Sean wrote:
This reminds me that I found some new evidence about Polyaenus 2.38.2 on Onomarchus surprising Philip with "stones and stone throwers" and Marsden's decision to translate this as "stone-throwing machines"
https://bookandsword.com/2014/02/04/409/
Whilst this illustrates your point regarding carefully citing texts very well, it is a shame to raise this hoary old chestnut about the alleged ambiguity of Polyaenus’ text. When you wrote this I see you had an old thread on RAT in mind, for you paraphrase the arguments of the rather pedantic proponent who argued that it could mean throwing stones by hand:
“
The oldest manuscripts say that Onomarchus placed stones and stone throwers (petrous kai petrobolous) on the ridge. In Greek as in English, “stone throwers” can be either men or machines, and people interested in ancient artillery have debated which Onomarchus would have used. The general feeling is that this is too early for the leader of a small community to have a large train of stone throwing engines, that hiding catapults would have been difficult, and that ancient catapults had trouble shooting downhill. A famous authority on Greek artillery, Marsden, has been criticized for saying that Polyaenus wrote “stone throwing machines” rather than “stone throwers.”
As in English, when there is a potentially ambiguous word, the context usually makes it clear, as it does in this case. In 404 BC, before the invention of catapults, Xenophon[Hell.II.4] could use the term to mean human stone-throwers:-
“[Street fighting in Athens] ...but they made a line not more than ten hoplites in depth. Behind the hoplites, however, were stationed peltasts/ πελτοφόροι and light javelin-men/ ἀκοντισταί,, and behind them the stone-throwers/ πετροβόλοι . And of these there were many, for they came from that neighbourhood.”
After 399 BC, when catapults were invented in Syracuse, the term became increasingly used to mean ‘stone throwing catapults’ and in the last half of the 4 C BC is found universally in lists and armoury inventories in that sense. Historians such as Polybius and Diodorus also use the word to mean engines, and it also crops up in technical treatises such as that of ‘Athenaeus Mechanicus’ in the 1st C BC. By Polyaenus’ time in the 2nd C AD, it was only used to mean machines in our source literature.
As to the paraphrased arguments of the RAT proponent you refer to, the ‘general feeling’ is that Polyaenus is referring to engines, and it is certainly ‘communis opinio’ among those who know the subject. The RAT proponent is, as far as I am aware, in a minority of one. His arguments are also reminiscent of the shopkeeper’s excuses in the ‘Monty Python parrot sketch’.LOL!
It is not ‘too early’, for Philip’s defeat occurred roughly half a century after catapults had been invented. Furthermore the war came about when in desperation the Phokians seized the treasuries of Delphi to fight off the Thebans – the largest and richest treasure in all Greece. With it they hired tens of thousands of mercenaries, and could easily have afforded as many catapults as they wished. Nor is hiding catapults on a scrubby mountainside ‘difficult’ - they weren't that large. They could have been hidden on the reverse slope if all else failed. To claim that catapults ‘had trouble shooting downhill’ is a preposterous argument. Anyone familiar with the law of gravity and the laws of ballistics knows that artillery must be aimed upward to cover any distance, even when shooting downhill, not to mention that the machines were designed to shoot down from walls and towers!
On the other hand most people cannot throw large stones more than about 25 metres or so, and this would barely clear their own ranks, and would in any case have been outranged by the Macedonian javelins.
Arguments that the stones could have been dropped off cliffs, or rolled down the slope are equally fallacious. ( How did they clear their own ranks?) On one occasion in Thrace, the enemy rolled carts and wagons down a slope at the Macedonian infantry, who were unfazed by this. Those unable to get out of the way lay down huddled together, with locked shields and allowed the wagons to pass over them, so rolled rocks wouldn't have had the effects described !
Common sense also dictates that Polyaenus means machines. On only two occasions was the famously tough Macedonian Army so demoralised that it refused to obey the King and take the field. One was in India, after the first bloody battle against Porus and his elephants. The Army refused to follow Alexander further, with the prospect of facing thousands more elephants. The other occasion was this one, when after being defeated by Onomarchus, the Army refused to take the field next campaigning season. Is it credible that this was as the result of having stones thrown at them by hand, which would not have inflicted many casualties on armoured men, and which were a commonplace on ancient battlefields? It must have taken something new and terrifying, like the elephants, to cause this. Something that delivered “shock and awe”, and that can only realistically be coming under artillery fire for the first time.
Nor can it be co-incidence that in the following years Philip took a keen interest in catapults and having an artillery train. So much so that the Athenians joked about Philip’s ‘catapult obsession’.
There can really be no reasonable doubt that Polyaenus meant stone-throwing machines.
The ‘new evidence’ you refer to is, I take it, the Byzantine “Excerpta’ ?
I always understood it as "fighting (μαχία) with a full set of kit (ὅπλα)." In the fourth century, that comprised at least a long spear and a big shield and ideally a helmet and thorax and greaves and sword. That would distinguish it from fighting with a bow, or fighting with just a spear and cloak, or wrestling (but also from learning just how to move your spear and shield through J.K. Anderson's standard postures in formation, or from drill and 'square bashing').
‘ὅπλα’ is yet another of those generic Greek words. It means ‘equipment’ or ‘implements’, thus one can speak of a ship’s ‘opla’ meaning it’s gear generally. In a military context it means ‘implements of war’ or ‘weapons’, sometimes ‘arms and armour’ hence its association with the heavy infantry (‘hoplites’) and the weapons you refer to.
I would compare the ephebes to old 19th/20th century European conscript armies, which also recruited most young men for a few years of training and service, then sent them home ready to serve again when called up.
....and not just ‘old’ armies either. The Swiss operate this system to this very day. Curiously enough, despite every soldier/citizen having his weapon at home with him, there is very little gun crime in Switzerland......
I take it that you have Ueda-Sarson's "Macedonian Unit Organisation" paper? For the benefit of those who don't, in summary it sets out the arguments for this, as originally proposed by Brunt.Our sources give roughly two sets of figures for Alexander in Asia - roughly 30,000 infantry and 4,500/5,000 horse, or 40,000 foot and the same number of horse. Now two of the sources who specify 30,000 (Diodorus and Arrian) specifically state that their numbers are for "those that crossed over into Asia with Alexander."
