In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  It was at Chaeronea in Boeotia that the new Macedonian secret infantry weapon was also rolled out in front of the Greek world, when the eight-deep Greek allied ranks (including Athenians, Boeotians, Achaeans, Chacidians, Epidaurans, Corinthians and Megarans) fell on the armour-penetrating double-length infantry Macedonian pike. The Athenians, who had not fielded a land army in over twenty years for a major set-piece battle, were stunned.63 And from then on the policies of Philip and Alexander were propagated most devastatingly through the shaft of the Macedonian sarissa.

  The early development of the sarissa (literally a ‘hafted weapon’) is poorly documented. Diodorus claimed Philip had been inspired by the pyknosis – compact order – of the phalanx Homer alluded to at Troy, though this could equally have portrayed a traditional hoplite synaspismos,64 the ultra-tight formation with overlapping shields, though much of the Homeric fighting was either peltast-styled or single combat rather than in disciplined ranks. But in the Iliad Hector’s spear was described as being sufficiently long and ‘far-shadowing’ to be wielded with both hands.65 Iphicrates had already lengthened the spears and swords of his men considerably (perhaps a necessity when he fought in Egypt), creating the lighter crescent-shaped-shield-bearing peltasts (named after the lighter shield, pelta) who defeated the shorter-sworded Spartans. Evidence suggests Thracians had also carried longer thrusting spears.66

  The seeds of an idea to neutralise the traditional hoplite phalanx may have even been planted when Philip was a hostage at Thebes in his teens; he was in the hallowed company of the great generals Pammenes, Epaminondas and Pelopidas, themselves military innovators (of the infantry wedge) as well as accomplished philosophers. Alexander II, Philip’s brother, had also been acquainted with Pelopidas (who had arbitrated for his mother in the regency, or kingship, of Ptolemy of Alorus, and assisted in ridding the kingdom of the pretender, Pausanias) and ideas may have filtered down. But ‘when Epaminondas and Pelopidas prevailed, they did not kill anyone, nor did they enslave cities’, claimed Plutarch.67 Philip had innovated differently; thousands fell at Chaeronea and cities were later garrisoned.68

  The period spent at Thebes was in fact Philip’s second hostage term due to the immediate pressures on his older brothers, and it stood him in good stead. Given a regional command by Perdiccas III when he was just eighteen, he had Antipater and Parmenio drill the regiments with a precision never witnessed before when he himself became king. Philip hardened his men with forced marches over 300 stades (approximately 34 miles) during which they carried their own panoply and rations for thirty days; this still-waggonless army (and chariotless after Philip’s run-in with the oracle of Trophonius) could out-range any opposition, while punishments of flogging and execution were levied on the undisciplined and any deserters.69 Philip would have used the equivalent of hoplomachoi, seasoned hoplite tutors, but now trained in the new arts of the sarissa phalanx and its supporting parts.70

  Similar loose references to infantry guards units as ‘hoplites’, ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ foot soldiers (which may have included skirmishers, slingers and peltasts), and to ‘wedges’, ‘oblique phalanxes’ and ‘compact formations’, provide challenging definitions.71 Nevertheless, each unit would have been trained in the new Macedonian fashion to perfect complicated manoeuvres, including the oblique advance that created gaps in the enemy line and into which the cavalry wedges would fly with devastating effect.

  According to Theopompus, the tallest and strongest infantrymen had been originally enrolled in the king’s elite agema of the pezhetaroi (‘foot Companions’) who were once more generally referred to as the king’s doryphoroi (‘spear bearers’), though they later developed into the hypaspistai (‘shield bearers’).72 Hypaspists were used on special missions that required a fast response and potentially hand-to-hand combat, but when involved in set-piece battles, led by an archihypaspistes with unit commanders below him, they were positioned closest to the king.

  Like the Companion Cavalry they were retained all year round as the nucleus of a professional army. As instigated by his elder brother, Philip was now inviting the infantry into the former cavalry-dominated ‘friendship’ with the king in the form of elite personal brigades (generically, epilektoi) recognised by their privileged position on the right of the line in battle.73 The king and his ‘Companionate’ would worship Zeus Hetairos and their status as ‘friends’ was reaffirmed at a festival of the Hetairideia. Hypaspist numbers grew from perhaps 800 initially under Philip to a corps of some 3,000 from which the king’s personal infantry guard of 1,000 had been selected, though their panoply and weapons remain much disputed.74

  Hypaspists were likely equipped as mobile hoplites (possibly carrying smaller shields) with laminated linen corselets worn since Homeric times (linothorakes, perhaps now with iron plates inside, as Pausanias thought linen was only good for hunting) and traditional 8-foot spears (if not also extended).75 Their outfitting would again emulate elements of Iphicrates’ reforms, and the association with the great Athenian general is fully understandable; Philip’s father had ca. 386 BCE adopted Iphicrates, who was later to come to the aid of his mother Eurydice (ca. 367 BCE); according to the claim of Aeschines, Philip had known the innovating general since, literally, a babe in his arms.76

  Under Alexander, either by the battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE, or after the Macedonians returned from India (if not early in the Successor Wars, again, sources are ambiguous), an elite hypaspist brigade emerged – the Silver Shields (Argyraspides) – and they played a central role in the balance of power in the first eight years after Alexander’s death.77 Certainly Alexander’s campaigning in the mountainous upper and eastern satrapies required a new mobile type of fighting; Diodorus mentioned a reorganisation of the army after the defeat of Darius III at Gaugamela, and this followed restructuring at Sittacene earlier in the year.78 It is possible that an ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ canton mix was wisely being maintained when incorporating the new recruits, though the depopulation of the former by this overseas enlistment reduced the threat of a domestic uprising at home. Philip had himself initiated a programme of integration (and forced exchange) of the citizens of Lower and Upper Macedonia, and surely for similar reasons.

  The foot-Companions, pezhetairoi, now re-emerged as the pike-bearers, the 9,000 strong heart of the infantry at the centre of the Macedonian battle line.79 It was these phalangites who had been armed with sarissai and they initially formed up in manoeuvrable ten-by-ten boxed formations under Philip in what replicated Achaemenid order, with the ten-deep files (dekades) under the command of dekadarches. The unit depth was later increased to sixteen more in line with deepest traditional Greek phalanx formation (a doubling of its traditional eight).80 In the sarissa ranks, sixteen files formed a syntagma of 256 men under a lochagos, and in turn, six syntagmata formed a taxis of 1,536 regionally-distinct infantrymen commanded by taxiarchoi originally selected from their local aristocrats (Perdiccas the Orestians and Lyncestians, Coenus the Elimeans, and Polyperchon the Tymphaeans, for example). Once again, ‘taxis’ appears to have become a general term used for a major infantry command.81 Later, in the Asian campaign, chiliarchiai of 1,024 men were frequently referred to, half of which had been a lochoi (or pentakosiarchia) of 512, charge of which represented a new intermediary command.82

  Arrian’s unique references to the so-called infantry ranks of asthetairoi, often interpreted as ‘Close Companions’, who would have occupied a position of honour and who seemed to hail from the cantons of Upper Macedonia, have sparked enormous debate: the prefix, ‘ast’, has been variously interpreted as stemming from ‘aristoi’, ‘astoi’, ‘asth’ or ‘assista’, suggesting either ‘best’, ‘townsman’, ‘star’ or ‘renowned’, and here thought to refer to their geographical origins, shield adornment, or reputation. But were they the elite brigades of pezhetairoi – pike-bearers – or part of the more mobile hypaspistai and as lightly clad as the figures depicted on the Alexander Sarcophagus?83 The term employed by Arrian, the ‘s
o-called’ asthetairoi, may suggest a non-contemporary tag or an earlier less-formal epithet. If the latter, these unique brigades may have been multi-role versatile units designed to form flying columns and protect pezhetairoi flanks (linking up with cavalry) and rear in set-piece battles; mercenary thureophoroi were employed in similar roles in the later Hellenistic armies.84 Moreover, under this interpretation they could double, with other hypaspists, as fast mobile infantry on special missions where slow, inflexible pike-bearing brigades could not be usefully deployed.

  When recounting events of 316 BCE and the mounted brigades of Antigonus Monophthalmos, Diodorus additionally made a single mention of what might have been a cavalry equivalent, the asthippoi (which, however, varies between the manuscripts Parisinus gr. 1665 and Laurentianus 70,12), though this is usually amended to amphippoi, ‘two-horse men’, as Diodorus believed, in which case they were possibly a specialist squadron of the Tarentine cavalry.85 But some scholars maintain that this hapax legomenon refers once more to ‘closest cavalry’ of an elite agema.

  What is surprising is the lack of any reference to shield-bearing cavalrymen, who, for practical reasons, would have been equipped with a smaller, lighter aspis (‘asphippoi’?); certainly carrying a shield would have been a distinction, as it appears (again from images, as well as texts) that the cavalry units depicted were generally not equipped with such protection, though the melees in which Alexander and his Companion Cavalry found themselves, with archers and missile-throwers concentrating on them, indicate he and his royal squadron must have had more protection than linothorakes. Scythian horsemen did carry small pelta-styled shields, as had the legendary Amazons.86 Furthermore, we do still need some equipment identifier for the elusive ‘heavy’ cavalry, and in this light it is perhaps noteworthy that the sarissophoroi, cavalry equipped with the longer and heavier lance – the obvious contenders – disappeared from texts around 329 BCE.87

  At Philip’s death, Alexander became the commander-in-chief of a force that included some 1,800 Macedonian cavalry and a similar number of Thessalian horsemen with mounted auxiliaries, with 24,000 infantrymen, as well as engineers, speciality troops and mercenaries in pay; by the time he crossed to Asia he had under arms a total of some 32,000 infantry and 4,500 cavalry.88 At the heart of this conglomerate army was the sarissa-bearing phalanx. What does remain clear amongst the varied weaponry and brigades listed on both sides of the Hellespont, is that the sarissa had developed into a deadly two-handed pike that outreached any hafted weapon in the Graeco-Persian world; its leaf-shaped blade could penetrate both shield and armour and nothing could withstand a phalanx frontal assault. The Macedonians now had a ‘first-strike’ capability that would become decisive.89

  Fittingly, as the symbol of Alexander’s ambition, the length of the sarissa is still controversially debated, though it is clear it was far longer than the traditional spear, dory, with its bronze ‘lizard-killer’ butt, sauroter, we first read of in the Iliad.90 Depending upon whether ancient writers had adopted the attic cubit (cubit stems from the Latin cubitum, elbow, possibly pechys in Greek) or the bematistes’ (map-makers’) Macedonian cubit, the cornel (male cherrywood) shaft, or more likely a pike made of ash (Achilles’ spear was of Pelion ash), may have been as long as 18 feet in Alexander’s ranks, and it might have even varied in length to ensure sufficient blades protruded. A pike-head lodged in the wall of Tomb II at Vergina (after its wood shaft rotted away) suggests it had been at least 16.5 feet long.91

  Evidence points to the sarissa being practically assembled in two halves and joined by an iron-coupling device; it was tapered towards the blade to balance it and reduce its overall weight, resulting in a gripping position closer to the butt.92 In the hands of strictly drilled pezhetairoi, sarissai created an impenetrable ‘porcupine’ of blades (Curtius termed it an ‘immovable wedge’) that effectively rendered the classic othismos aspidoon, the traditional Greek shield-shoving tactic of the hoplite phalanx, redundant.93

  Assuming the blades from a maximum of five ranks protruded through the Macedonian front, a disciplined system must have been developed whereby the exhausted front lines, which presented pikes horizontally, and the fresher rear lines with sarissai held vertically, could interchange during battle. Polybius, following Callisthenes, described how Alexander’s phalanx formations reduced from thirty-two, to sixteen, to eight ranks deep as they approached enemy lines. The three rear ranks (whose blades would not reach past the front) were either on stand-by to relieve the front – it has been suggested that they possibly threw javelins using a free hand, but this seems impractical – or they were ready to extend the line in the way the deep-order pezhetairoi fanned out for battle at Issus; Arrian’s Tactics suggested the rear ranks could manoeuvre through the intervals (the gaps between each man were perhaps 6 feet in ‘open order’ – though less than 2 feet in close order) to double the length of the front.94

  With both hands employed in wielding the long pike, an eye had to be kept by the rear on possible infiltration, and this would have required agile lightly armed auxiliaries to dispatch any interlopers. Demosthenes confirmed the presence of epikouroi (‘fighters alongside’), including archers, mercenaries and other auxiliary troops in the army’s composition, making it very clear this was no longer one-dimensional warfare.95

  The penetrative result of the sarissa ranks must have been devastating against soldiers sporting a leather or linen cuirass, though pike-bearers were themselves relatively unprotected; they carried the smaller shield, the pelta or aspis, likely slung over their shoulder, then to the chest when engaging the enemy, and held in place by a telamon, a neck strap. In addition, pezhetairoi were issued a short sword (kopis or curved machaira), possibly to deal with any of the still dangerous wounded they were walking over or in case the line should break. There is mixed evidence for their protective corselets; the lighter (and cooler) linothorax seems to have been initially worn, though later in the campaign a hemithorakion (half-cuirass) was mentioned, suggesting backs were no longer protected.

  An illustration, dating to ca. 1886, of Alexander’s operation against Thracians in 335 BCE. The leaf-shaped blades of sarissai from five front ranks of the pezhetairoi could protrude, as Polybius reported, and the right side of the image captures the terror of the ‘porcupine’ of blades that an approaching line would be faced with when points would be variously aimed at the vulnerable necks and groins of the enemy infantry or in this illustration cavalry.96

  Depictions we have show phalangites arrayed in Phrygian-styled and lighter pilos helmets, and Polybius additionally (and curiously) claimed that sarissai in upright position were effective in deflect incoming missiles.97 The pike-bearers, then, were not ‘heavy infantry’ as such (as hoplites had been ‘heavy’ in shield and armour), except in the scale of the pike, and yet the king’s confidence in their formation was never betrayed.98 The bristling Macedonian phalanx became the proverbial ‘anvil’ on which the exelasis, the charge by Alexander’s ‘heavy’ cavalry, dealt the decisive hammer-blow.

  The Persian Great Kings still relied on intimidation and their 10,000 famed Immortals to cow the empire’s satraps into submission. Yet Xenophon’s Anabasis had already exposed Persian weakness in the face of well-organised Greek hoplites despite vastly superior Asiatic numbers, and this must have encouraged the Macedonian-led coalition when crossing the Hellespont. Persian satraps had hired Greeks as crack regiments and as bodyguards for just this reason, as Cyrus the Younger had in Xenophon’s day.99 But if the Greeks’ heavy hoplon was unable to parry a sarissa assault, then the gerrhon-bearing (wicker-shielded), felt-capped, shorter-speared Persians, or even the Cardaces present at Issus and likened by Arrian to ‘hoplites’, did not stand a chance; this was akin to warfare against the unshielded (anhoploi).100 As the Athenian general, Charidemus, had fatally warned a doubting Great King at Susa when in exile following the fall of Thebes, Darius’ host might be ‘glittering with gold and silver’ but it now faced the iron and bronze of real soldier
s; ‘the hardiest and most warlike of Europe against the laziest and effeminate of Asia’.101

  A Bronze Phrygian helmet ca. 350-300 BCE typical of those worn by the Macedonian sarissa bearers, the pezhetairoi, though the Thracian type is also mentioned. The helmet was formed from two sections with a riveted horizontal seam where the crown joins the bowl. The high crown afforded some shock protection against downward blows. This example has additional ear and jaw protection from the hinged face guards, with a neck guard at the rear.

  Mnesimachus, a comic poet of Philip II’s day, had already spread effective propaganda: Macedonians dined on honed-up swords and swallowed blazing torches, they desserted on broken arrowheads and splintered spear-shafts; for pillows they used shields and breastplates and they wreathed their brows with catapults.102 His lyrical description captured their formidability, for the sarissa phalanx of Philip, and then Alexander, would deal out death in victor-vanquished ratios still unheard of, if we are to trust even the most conservative of our sources’ conflicting estimates. The total enemy numbers are of course questionable, but if Xerxes had brought ‘millions’ of troops to face the Greeks at Thermopylae, then ‘interested’ historians, those present at the battles or at the courts of participants, could hardly credit Alexander with facing less. Curtius pondered: ‘Who counts troops at the moment of victory or flight?’ This was perhaps stated with some irony, for a few paragraphs earlier he had listed the casualty numbers at Issus.103 But following his second defeat in Cilicia in 333 BCE and noting the devastating effect of the sarissa, Darius apparently ordered an increase in the length of Persian swords and spears as well.104