The Macedonian Infantry From Antigonos M

ABSTRACT
The Macedonian army under the Antigonids was one of the most important institutions of the
Hellenistic period, due to the military nature of the Hellenistic kingdoms. The infantry was an
especially relevant section of the army, which underwent several reorganisations from
Alexander’s time until it became the war machine with which Perseus faced the Romans in
Pydna. This work will try to establish the evolution of the Macedonian infantry throughout
the Antigonid period, focusing on three main areas: the recruitment process and conditions, to
understand how the army was built up; the infantry units themselves up to Philip V’s time,
including the phalanx, the peltasts and agema, and the hypaspists; and finally the reign of
Perseus and the Macedonian army in its last moments.
1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................... 3
Epigraphic Abbreviations ....................................................................................................................... 4
1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 5
2. Recruitment and Military Service ....................................................................................................... 7
2.1. Recruitment basis ......................................................................................................................... 7
2.2. Age ............................................................................................................................................. 10
2.3. Census and recruitment conditions ............................................................................................ 13
3. Infantry Units .................................................................................................................................... 15
3.1. Phalanx....................................................................................................................................... 15
3.2. Peltasts and Agema .................................................................................................................... 20
3.3. Hypaspists .................................................................................................................................. 24
4. After Philip V: Perseus ..................................................................................................................... 29
5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 33
6. Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 34
2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank, first and foremost, Dr Riet van Bremen, my supervisor for this
dissertation, whose invaluable help and support throughout the last months have made of this
work not only an interesting and rewarding task but also a thoroughly entertaining one.
I would also like to thank my MA tutor, Dr Paola Ceccarelli, for her closeness, support and
empathy, and Dr Julietta Steinhauer, whose classes and comments have helped me improve
my writing and thinking to an extent I could not have imagined.
I thank UCL’s History Department for giving me the opportunity to undertake this
dissertation and grow as a person and the Institute of Classical Studies for their helpfulness.
Finally, I would like to thank my mother and all the friends who have supported me for the
last few months and have made this dissertation possible.
3
EPIGRAPHIC ABBREVIATIONS
Hatzopoulos, Institutions = Epigraphic appendix in M.B. Hatzopoulos (1996), Macedonian
Institutions Under the Kings, vol. I-II, Athens, Research Centre for Greek and Roman
Antiquity, National Hellenic Research Foundation.
Hatzopoulos, Organisation = Epigraphic appendix in M.B. Hatzopoulos (2001),

L'organisation de l'armée macedonienne sous les antigonides: problèmes anciens et
documents nouveaux, Athens, Centre de recherche de l'antiquité grecque et romaine,
Fondation nationale de la recherche scientifique.
ISE = Moretti, L. (1976). Iscrizioni Storiche Ellenistiche, Firenze, La nuova Italia.
4
1. INTRODUCTION
After the death of Alexander, the strained peace he had imposed during his rule was torn to
pieces along with his empire. The emergence of the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC) gave
rise to new political powers and dynasties who strove to impose their hegemony in the
Mediterranean. Antigonids, Seleucids and Ptolemies all created new kingdoms which had to
adapt to the sudden vastness of the world, all the while endeavouring to retain their
Greekness and fend off their enemies. And all of them did so through their armies.
While the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties had to contend with the integration of their
autochthonous populations into the army, Antigonid Macedonia occupied what had
historically been Philip II and Alexander’s kingdom, with the biggest Greek based-population
of the three Successor states, what enabled their military to remain as attached to tradition as
was possible. The infantry, an evolution of the traditional hoplite phalanx into a Macedonian
one armed with the famed sarissa, became one of Macedonia’s identity signs and insignia of
their power, at the same time as Argead units were reinvented and given new life. From
Antigonus Monophthalmos to Perseus, the Macedonian infantry not only survived and
adapted to each monarch’s needs and aims, but also managed to remain the best option until
Rome’s appearance on the political stage.
However, the 150 year gap that divides Antigonus from Perseus is more than enough to
raise questions about the stability and evolution of the infantry as a whole. As the times
changed, so did the kings and the enemies to face, and the army had to adapt to those
changes. Throughout not only the conscription and the structure of the troops but also their
deployment on the battlefield, it is easier to understand just a bit better the relationship these
fighting citizens had with their rulers, as well as to perceive the army as an organic, evolving
institution.
This paper seeks to go beyond the isolated, static image of what a phalanx, a hypaspist or a
peltasts, amongst others, were, and combine all available evidence to produce a picture of the
way in which the Macedonian infantry evolved throughout the Antigonid period. Through
careful study of the documents pertaining to Philip V’s reign, the best documented of his
dynasty, such as recent epigraphic finds from the cities of Cassandreia and Amphipolis, and
ancient textual sources, we will proceed to see to what extent that situation may or may not
have changed under previous Antigonids.
5
Due to the limitations of the dissertation format, I have chosen to focus only on the
Macedonian-based infantry, and have excluded cavalry, fleet and foreign troops. I will start
my dissertation with a discussion of how the Macedonian army was constructed, dealing with
the recruitment process, the age limits imposed on the soldiers and the census for being
inscribed in the army, as this is an essential issue to tackle if one wants to understand better
the whole of the army. Then I will move on to the units themselves, which have been divided
into three broad groups: phalanx; peltasts and agema, and hypaspists. Finally, I will devote
one last section to the army during the time of Perseus as the culmination of the Macedonian
army until the time of its ultimate demise.
6
2. RECRUITMENT AND MILITARY SERVICE
The way of constituting a permanent standing army such as the one which existed in
Antigonid Macedonia began inevitably with the recruitment and conscription of the troops.
While the most important and extensive information on this subject is provided by the
epigraphic finds from Amphipolis, they seem to belong almost exclusively to the reign of
Philip V, with Antigonus Doson’s letter to Beroia as possibly the only exception, and in order
to reconstruct the recruitment system for earlier monarchs, we must rely on literary sources,
which must be taken with caution, as not only the language but also the aim of these
documents is much different from those belonging to the Antigonid administration. For this
section, I will analyse what conscription units were employed for the recruitment of soldiers
throughout Macedonia, the age of the conscripts, comprising both upper and lower limits, and
finally the citizen census applied to army recruitment, all the while trying to discern whether
the information we have from Philip V’s chancery may also be applied to earlier moments of
Antigonid Macedonia.
2.1. RECRUITMENT BASIS

The question of what the basis for recruitment was has been widely discussed. Before the
discovery of the military service regulations of Amphipolis1 and Cassandreia2 –in truth, two
copies of the same document–, the main sources for the recruitment of the army were
Polybius and Livy, the latter using the former many times as a source when discussing this
issue. According to Livy, the basic military circumscriptions were the cities (oppida 3 or
urbes4), which directly dismissed the possibility of recruitment being based upon neither age
nor social status5. However, the discovery of the Amphipolis military regulation has helped to
shed some light on this subject and allowed us to delimit in a more precise manner what the
actual basic unit of recruitment was, at the time of its inscribing, and possibly also before: the
pyrokausis. Mentioned several times in both the Amphipolis and the Cassandreia documents6,
Hatzopoulos translates pyrokausis as “feu”7, for which the closest English equivalent would
1
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I.
2
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 II.
3
Liv. 33.3.1-5.
4
Liv. 33.19.3.
5
As Hatzopoulos notes (2001a: 89), there is no evidence in the sources about any kind of census classes in
Macedonia. In any case, while it is true that some bodies of the army, as shall be seen in Section 3, Infantry
units, only accepted members of an elevated social and economic status, the general levy of the army did not
take such matters into consideration but rather functioned on a territorial basis, and status was only taken into
account after the levy had been carried out.
6
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I A ll. 11, 17-29, 23, 27 and nº 2 II ll. 12, 50, 53, 56 respectively.
7
Hatzopoulos 2001a: 91.
7
be ‘hearth’ or ‘household’. What seems to be clear is that it refers to a subdivision of the
citizen body similar to the oikia 8 , and the eligibility criteria for the members of each
pyrokausis, which we will comment on later, leaves no doubt about the family nature of this
division.
Once established that the pyrokausis was the smallest unit upon which the recruitment
system operated, we can look at the way in which the Amphipolis regulation controlled the
levy of the troops. From each pyrokausis, only one capable male would be enrolled actively
in the army, while the rest of the men from the household would remain put, either exempt
from military service if too young, or as reservists if too old. The Amphipolis inscription9
contains several case studies dealing with different family types and how recruitment would
affect them, which Hatzopoulos10 has already explained in detail in his work, so I will only
comment it briefly. From the different family situations we can gather from this inscription –
families with one, two or more sons, whose fathers may be either capable or incapable of
going to war–, while respecting the age limits, of which we will talk later, the choice for
conscription will usually be for the fittest male member of the family, even if he has less
fighting experience, although in some cases, if the father is still relatively young and the son
has just finished the ephebic training, it will be the father who will be enrolled11.
ἐὰν δ[ὲ ὁ] υἱὸς ἦι (νεώτερος) τῶν εἴκοσι ἐτῶν ὁ δὲ πατὴρ ἐν ἔτεσιν

πεντήκοντ[α] ἢ καὶ νεώτερος καὶ δυνατός, ἦι τῶι σώμα[τι σ]τρατεύεσ[θαι],
γραφέτωσαν τὸν πατέρα, ὁ δε υἱὸς ἔστω βοηθός·12
If the son is younger than twenty years old and the father is fifty years old or
younger and physically able to fight in battle, the father will be enrolled, and the
son will be a reservist.
In any case it is made very clear that the enrolment of any member of the family will only
take place if there is another responsible and capable male to stay behind and look after the
household13. This proves that the military administration was aware of the need to protect or
at least not damage the economic wellbeing of the kingdom while at the same time keeping a
8
9
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I B.
10
Hatzopoulos 2001a: 109-118.
11
12
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I B ll. 16-19. Also found in nº 2 II ll. 24-25. Translation by Cristina González.
13
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I B ll. 27-31 and nº 2 II ll. 29-31.
8
standing army14; in this way, they ensured that the estates left behind by the soldiers would be
properly looked after15.
The fact that only one person per household would be enrolled, leaving the rest at home,
even as reservists, gave rise to certain irregularities concerning the registration of certain
individuals16, as some people forced young men into their own households hoping to avoid
military conscription17. To avoid this kind of abuse, the diagramma from Amphipolis invokes
the common law (κοινός […] νόμος18) which each city individually would have regarding the
registration of people into the citizen body, making sure that those registered into the
pyrokausis had done so lawfully19.
However, Livy’s assertion that recruitment was carried out based on cities is not entirely
erroneous, since the pyrokausis was indeed the smallest possible recruitment unit but it must
be understood within a greater system of cities and districts. As a civic and administrative
centre, each city provided a fixed number of soldiers corresponding to the number of
households it held 20 , and the cities were divided into four great administrative districts:
Upper and Lower Macedonia, Bottia and Amphaxitis21. As for the number of conscripted
men, since the cities would have furnished, as we have mentioned, a fixed number based on
the total of households, Hatzopoulos 22 explains the fluctuation in the numbers of the
Antigonid army due to the fact that the recruitment could be total or partial, depending of the
needs of each individual campaign. In addition to that, there was a system of district
14
Bosworth (1986) claimed that Alexander’s military activity plunged Macedonia into a permanent decline,
demographic and economically speaking. Although Billows (1995: 184-186) has contested Bosworth’s claim,
correctly in my view, it is true that Macedonia suffered some population loss due to Alexander’s campaigns,
opening the door to a possible mismanagement of the estates and therefore of the economy, which would
undoubtedly make the later Antigonid kings eager to avoid such a situation.
15
Based on this one-man recruitment policy, Hatzopoulos interprets that in the case of a household with only
one male member, no combatants would be enrolled, since nobody would be able to look properly after the
estate, choosing to keep the economy stable over military manpower (Hatzpoulos 2001a: 94). This seems to be
confirmed by Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I B ll. 27-31, where it is stated that in case the only son is younger
than fifteen (and so incapable), the father will only be enlisted if there is someone who can replace him to
administer the household.
16
See Section 2.3 Census and recruitment conditions.
17
Hatzopoulos (2001a: 92) takes the existence of the measures described in the inscription as proof that said
irregularities were taking place, though no explicit mention of them survives.
18
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I A lines 6-8.
19
Hatzopoulos 2001a: 92-93. However, as Hatzopoulos admits, it is not entirely clear to what kind of laws this
term refers, as the inscription itself does not give any explanations, but all things considered it seems sensible to
imagine that it is a law adopted by each city under the injunction of a royal diagramma, similarly to the
gymnasiarchic law of Beroia, as Hatzopoulos suggests.
20
Hatzopoulos 2001a: 119-120. If this was indeed the case, as it seems to be, it is not surprising that the
Macedonian kings would have such an intense interest in annexing as many cities as possible to their territory,
as was the case with Larissa.
21
Hatzopoulos 1996: 455.
22
Hatzopoulos 2001a: 120-121.
9
alternation every two years for campaigns outside the country, as the king preferred to avoid
summoning the same soldiers for two years straight23, what may have also contributed to the
variation in number of the recruits. This seems to make sense once put together with
Antigonus Doson’s letter to Beroia24, whose list of officers enables us to roughly calculate
their phalanx strength and balance the numbers we have for conscription around this time25.
Most of this information about the recruitment basis of the army, Doson’s letter
notwithstanding, belongs to the reign of Philip V, which is certainly the best documented of
all his Antigonid counterparts. However, as Hatzopoulos admits in one of his latest works26,
we cannot simply assume that he singlehandedly created such a complex system from
scratch, and therefore it is more logical to imagine that he inherited at least some of it,
although to what extent is hard to say from the extant evidence from previous monarchs. We
know, for example, that the district division was already in use by the time of Philip’s
predecessor, Antigonus Doson, and maybe even since the beginning of the Antigonid
dynasty27. Unfortunately, we have no information from earlier times about the pyrokausis
system and therefore it is impossible to ascribe it with certainty to any particular monarch
previous to Philip V.
2.2. AGE
Age played a very important role in the mobilisation of men. Theoretically, as stated in
Cassandreia’s military code28, men from fifteen up to fifty years of age were to be recruited.
However, the code goes on to present us with several examples of family cases where this
rule is not always observed. It is more likely that men until the age of twenty usually stayed
home as reserves, as the Amphipolis and Cassandreia codes always seem to be looking for
the fittest and most suitable member of the household, and it is hard to believe that a fifteen-
year-old child could have fitted that description. On the other hand, men close the age limit of
fifty were only enrolled if they were judged physically capable, preferring the younger son if
that was not the case.
23
Hatzopoulos 2001a: 122 and 2001b: 49.
24
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 5.
25
Hatzopoulos (1996: 453-6) thoroughly analyses the numbers we get from this letter and compares them to
other figures from Philip V’s early reign.
26
Hatzopoulos 2016.
27
Sekunda (2014: 102) argues that the cantonal administrative system that was in use during the Argead dynasty
died with Alexander due to the new dynasty’s interest in avoiding internal power struggles, and that the city
became the main administrative unit, which in my view does not really clash with Hatzopoulos’ opinion, as the
city was indeed the administrative unit which carried out the recruitment, while the four districts worked only as
a territorial grouping for certain parts of the army (namely the pezhetairoi).
28
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 II ll. 12-13.
10
We have some examples of particular cases in which the age limits were stretched, always
in case of dire need: during an Aetolian attack in Acarnania29 fifteen-year-old boys and sixty-
year-old men were mobilised to engage in combat, and Philip V, while preparing the battle of
Cynoscephalae, was forced to recruit sixteen-year-olds and to recall veterans back to service,
provided they were still strong enough to fight 30. However, these were exceptional cases,
since if they were the norm Livy would not have found any reason to comment on them, and
so it seems that age limits were tighter than the Cassandreia code seems to suggest. Not that
the code was wrong or obsolete by any means, but it may have just provided a theoretical
framework within which recruitment could work both in times of peace and in times of need.
The ephebarchic law of Amphipolis31 reinforces the idea of this fifteen to twenty-year-old
non-fighting window. Much has been said already about the system of the ephebeia, so I will
only briefly comment on the section that concerns us for the present work. The ephebarchic
law of Amphipolis depicts the intense training young Macedonian men had to endure to enrol
in the regular army, marking the military character of the ephebeia and its relationship to the
army32. According to this law, fifteen-year-old males of a certain economic background could
register and attend the gymnasium until they turned eighteen, when they would register as
ephebes, and between twenty and twenty-two they would serve as reserves in the army33.
Therefore, we can conclude that although fifteen-year-olds were liable to being recruited, this
was only done in times of dire need, and more usually they just stayed as reserves until they
turned twenty while attending the gymnasium and training for the army34.
As for the upper age limit, there are three special cases worth mentioning: that of the
agema, of the peltasts and of the hypaspists. These three units required a more demanding
physical aptitude due to the tasks that were entrusted to them35, and both the Amphipolis36
and the Cassandreia37 codes mention that the eldest of the agema would not be older than
forty-five and those of the peltasts not older than thirty-five. Considering how the
29
Liv. 26.25.11.
30
Liv. 33.3.4.
31
Hatzopoulos Institutions, II nº 42. More recently, Hatzopoulos (2016).
32
33
34
It must be pointed out that the actual inscription of the ephebarchic law belongs to the period of Roman
control of Macedonia, around 24/5 BC, but the text is a reproduction of a much older document (Hatzopoulos
2016: 31), most likely pertaining to the reign of Philip V, what fits quite well with the information we get from
the Amphipolis and Cassandreia inscriptions.
35
See Section 3.2. Peltasts and agema.
36
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I B ll. 8-12.
37
11
Cassandreia inscription initially sets the upper limit in fifty years of age, it seems quite
striking how these two units received such low age limits, which Hatzopoulos38 explains by
the assumption that while the peltasts needed great physical strength and were therefore
dismissed from service earlier, the agema favoured experience and kept its men for longer in
service. Hatzopoulos goes further still and suggests, while trying to explain the relationship
between both bodies, that it was possible that the peltasts served as such until their thirty-fifth
year and were then transferred to the agema until they turned forty-five39. Considering the
role we will see them play in the Antigonid era, this does seem quite in consonance with what
we derive from the sources.
The hypaspists and the argyraspides form another peculiar collective, in many senses.
During Diodorus’ account of the battle of Gabiene between Eumenes and Antigonus
Monophthalmos, we are informed that
καὶ γὰρ ἐτύγχανον κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν καιρὸν τῶν ἀργυρασπίδων οἱ

νεώτατοι μὲν περὶ τὰ ἑξήκοντα ἔτη, τῶν δ᾿ ἄλλων οἱ πλείους μὲν περὶ τὰ
ἑβδομήκοντα, τινὲς δὲ καὶ πρεσβύτεροι […].40
At this time, the youngest of the Silver Shields were about sixty years old, most of
the others about seventy, and some even older […].
Leaving aside the debate of to what extent the Silver Shields (argyraspides) could have
been the same corps as the hypaspists 41, the age limits of sixty and seventy years of age
mentioned here and corroborated by Plutarch42 seem quite startling. As Champion states in
his book on Antigonus43, it would be hard to believe that these men not only had managed to
stay alive, healthy and physically capable of engaging in battle, but also that the State would
prefer to mobilise them to go to war rather than younger generations. Champion’s claim that
these particular Silver Shields would be the late Alexander’s hypaspists 44 , who had been
fighting for nearly two decades and knew no other way of life, seems quite reasonable in
explaining why Eumenes would have a corps of such elderly men, although on no account is
this explanation applicable to later Silver Shields and hypaspists. In any case, the fact that
38
39
40
Diod. 19.41.2. Translation by C. H. Oldfather.
41
See Section 3.3. Hypaspists.
42
Plut. Demetr. 16.
43
Champion 2014: 38-39.
44
Champion 2014: 38.
12
Diodorus and Plutarch stress the extraordinary old age of the Silver Shields –in order to
praise their strength– only marks it as something extraordinary, so we can imagine that the
Amphipolis and Cassandreia age regulations would very likely also have been in place in
Macedonia at the beginning of the Hellenistic period.
2.3. CENSUS AND RECRUITMENT CONDITIONS

What is also clear is that not everybody was allowed to be part of the Macedonian
standing army. Not in vain do all literary sources, when recounting battles, distinguish
between the Macedonian army and its foreign allies. The Amphipolis military code clearly
states that whoever is not inscribed in the politeumata will not be eligible to be inscribed in
the pyrokausis and therefore will not be able to enrol in the army 45 ; therefore, only
Macedonian citizens could become members of the army. This could again lead to
irregularities in the inscription of individuals in the citizen lists, like those mentioned above
in Section 2.1 Recruitment basis. To avoid them existed magistrates in charge of the
conscription, the epistatai, who closely monitored the whole process and punished the
offenders accordingly.
Once enrolled as a Macedonian citizen through the pyrokausis system, an individual’s

position within the army depended to a great extent on his socioeconomic background. Both
the codes of Amphipolis 46 and Cassandreia 47 draw a very clear distinction: while the
wealthier would be recruited into the peltasts and the agema, those of a less fortunate
condition would be recruited into the regular infantry (pezos). Although the distinction of
what would be considered “wealthy” (οὐσίαις εὐπορωτέρος) and “poor” (ἀπορωτάτος) is
not made entirely clear in the codes, this citizen division probably has its roots in the elite
nature of the agema and the peltasts in contrast to the general infantry, as well as in the
training each of this bodies had to endure, since the agema and the peltasts were an extremely
demanding corps which required a training time that only those wealthy enough to be
sustained without work could afford 48 . Since the nature of all three formations, agema,
peltasts and phalanx, as we shall see throughout the next section, did not vary greatly during
the reign of the Antigonid dynasty, it would be safe to assume that this division based on
economic fortune would have also existed since the death of Alexander and was not
45
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 2 I A ll. 21-24.
46
47
48
13
something instituted by Philip V, although, as with much else, the lack of evidence on the
subject for prior monarchs makes it hard to ascertain for sure.
14
3. INFANTRY UNITS
In this chapter, we will discuss the different infantry units that we can find in the
Macedonian army: the phalanx, the peltasts and agema and the hypaspists. Since the military
reforms of Philip II and the creation of the Macedonian phalanx49, the infantry became an
even more key player in the military developments that took part during the Hellenistic
period. The Antigonid dynasty inherited an infantry model from Philip II and Alexander the
Great and kept that model with relatively few changes until the Roman conquest of
Macedonia. As with the recruitment process seen in Section 2, the documents we can handle
when researching the Macedonian infantry belong in their majority to Philip V’s reign,
especially when it comes to epigraphic evidence, but in this case the literary sources
encompass a much larger time lapse, including the reigns of Antigonus I Monophthalmos and
Antigonus III Doson, so that, even though the evidence for them is not as substantial as for
Philip V, it still allows us some insight into previous moments of the Antigonid dynasty.
3.1. PHALANX
The first corps we will discuss is the phalanx, as it was and remained for the whole
dynasty the main bulk of the army and one of the main strengths of Macedonia, together with
the cavalry. Though we will not discuss weaponry here, it is worth mentioning that their
importance and strength resided in their very anomalous and extremely long pikes, the
sarissai, which reached a length of between five and six metres during the first half of the 2nd
century BC50, and which set them apart from the more traditional, dory-armed Greek hoplites.
Though it may well have been the corps that changed the least during the Hellenistic
period, since phalanx against phalanx battles were the rule until the coming of Rome, with
the death of Alexander and the wars of the Diadochi many new designations for the infantry
soldiers –the traditional pezhetairoi– arose, such as leukaspides and chalkaspides, which we
will discuss later. It was one of the most stable parts of the army, appearing in every battle
throughout the Antigonid dynasty, and although its numbers varied from reign to reign, the
phalanx can be traced all the way to Perseus’ reign and the battle of Pydna.
49
Worthington (2008: 23-29) talks about Philip II’s army reforms, although he acknowledges, as Hammond also
pointed out (1994: 9), that we do not know to what extent these changes were entirely Philip’s creation or
whether his brother Alexander II should also be credited for their implementation.
50
Theophr. Caus.pl. 3.12.2 (12 cubits) and Ascl. Tact. 5.1. (between 10 and 12 cubits). For more on the sarissa,
see Markle (1977; 1978), Hammond (1980), Sekunda (2001) and Campbell (2014).
15
The best description of a phalanx formation is given to us by the 1st century BC tactician
Asclepiodotus51, hence describing most likely either Philip V’s or Perseus’ phalanx, but even
so the changes that may have occurred since Antigonus Monophthalmos’ reign are not likely
to have been drastic. If anything, the major transformations one can observe happen in
nomenclature, but the essence is not altered. The smallest military unit Asclepiodotus
recognises is the lochos, a single file made of, normally, sixteen men, though the number
could vary52, and the basic tactic unit was the speira or syntagma, which comprised sixteen
lochoi 53 . Several more military divisions follow until we reach what was known as a
complete phalanx, made up of 1024 lochoi and around sixteen thousand men54. This is, of
course, a theoretical picture, as we know that the forces each king could muster were not
always as precise as this or as close to this number: for the battle of Paraetacene,
Monophthalmos’ heavy infantry numbered twenty-eighth thousand men55; Doson’s phalanx
forces in Sellasia amounted only to ten thousand men56; while for Cynoscephalae Philip V
could only call on eighteen thousand infantry57 –and in very dire conditions, as we have seen
in the previous chapter–, but Perseus in Pydna faced the Romans with twenty-six thousand
Macedonian phalangites58.
The fluctuation in numbers is not entirely negligible, and may reflect the population and
manpower changes that Macedonia went through during the Antigonid dynasty, although it
was not as drastic as some have made it seems, as it keeps within the logical limits of a
country’s manpower, even by the standards of Alexander’s time. Indeed, contrary to what has
been said, it seems that Macedonia did not go into a permanent demographic decline after the
death of Alexander the Great. This thesis, which is supported by Bosworth, is dismissed by
Billows and later Eckstein, the former claiming that the military losses from Alexander’s
campaign did not affect as many women and children, what enabled the kingdom to recover
in a few generations’ time59.
51
Ascl. Tact. 2.
52
Ascl. Tact. 2.1.
53
Ascl. Tact. 2.8.
54
Ascl. Tact. 2.10.
55
Diod. 19.27.1.
56
Polyb. 2.65.2.
57
Liv. 33.4.4.
58
Liv. 42.51.
59
For more on Macedonia’s varying manpower, see Billows (1995: 184-206). Here Billows answers Bosworth’s
claim that Alexander’s wars greatly diminished Macedonia’s manpower by analysing as far as possible the
number of men that left for Asia and that returned to Macedonia, very wisely taking into account Macedonia’s
population and natural death rate, as well as social customs for the production of children such as polygamy.
16
Each of the lochoi and their combinations (dilochia, tetrarchia and taxis) was led by a
military official who was also part of the lochos itself60. As such, we find ourselves with a
strict hierarchical structure in which we have numerous officials that supervise the workings
of the phalanx, making it an extraordinarily machine-like formation. When commenting on
the organisation of the lochos, Asclepiodotus says what follows:
Ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ ὁ λόχος πάλαι καὶ στίχος καὶ συνωμοτία καὶ δεκανία, καὶ ὁ μὲν
ἄριστος καὶ ἡγεμὼν τοῦ στίχου λοχαγός, ὁ δὲ ἔσχατος οὐραγός· ὕστερον δὲ
μεταταχθεὶς ὁ στίχος διαφόρους ἔσχεν τῶν μερῶν ἐπωνυμίας […].61
Now the file was formerly called a row, a synomoty, and a decury, and the best man
and the leader of the row was called the file-leader (lochagos), while the last man
was called the file-closer (ouragos). But when later on the row was reorganized its
parts received different names; […].
His comment is quite ambiguous, as he does not specify what it is he means by πάλαι or
ὕστερον, but he could well be talking about some change that occurred after Alexander’s
death, when the new infantry denominations appear, since it seems the change that
Asclepiodotus is mentioning here concerns only the names and not the actual structure of the
phalanx. In any case, it is an indication that the phalanx did not stay completely static during
the Hellenistic period, but did suffer some, if slight, modifications.
While pezhetairoi, “foot companion”, is a generic designation for a phalangite, the fact
that two new names appeared, leukaspides and chalkaspides, is also evidence that at the
beginning of the Hellenistic period some kind of change was taking place within the phalanx.
As a firm believer in the economy of language, I find it hard to believe that there would be
two completely synonymous terms for the phalanx, so it would seem sensible to think that
they described two different corps within the heavy infantry. However, as neither literary nor
epigraphic sources explain this distinction, the debate is quite a barren one. What I believe is
undeniable is that both were Macedonian troops and formed part of the phalanx. Nicholas
Sekunda has argued extensively 62 that the so-called phalanx of leukaspides was to be
Though Billows does not elaborate on the state of Macedonian demographics during the Hellenistic period, I
agree with him in that, although the number of deaths was a high one, it did not excessively affect Macedonia’s
ability to produce a standing army.
60
Ascl. Tact. 2.2-3; 2.8.
61
Ascl. Tact. 2.2. Translation by Illinois Greek Club.
62
Sekunda 2014: 108-109ff.
17
identified with non-Macedonian troops, specifically Thracians, carrying the thyreos, a
wooden oval shield, but in my opinion that it is a far-fetched claim based on a very free
interpretation of Livy’s description of the battle of Pydna63. It is easier to understand that they
were part of the same body, the Macedonian phalanx, as they never are mentioned alongside
the foreign allies and certainly, as Sekunda himself concedes, they are never equated with
Thracians in the sources64. Polybius also mentions the chalkaspides’ Macedonian identity65.
In any case, both bodies were certainly employed as part of the phalanx, and as far as we
know, their difference may only lie in their weaponry66.
To end this first section on the phalanx, we will look at some practical examples of how
different monarchs employed said formation on the battlefield, as this may well be the best
way to understand how each of them viewed and understood the army.
In the course of the Wars of the Diadochi, Antigonus I Monophthalmos had to face a fair
number of enemies to secure his position in Macedonia, chief amongst them Eumenes of
Cardia, against whom he fought in Paraetacene (317 BC) and in Gabiene (316 BC). The
number of heavy infantry effectives that he produced for both encounters was quite
respectable, 28,000 for the former67 and 22,000 for the latter68, though it must be noted that
these figures are not for Macedonian infantry soldiers but rather for the whole of the infantry,
foreign allies included, so the number of Macedonian effectives would be smaller than this.
63
Sekunda 2014: 125.
64
Sekunda 2014: 109.
65
Polyb. 2.66.5.
66
I think it worthy of mention that in Twiss Travers’ edition of Livy’s text (1841), at the end 44.40, where all
other editions (cf. Loeb Classical Library or Briscoe’s commentary) indicate that two leaves of the manuscript
are missing, Travers adds a long excerpt of text before the beginning of 44.41, part of which reads as follows:
Primi Thraces incedebant, truci vultu, corpore procero, splenditibus miro candour, clipeis laevam
protecti. […] Subibat agmen Macedonum ipsorum, quam leucaspidem phallangem appellabant:
delecti quotquot robore ac virtute praestabant, fulgenres auratis armis saguisque puniceis. Ea media
acies fuit. Hos sequebantur, quos ab aereis lucidisque clipeis chalcaspidas dicebant.
First marched the Thracians, men of fierce countenance and tall of stature, and protected on their left
side by bucklers which shone with remarkable brightness. […] Next came a band of the
Macedonians themselves, which they called the phalanx of the Leucaspides. A few selected for their
strength and valour were more conspicuous, shining in gilded armour and scarlet cloaks: this was the
middle of the army. These were succeeded by those whom they called Chalcaspides, from their
brazen and glittering bucklers. (Translation by William A. McDevitte)
In case we could take this passage as legitimate, it would certainly mean that both chalkaspides and leukaspides
were doubtlessly Macedonian and that they indeed worked as part of the phalanx. However, Travers does not
reveal the source for this alleged text from Livy, and as I have been unable to confirm its authenticity, I am
sadly unable to accept it as evidence.
67
Diod. 19.27.1.
68
Diod. 19.40.1.
18
However, Antigonus did not make them his main weapon, but rather devised his final blow
on Eumenes through the cavalry. As Diodorus narrates, towards the end of the battle of
Paraetacene, “the infantry for a considerable time had been engaged in a battle of phalanxes,
but finally, after many had fallen on both sides, Eumenes’ men were victorious”69, but on
seeing this, Antigonus reassembled his cavalry, charged against Eumenes’ Silver Shields and
pursued them into the nearby hills, thus gaining victory70. At Gabiene, a similar situation took
place, when the phalanx merely advanced and engaged in a phalanx battle against Eumenes’
infantry, while the focus of the action, especially between Eumenes and Antigonus
themselves, took place in the midst of the cavalry engagement 71 , and it was through the
action of the cavalry once again that Antigonus seized victory.
The next decisive land battle was the battle of Sellasia (222 BC) between Antigonus III
Doson and Cleomenes III of Sparta in the context of the Cleomenean War. Doson’s phalanx
was quite reduced from the one Monophthalmos had mustered for Paraetacene and Gabiene,
as he had only 10,000 Macedonia phalanx men. However, Doson did give the phalanx a
greater importance than his previous counterpart, as he placed the chalkaspides against one of
the enemy contingents72 and he attacked the rest of the enemy’s forces with the mercenaries
and the rest of the phalanx, which he arranged in a narrow formation forced by the battle
terrain 73 . The order and discipline of the Macedonian phalanx and, especially, their long
pikes, the sarissai, were key in pushing the Spartan regiments downhill from the strategic
position they held, which inevitably led to their defeat74.
Finally, the most crucial battle for the Macedonian army –Perseus’ Pydna
notwithstanding– was Philip V’s Cynoscephalae against the Roman forces of Titus Quinctius
Flamininus. Philip had mustered a phalanx of sixteen thousand men, and here they proved to
be key players in the development of the battle, for after a series of unexpected skirmishes
between both sides, Philip advanced with his peltasts and part of the phalanx75 and the latter’s
overpowering force managed to force the Romans into retreat, also thanks to “the nature of
their arms”76. However, the lack of a proper chain of command to impose order and the
69
Diod. 19.30.5. Translation by Russel M. Geer.
70
Diod. 19.30.7-10.
71
Diod. 19.42.1-7.
72
Polyb. 2.66.5.
73
Polyb. 2.66.9-11.
74
Polyb. 2.68.3-10.
75
Polyb. 18.24.
76
Polyb. 18.25.2.
19
natural rigidity of the phalanx allowed the Romans to take advantage of the terrain and
outmanoeuvre the Macedonian soldiers77, ending the battle in a total Macedonian defeat.
To conclude this section on the Macedonian phalanx, we can understand that although it
was the army corps that changed the least during the Hellenistic period, it was fundamental in
the establishment of Macedonian power over Greece and in the Hellenistic world, and
although different monarchs may have employed it in different ways, it remained the visible
face of the Macedonian army until the Roman conquest of Greece. Its relationship with the
king, however, did vary, and we have a reflection of that in the way each monarch employed
it. While later kings, such as Doson or Philip V, made extensive use of the phalanx and relied
on it to a greater extent –with more or less success–, it is striking to note that Antigonus
Monophthalmos gave pre-eminence to the cavalry when in battle, employing the phalanx as a
secondary means of attack. This could be due to the exhaustion of the troops, who had after
all been fighting with Alexander for the last couple of decades, and who were more worn-out
than the king would have wished, or perhaps due to the lack of trust between himself and the
soldiers, as they were still fighting wars against other Greeks for the control of Alexander’s
territories. Of course, this is just speculation, buy in any case there is no doubt that the
phalanx did indeed go through a period of turbulence after Alexander’s death, of which it
emerged still as the indisputable emblem of Macedonian infantry power.
3.2. PELTASTS AND AGEMA

In the Tactica, Asclepiodotus divides the infantry into three main groups: the hoplites, the
peltasts and the light infantry78. While the peltasts did not number amongst the heavily armed
phalanx, they did usually act alongside them, as we shall see, and form part of the main bulk
of the army. The main difference between a peltast and a hoplite lay in their weapons: the
Macedonian peltasts were armed in a lighter fashion –smaller shields and no cuirass, though
they probably still carried sarissai79–, and derived their name from their small round shield,
77
Polyb. 18.25.4-7.
78
Ascl. Tact. 1.2.
79
Sekunda 2010: 461-62.
20
the pelte80, which in turn enabled them to carry out scouting and skirmishing missions that
the phalanx was unable to81.
As such, and after having studied their conditions for recruitment82, we can confidently
say that they were an elite corps within the Macedonian army, what is confirmed by Polybius
in Book 5 of his Histories, during the political crisis of the alleged conspiracy of Apelles in
217 BC.
παραγενομένου δ᾿ εἰς τὴν Κόρινθον αὐτοῦ, μεγάλην σπουδὴν ἐποιοῦντο καὶ

παρώξυνον τοὺς νέους εἰς τὴν ἀπάντησιν οἱ περὶ τὸν Λεόντιον καὶ Πτολεμαῖον
καὶ Μεγαλέαν, ὄντες ἡγεμόνες τῶν τε πελταστῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν
ἐπιφανεστάτων συστημάτων.83
On his arrival at Corinth Leontius, Ptolemaeus, and Megaleas, who were in

command of the peltasts and the other crack corps, were at much pains to work up
the soldiers to give him a fine reception.
The fact that he uses τῶν ἄλλων τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων συστημάτων must mean that the
peltasts also were a crack corps within the Macedonian military84, which would make sense
given their relatively small numbers: it would seem that they were organised in chiliarchies85,
since they are always mentioned by the thousands: three thousand with Antigonus Doson86
and between one thousand87 and two thousand88 with Philip V. Compared to the numbers we
have handled when talking about the phalanx, this is certainly a small body, which does
reinforce its elite and exclusive character.
Curiously, the peltasts seem to be inextricably linked to another body of the Macedonian
army, known as the agema 89 . Livy gives us a definition of this corps: Delecta deinde et
80
Juhel and Sekunda 2009: 106. Not to be confused with the Iphicratean peltasts of the Classical period (Diod.
15.44).
81
As odd as it may seem that a sarissa could be used for skirmishing or scouting, it is possible that the peltasts
employed a detachable sarissa, which would enable them to perform said tasks (Gonzalez Mestre 2017: 83-96),
or, alternatively, they might have changed their weapon for a shorter one.
82
See Section 2.2 Age.
83
Polyb. 5.26.8. Translation by W.R. Paton.
84
85
86
Polyb. 2.65.1-2.
87
Polyb. 10.42.2.
88
Polyb. 4.67.6.
89
There is also a cavalry agema documented by the sources (Diod. 19.29.5-6), which fought close to the king in
battle (Liv. 42.58.9), but it must be distinguished from that of the infantry.
21
viribus et robore aetatis ex omni caetratorum numero duo milia erant: agema hanc ipsi
legionem vocabant90; that is, they were a body chosen from the peltasts (caetrati)91 for their
strength (viribus) and age (robore aetatis), which would make them an even more select
corps than the peltasts themselves. However, the identification of the peltasts and the agema
has led to a debate on the nature of the latter, on whether there could have existed two
agemata, one made up of peltasts and another completely different unit, mentioned in the
military code of Amphipolis92. Current historiography has yet to agree on whether the agema
was a different body from the peltasts, but what is clear is that they did share and elite nature
and the origin of the men which made it up93. As mentioned in Section 2.2. Age, it seems
likely that when a member of the peltasts finished his service with this body, he would be
transferred to the agema for some ten more years 94 , thus building up an elite force with
accumulated battle experience. Unfortunately, what exactly the agema’s role was is unclear
to us, as the sources do not explicitly explain it, and we can only speculate with their role as
the vanguard of the army95.
It seems we could talk about an agema of peltasts inasmuch as its components were
former members of the peltasts, but that functioned under different rules. Unfortunately, the
chain of command does not make things much clearer. We know that during Doson’s time
and at the beginning of Philip V’s reign the head of the peltasts was a man named Leontios 96,
who was incidentally put to death by Philip V some time later 97 . He sometimes appears
paired with two other individuals, Megaleas and Ptolemaios, and in one instance Polybius
considers all three of them commanders of the peltasts and the other “crack corps” 98, which
could well mean the agema. However, this Megaleas is also described as ὁ ἐπὶ τοῦ
γραμματείου99, which was a high administrative position within the army, so he could be
90
Liv. 42.51.5.
91
Both Hatzopoulos (2001a: 68) and Sekunda (2014: 94) accept the identification of Livy’s caetrati with the
Greek peltastai.
92
93
Sekunda 2009: 107. Sekunda and Hatzopoulos (2001a: 66-68) disagree on the equipment of both bodies, as
Sekunda claims that they were armed in the same fashion, since it was a body within the peltasts, while
Hatzopoulos prefers to consider them completely different bodies. I would rather search for an understanding of
both their points of view, since it seems more plausible to me that they did share a common origin, as the
sources suggest, but functioned as independent bodies in battle.
94
95
Sekunda (2009: 104) suggests that the agema would have acted as the vanguard of the army, taking the lead in
battle, which sounds sensible to me, but in any case, it did not act as protector of the king as the hypaspists did,
since they protected him inasmuch as their military role enabled them to when fighting their enemies.
96
Polyb. 4.87.9; 5.4.9; 5.26.8; 5.27.4.
97
Le Bohec 1993: 294.
98
Polyb. 5.26.8.
99
Polyb. 4.87.9.
22
interpreted as a high-ranking official who oversaw the army, generally speaking, and not only
this particular corps. Walbank tries to see Ptolemaios as the leader of the agema100 but there
is just not enough evidence to support this claim.
The role of both peltasts and agema within the army is best understood when seen in
context, framed in the battles we already mentioned in Section 3.1. Phalanx. Curiously, there
is no mention in the sources of peltasts during either Paraetacene or Gabiene, and the only
agema mentioned is that of the cavalry 101 , but that does not mean that peltasts were not
employed, in battle or otherwise, during Antigonus I’s reign. For the battle of Sellasia,
however, we know that Antigonus III engaged battle with a force of three thousand
peltasts 102 , although in Polybius’ subsequent narration of the confrontation, they are not
mentioned again. However, it stands to logic that, if we accept that they did take part in the
battle, they would have been placed near the phalanx, in the left wing103. It is when we get to
Philip V’s Cynoscephalae that we get a sense of the true role of the peltasts. For this battle, as
narrated by Polybius and Livy, Macedonians and Romans had unknowingly encamped on the
opposite side of a hill that separated them, and when both sent out reconnaissance patrols, a
series of skirmishes began that ultimately led to open battle. Once Philip realised that the
confrontation was inevitable, he drew up the part of his phalanx that was available –the rest
was still in the camp– and the peltasts, and advanced with them towards the Romans104. This
testimony, together with others105, proves that the peltasts were a scouting force which could
move lightly –something that the phalanx, for example, could not do– and were not bound to
protect the king as the hypaspists were, so they were an ideal body to carry out ambushes and
reconnaissance tasks, for they were also able to engage in combat whenever needed.
To conclude, the peltasts and the agema were two discrete forces in the Antigonid army
that nonetheless had a very particular use in laying out the territory for bigger battles, so
much so that the silence in the sources about them could also mean that they were taken for
granted in every Antigonid army. The best documentation we have for them belongs to
100
Walbank 1999: 558.
101
Diod. 19.29.5.
102
Polyb. 2.65.2.
103
Le Bohec 1993: 434. Le Bohec (1993: 432) also acknowledges the fact that other authors have wanted to see
the peltasts in Polybius’ euzonoi (2.67.2), although there is not much evidence that supports this claim.
104
Polyb. 18.24.1.
105
Polyb. 4.67.6; 4.75.4; 5.13.5-6; 5.22.9; Liv. 31.36.1.
23
Antigonus Doson’s reign and, especially, to Philip V, but we might be safe to assume that
they were a constant throughout the whole Antigonid dynasty106.
3.3. HYPASPISTS
The hypaspist corps is one of the most celebrated of the Macedonian army but also one of
the most disputed 107 . Not only has their weaponry been subject to debate, but their very
nature is still unclear to us. There seems to be a dichotomy we have yet to overcome: either
they were a single corps with a double function, that of fighting in the battlefield and acting
as royal bodyguards, or there existed two separate units that shared the same name 108. I am
inclined to choose the former option, for this duplicate in terminology would have only led to
confusion and probably the infantry force would have been subsumed into another unit with
another name had they been separate bodies. However, we have insufficient evidence to
confirm any of these hypotheses. What is certain is that the term “hypaspist” was attached to
military obligations closely related to the king, both inside and outside the battlefield109. The
Amphipolis110 and the Cassandreia111 inscriptions add to this definition the criterion for the
recruitment into this unit: economic fortune, both in property and in liquidity:
Ἐγλαμβανέτωσαν δὲ εἰς τοὺς ὑπασπιστὰς τοὺς τὰ δοράτια οἴσοντας τῶι βασιλεῖ ἀπ'
οἰκιῶν καὶ οὐσιῶν οὓς ἂν νομίζωσιν ἐπιτηδείους εἶναι. From this we can infer that they
were a very exclusive corps, accessible only to the richest segment of the population.
We have their participation in major battles attested by literary sources, but recent
epigraphic finds have enlarged the scope of their activity. As well as being a proper infantry
force, the military code of Amphipolis 112 presents them as the collectors of fines from
undisciplined soldiers and reinforces them as royal bodyguards, since after the building of the
106
It is interesting to note that the term “peltasts” was during Philip II’s reign initially employed to describe the
phalanx men, and only after some time did their denomination shift to “hoplites” (Sekunda 2010: 449-58), so it
is quite possible that until the Antigonid period, perhaps even not even during Monophthalmos’ reign, the
phalanx and the peltasts –as we understand them in Antigonid Macedonia– were not clearly defined as different
groups and may have only truly separated with the Antigonids.
107
For discussion of the hypaspist corps during Philip II and Alexander the Great’s reigns, see Milns (1967;
1971), Ellis (1975), Park (2007) and Kambouris (2016).
108
Le Bohec (1993: 232) defends the latter hypothesis, while Hatzopoulos does seem to also support it in 1994:
101, linking the bodyguard group to the royal neaniskoi, but in his section on the hypaspists in 2001a: 58 he
fails to mention the difference between what he called, paraphrasing Berve, “Hypaspistenleibwache" and
“Hypaspistentruppe", rendering his later definition rather precarious. He also mentions they would be between
20 and 30 years old, but gives no indication of whether there would be an upper limit of age or of the source for
this statement.
109
110
111
112
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 3 A II ll. 2-8.
24
king’s tent, it was their quarters the next ones in importance which had to be built,
presumably so that they would be prepared in case the king needed protecting. Moreover, the
letter of Philip V to Archippos in the otherwise irrelevant city of Euia113 contains a mention
of a single hypaspist –amongst many other men in different military capacities–, Theoxenos,
son of Kleitinos, which may seem odd given that this would place him on his own, not within
his unit, as could be expected, in a very small city of Macedonia, but Welles 114 understood
his position as similar to that of a Roman speculator, so that they would also carry out duties
akin to a military police, surveilling the troops in their outposts. However, Sekunda115, from
his interpretation of the Amphipolis code116, does not believe that there is any indication that
the hypaspists performed either a guard of a staff function, as he makes a very literal
interpretation of the phrase τοὺς τὰ δοράτια οἴσοντας τῶι βασιλεῖ, understanding it as a
mention of the small pikes they might have carried in contrast to the sarissai of the
bodyguards. I disagree with him for two reasons: firstly, as Hatzopoulos says 117, it seems
more likely that it is a reference to the word doryphoros, as it contains the two grammatical
elements which make up this word. Also, I believe there is enough evidence to suggest that
the hypaspists did, when needed, perform bodyguard functions, whether armed with a sarissa
or with a dory, as the death of Kleitus the Black in Samarkand as described by Plutarch and
Arrian shows118. Although this episode preludes the Antigonid epoch, textual and epigraphic
evidence such as the assembling of the tents in the military codes and the hypaspist that
Philip V sent to Larissa to burn his correspondence can lead us to believe that the hypaspists
were more than a simple fighting unit in the Hellenistic period.
The few explicit references we have in the sources to the hypaspists do nothing but
reinforce the already mentioned idea of their double function as an infantry corps and at the
same time royal bodyguards. During Antigonus I and Eumenes’ encounter in Paraetacene,
Eumenes employs them as a fighting force in the battlefield119 together with the argyraspides.
The next mention we have of them is in Polybius, where they are acting as bodyguards and
aides-de-camp to Philip V: in the first instance, they are accompanying the king on his trip to
113
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 6.
114
Welles 1938: 249 n1.
115
Sekunda 2014: 57.
116
117
Hatzopoulos 2001a: 59 n9.
118
Plut. Alex. 51.9 and Arr. Anab. 4.8.8-9. For more on this dichotomy on the use of sarissa or dory, see
González Mestre 2017: 87-95.
119
Diod. 19.28.1.
25
Sicyon120, and in the second, after his defeat at Cynoscephalae, he sends one of his hypaspists
to burn his royal correspondence121. Another term found in the sources for bodyguards is
somatophylax122, which many authors have accepted to be identified with the hypaspists123,
and although there is not enough evidence to affirm that they were indeed the same unit, we
can at least accept that this term could be employed for the section of the hypaspists that
served as protectors for the king. In any case, I do not believe that the term could have been
used interchangeably for the whole of this unit, but rather for when they served in this
particular capacity.
Another term that may have been directly linked to the hypaspists was the therapeia, a
collective name for the royal bodyguards124, which, although better documented during Philip
V, undoubtedly existed already under Antigonus Doson. Polybius (4.87.5), makes it
abundantly clear that the therapeia and the somatophylakes were very closely related, if not
the very same body, which again links them to the hypaspists. Its commander was
denominated ὁ ἐπὶ τῆς θεραπείας, and we know that under these two kings it was a certain
Alexander, son of Admetos125, who had already served under Doson in Sellasia commanding
the phalanx126 and who was celebrated in an honorific decree from the city of Gonnoi 127,
which leads us to think that both intimacy with the king and military expertise were key
factors in gaining acceptance into the king’s inner circle.
A term that becomes associated to the hypaspists in the Hellenistic period is that of the
Silver Shields or argyraspides. The title first appears during the battle of Gaugamela as an
alternative title to the hypaspists128, but after Alexander’s death they already seem to be two
distinct bodies. This passage by Diodorus is especially revealing:
Μετὰ δὲ τούτους ἐτάχθησαν οἱ Μακεδόνες ἀργυράσπιδες, ὄντες μὲν πλείους

τρισχιλίων, ἀνίκητοι δὲ καὶ διὰ τὰς ἀρετὰς πολὺν φόβον παρεχόμενοι τοῖς
πολεμίοις· ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ οἱ ἐκ τῶν ὑπασπιστῶν, ὄντες πλείους τρισχιλίων,
120
Polyb. 5.27.3.
121
Polyb. 18.33.1-3.
122
After Perseus’ defeat at Pydna, he sent a somatophylax to burn Thessalonica in a similar manner to his father
sending a hypaspist after Cynoscephalae (Diod. 30.11.1).
123
Le Bohec 1993: 232, Hatzopoulos 2001a: 57-9.
124
Le Bohec 1993: 231.
125
Polyb. 4.87.5.
126
Polyb. 2.66.5.
127
ISE II 104.
128
Sekunda 2010: 455. For the ancient sources, Diod. 17.57.2 and Curt. 4.13.27.
26
ἀφηγουμένου τούτων τε ἅμα καὶ τῶν ἀργυρασπίδων Ἀντιγένους καὶ
Τευτάμου.129
After them he drew up the Macedonian Silver Shields, more than three thousand in
number, undefeated troops, the fame of whose exploits caused much fear among the
enemy, and finally the men from the hypaspists, more than three thousand, with
Antigenes and Teutamus leading both them and the Silver Shields.
Here Polybius makes a clear distinction between the argyraspides and the hypaspists, for
Eumenes first draws up the former and then the latter, but curiously enough, both groups are
led by the same people, Antigenes and Teutamus130, which must mean that they did share
some characteristics, but whether it was weaponry or role on the battlefield is unclear. As we
have already mentioned in Section 2.2 Age, Diodorus’ description of the age of Eumenes’
argyraspides 131 is certainly startling, but it can be interpreted that these first Hellenistic
argyraspides were Alexander’s old hypaspists132, a corps to accommodate both those war
veterans and the new elite recruits, but they ended up becoming two entirely separate bodies:
the hypaspists as a sort of royal bodyguards and the argyraspides as fully-fledged infantry
corps. In any case, I do not believe that the terms could have been interchangeable.
Unfortunately, there is not nearly enough evidence about how the hypaspists fought in
actual battles, since the two only mentions we have during Philip V’s reign present them to us
in their bodyguard capacity, and the information we have from earlier periods comes mainly
from the conflict between Antigonus Monophthalmos and Eumenes, and it is in the latter’s
army where we find both hypaspists and argyraspides, not in Antigonus’. This does gives us
some clues as to how they would have been employed on the battlefield, but it cannot be
taken entirely as a lead as to what their role would have been under the Antigonids, since we
are talking about a different army. In any case, it is to be understood from Diodorus’ words
that they were employed as part of, or as auxiliaries to, the phalanx133, having become “the
spearhead of the whole army”.
129
Diod. 19.28.1. Translation by Russel M. Geer.
130
Both are mentioned a few more times as conjoined leaders of the argyraspides (Diod. 18.59.3, Plut. Eum.
13.2), but the hypaspists are never again seen under their command, so it may also be interpreted as a one-time
occurrence for the sake of the battle that hypaspists and argyraspides had to be commanded by the same people.
131
Diod. 19.41.2.
132
Champion 2014: 38.
133
Diod. 19.30.5-6.
27
To conclude this section, there is no doubt that the hypaspist corps survived for the whole
of the Antigonid period, albeit with changes to its structure and role. As we are working with
the idea that Antigonus I Monophthalmos inherited most of his army from Alexander, there
must have been a hypaspist corps under his reign, although it was also in this period when the
division between hypaspists and argyraspides was finally achieved, becoming with time two
entirely separate bodies of the army. By the time we reach Antigonus III Doson and Philip V,
the hypaspists still exist but rather as a royal bodyguard corps, also performing less purely
military tasks such as surveillance of the troops and fine collection from soldiers, as recent
epigraphic finds show134. What does never seem to change is the elite nature of the body,
which is consistently made up of social and economically privileged members.
134
Hatzopoulos Organisation, nº 3 A II ll. 2-8.
28
4. AFTER PHILIP V: PERSEUS
Up until now we have focused on the situation of the army during Philip V’s reign while
trying to understand how it had or had not changed from previous times. Now, however, we
will stop looking back and start looking forward, concluding the present work with the reign
of Perseus, last king of Macedon.
The rule of Perseus is one of great relevance from a military point of view, not only
because of the challenge he had to face of pitching his army against Rome –which his father,
Philip V, had already done in Cynoscephalae–, but also because, being the last king of
Macedon, it is interesting to see how he made use of the army that had taken shape under his
predecessors. Most of his reign is framed in the context of the Third Macedonian War against
Rome –he was crowned king in 179 BC and the war started eight years later, in 171 BC–, so
the army played an extraordinarily important role in the historic development of this period.
Precisely, one of the main reasons that made Rome increasingly suspicious of Perseus was
the speed and the effectiveness with which he increased the military strength of his
kingdom135. After the death of his father and the short-lived renewal of the amicitia with
Rome, Perseus managed to keep the peace for a generation, which resulted in a significant
increase in the Macedonian population and thus in the numbers of the army136. When he
decided to go to war with Rome, he allegedly mustered some 43,000 men, as Livy tells us:
Ita summa totius exercitus triginta novem milia peditum erant, quattuor equitum.
Satis constabat, secundum eum exercitum, quem magnus Alexander in Asiam
traiecit, numquam ullius Macedonum regis copias tantas fuisse.137
Thus the total of the whole army was thirty-nine thousand infantry and four
thousand cavalry. It was generally agreed that, except for the army which
Alexander the Great took over to Asia, never had the forces of any Macedonian
king been so great.
Livy’s assertion that Perseus’ army was the second greatest of Macedonia’s history is
certainly an overstatement, since we have seen that Antigonus Monophthalmos gathered
135
Eckstein 2010: 240. As has already been commented on in the previous chapter, Alexander’s wars do not
seem to have had the extraordinary impact on demographics that had been argued by previous scholars, but
rather Macedonia’s population was able to stabilise itself enough to, with some growth during Perseus’ time, to
provide him with a powerful army.
136
Bosworth 2002: 94 n113.
137
Liv. 42.51.11. Translation by Evan T. Sage and Alfred C. Schlesinger.
29
some 44,000 men for the battle of Paraetacene138 and Demetrios Poliorcetes is said to have
raised 98,000 infantry in 288 BC139. But, despite Livy’s claim being untrue, it is a significant
statement, maybe trying to reinforce Rome’s merit on defeating Perseus, but it can also be
interpreted as a sign that Macedonia had indeed recovered from any past losses and that
between Philip V and Perseus’ reigns it had become a power not to be trifled with.
In the same chapter, Livy describes Perseus’ forces during their meeting in Pella, where
they agreed to wage war on Rome, with the following description:
Castra ante urbem ponit omnisque armatos in campo instruxit; summa omnium
quadraginta tria milia armata fuere; quorum pars ferme dimidia phalangitae erant;
Hippias Beroeaeus praeerat. Delecta deinde et viribus et robore aetatis ex omni
caetratorum numero duo milia erant: agema hanc ipsi legionem vocabant;
praefectos habebat Leonnatum et Thrasippum Eulyestas. Ceterorum caetratorum,
trium ferme milium hominum, dux erat Antiphilus Edessaeus.140
He pitched camp before the city and drew up all the soldiers on the plain; the total
of all was forty-three thousand under arms; about half of these were phalanx-
men; Hippias of Beroea was their commander. Then there were two thousand
chosen from all the force of light infantry for their strength and the vigour of their
youth; this unit the Macedonians called the Guard; its commanders were
Leonnatus and Thrasippus, Eulyestans. The leader of the other light infantry,
about three thousand men, was Antiphilus of Edessa.
Here we have mentioned two of the three canonical infantry units we have been dealing
with: phalangites, some 22,000, and the peltasts and the agema, three thousand and two
thousand respectively. The fact that Livy describes the agema as caetrati and the peltasts as
ceteri caetratorum once again confirms the identification of the two bodies that we have seen
since at least the times of Philip V, signalling continuity with the army of previous times.
The battle of Pydna, fought in 168 BC, was the last great battle fought by the Macedonian
army, who suffered an appalling defeat. Pitched against the Roman legions of the consul
Lucius Aemilius Paullus, Perseus deployed his troops in an uneven terrain, what sentenced
the battle for them. Livy is quite clear on the development of the battle, which only takes up
138
Diod. 19.27.1.
139
Plut. Demetr. 43.2. For more on numbers that dismiss Livy’s claim, see Billows (1995: 185 n4).
140
Liv. 42.51.3-5. Translation by Evan T. Sage and Alfred C. Schlesinger.
30
two chapters of his work: both the elephants and the cavalry were useless and fled before
time, and the phalanx was disrupted as soon as it left the plain, unable to counter the legions’
movements, and it was broken up by the Roman forces, rendering their sarissai useless in
close combat141. As Livy states at the end of the battle, facile convenit ab Romanis numquam
una acie tantum Macedonum interfectum142. It is worthy of mention that at the beginning of
the engagement, Aemilius was faced with the Bronze Shields, between the phalanx and the
light infantry, and the ex-consul Lucius Albinus with the White Shields, in the centre of the
enemy lines143. From this it would seem that both units remained in existence until the very
last moments of the Antigonid dynasty, being two infantry bodies distinct from the phalanx
and the hypaspists respectively, although once again, their precise attributes are lost to us.
After the defeat at Pydna and Perseus’ subsequent flight, we seem to get a mention of a
hypaspist that accompanied the king under the name somatophylax 144 . The fact that, as
narrated by Livy, we find argyraspides fighting in the battlefield but hypaspists serving as
royal bodyguards further serves to confirm the difference between both units, possibly
leading to a specialisation in their tasks, more battle based for the former and protective for
the latter.
Perseus’ army is perhaps the best example of the Antigonid army at its height, having
benefitted from an extraordinary increase in manpower and from the slowly built-up
organisation that he inherited from his predecessors. Though we have no information about
recruitment and census for his reign, it would seem sensible to assume that he employed the
same method found in the Cassandreia and Amphipolis codes from his father’s time. We also
find attested for this period all infantry units found under other Antigonid monarchs, thus
providing us with one of the most complete pictures of the Macedonian infantry and with that
of a complex and thoroughly trained professional army. However, Perseus’ reign also
evidences the decline of the Greek way of warfare when compared to the Roman model.
Perhaps the fact that Perseus’ army seems to resemble that of the first Antigonids in many
ways, particularly in terms of structure and organisation, is proof of the immobility of the
141
Liv. 44.41-42.
142
Liv. 44.42.7. “It is readily agreed that the Romans never killed so many Macedonians in any other single
battle”. Translation by Alfred C. Schlesinger.
143
Liv. 44.41.2.
144
Diod. 30.11.1. Walbank (1940: 290-91), Hatzopoulos (2001a: 56) and Le Bohec (1993: 232) accept the
identification of the hypaspists with the term somatophylax. Sekunda (2014: 52-56), however, draws a
distinctive line between both units based on their dress and weaponry. Still, he acknowledges the fact that in the
Antigonid period they are mentioned much less than in the Argead period (2014: 55), what could be interpreted
as a sign that hypaspists and somatophylakes were equated into one single unit after Alexander’s death.
31
Macedonian army throughout time, which stuck to the model it was familiar with and was
unable to catch up with the evolution of Rome and her legions.
32
5. CONCLUSION
The Macedonian army was an essential part of the kingdom and its society, as it had been
from the time of Philip II and as it continued to be throughout the Hellenistic period. Despite
the scant evidence that has reached our days and the century and a half that elapsed between
the rise and fall of the Antigonid dynasty, we can perceive that the army remained fairly
static from beginning to end; when looking at the army that Antigonus Monophthalmos
received from the late Alexander, one can find a number of similarities to that of Perseus,
more than a hundred years later. It is perhaps this structural immobility which led to
Macedonia’s final defeat against Rome, whose army had been able to adapt both to the terrain
and to the enemy, thus outdoing Perseus’ phalanx. The reason for the unchanging
organisation of the army may lay either in the commodity of relying on a system that had
worked well enough until then and in the historic circumstances of Hellenistic period, where
the wars between the Successor kingdoms confronted phalanx against phalanx and the need
for innovation was reduced to a minimum.
Another point of interest that this work raises, albeit in passing, is the relationship of the
king with his troops that we can infer from their deployment in the battlefield. While
Antigonus Monophthalmos preferred to rely on cavalry, Philip V based his strategy in
Cynoscephalae on his phalanx –with rather unsatisfactory results–, what could come to
reflect the mistrust of the former and the confidence of the latter. In a wider social context,
this would no doubt help us to understand the variable relationship of the Antigonid kings
with their people.
However, the greatest challenge of this work is trying to separate the general from the
particular. The lack of abundant data constantly pushes us to generalise in contexts were not
much can be known for certain, and where logic and cross-reference of the sources must be
applied. In consequence, we may not be sure of who exactly the hypaspists or the agema
were or what their exact attributions consisted in, but what we can analyse is the existence or
disappearance of particular units, terminology and battle tactics, so as to understand how such
a powerful army as the Macedonian one evolved and transformed and was finally so terribly
crushed under Rome in 168 BC.
33
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38

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ABSTRACT

Hatzopoulos, Organisation = Epigraphic appendix in M.B. Hatzopoulos (2001),

ISE = Moretti, L. (1976). Iscrizioni Storiche Ellenistiche, Firenze, La nuova Italia.

2.1. RECRUITMENT BASIS

ἐὰν δ[ὲ ὁ] υἱὸς ἦι (νεώτερος) τῶν εἴκοσι ἐτῶν ὁ δὲ πατὴρ ἐν ἔτεσιν

καὶ γὰρ ἐτύγχανον κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν καιρὸν τῶν ἀργυρασπίδων οἱ

2.3. CENSUS AND RECRUITMENT CONDITIONS

Once enrolled as a Macedonian citizen through the pyrokausis system, an individual’s

3.2. PELTASTS AND AGEMA

παραγενομένου δ᾿ εἰς τὴν Κόρινθον αὐτοῦ, μεγάλην σπουδὴν ἐποιοῦντο καὶ

On his arrival at Corinth Leontius, Ptolemaeus, and Megaleas, who were in

Μετὰ δὲ τούτους ἐτάχθησαν οἱ Μακεδόνες ἀργυράσπιδες, ὄντες μὲν πλείους

Arrian. Anabasis of Alexander, Volume I: Books 1-4. Translated by P. A. Brunt. Loeb

Diodorus Siculus. Library of History, Volume VIII: Books 16.66-17. Translated by C.

Polybius. The Histories, Volume I: Books 1-2. Translated by W. R. Paton. Revised by F. W.

Polybius. The Histories, Volume V: Books 16-27. Translated by W. R. Paton. Revised by F.

Theophrastus. De Causis Plantarum, Volume I: Books 1-2. Translated by Benedict

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