda (The "agema" and "the other Peltasts" in the late Antigonid Army, and in the Drama / Cassandreia Conscription "diagramma" Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, ISSN 0084-5388, Nº. 170, 2009 , pags. 104-108) have recently restated the point clearly in a discussion on these regulations. These units are present in the armies of Doson and Philip V and they can hardly have adopted the term from a Roman influence yet to make its presence felt post Cynoschephalae.

As for Arrian's use, the received opinion is that the Ile Basilikoi was replaced by the term agema as was the central noble unit of the hypaspists (the Royal hypaspists). Anabasis is not a military treatise (though some have sought to see it that way) and the technical terminology is not always correct or, more to the point, correctly used. We've noted before that the hetairoi that took the wall at Tyre with the king were (as Arrian makes plain earlier) the hypapspists and certainly the agema or Royal hypaspists for example.

That we have a cavalry agema and an infantry agema at Hydaspes is no surprise if the these units had been renamed via this term. That Arrian errs with his description of the infantry (two select foot guards and hypaspists) is no surprise given he also has Craterus commanding both the centre and the left of the phalanx line at Granicus. The easist solution is that the two taxeis of the phalanx have "dropped out" of his description. It will be these which had "precedence" on the day.