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Agema (Greek : ἄγημα), plural agemata (αγήματα) is a term to describe a military detachment, used for a special purpose, such as guarding high valued targets. Due to its nature the agema most probably comprises elite troops.
The word derives from the Greek verb ago (Greek : ἄγω, lit. 'to route', 'to drive'). It can literally mean a pack, a routing party and/or a detachment that has a single commander.
In ancient Macedonia, the royal squadron of the Companion cavalry formed the mounted agema, and was usually led in person by the king. The senior chiliarchy (χιλιαρχία) of the hypaspists and asthetairoi, and later argyraspids (silver shields) formed the foot agema. In the eastern Diadochi states (the Seleucid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, the Kingdom of Bactria) they were the infantry guards of the king. The eastern agema guards wore bronze plate, Phrygian helmet (or Thracian) helmet and aspis shield, and carried a sarissa and short sword.
In Macedonia, especially under Philip V of Macedon and Perseus of Macedon, the agema formed an elite body within the corps of peltasts. This corps is not to be confused with the light infantry. The Macedonian peltast corps was the equivalent of the hypaspists in Alexander the Great's army. The agema, as well as the peltasts, according to Duncan Head, would fight in pitched battle as a conventional phalanx. Yet they may have used lighter equipment for forced marches.
The agema had a full name, the agema of the hypaspists. The absence of mention of them in detailed writings about the Seleucid campaigns may be due to their having retained only the second half of their name, being called the hypaspists. They formed a crack force within the infantry guardsmen corps.
They were recruited from the Medes and their neighbors. [1]
The agema in the Seleucid army was also elite corps of cavalry that would escort the king into battle or be placed under direct command and combined with the Companions to escort the king.
In modern Greece's Hellenic Army, the term agema denotes an honorary guard detachment, such as at the hoisting of the Greek flag or in national and religious feasts. The name was applied for a short time to the Royal Guard, following its establishment in December 1868.
The Seleucid dynasty or the Seleucidae was a Macedonian Greek royal family, founded by Seleucus I Nicator, which ruled the Seleucid Empire centered in the Near East and regions of the Asian part of the earlier Achaemenid Persian Empire during the Hellenistic period.
Macedonia, also called Macedon, was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal Argead dynasty, which was followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians, the earliest kingdom was centered on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, and bordered by Epirus to the southwest, Illyria to the northwest, Paeonia to the north, Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south.
The Battle of Pydna took place in 168 BC between Rome and Macedon during the Third Macedonian War. The battle saw the further ascendancy of Rome in the Hellenistic world and the end of the Antigonid line of kings, whose power traced back to Alexander the Great. The battle is also considered to be a victory of the Roman legion's manipular system's flexibility over the Macedonian phalanx's rigidity.
The Battle of Gaugamela, also called the Battle of Arbela, took place in 331 BC between the forces of the Army of Macedon under Alexander the Great and the Persian Army under King Darius III. It was the second and final battle between the two kings, and is considered to be the final blow to the Achaemenid Empire, resulting in its complete conquest by Alexander.
The Battle of Magnesia took place in either December 190 or January 189 BC. It was fought as part of the Roman–Seleucid War, pitting forces of the Roman Republic led by the consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and the allied Kingdom of Pergamon under Eumenes II against a Seleucid army of Antiochus III the Great. The two armies initially camped north-east of Magnesia ad Sipylum in Asia Minor, attempting to provoke each other into a battle on favorable terrain for several days.
The Battle of the Granicus in May 334 BC was the first of three major battles fought between Alexander the Great of Macedon and the Persian Achaemenid Empire. The battle took place on the road from Abydus to Dascylium, at the crossing of the Granicus in the Troad region, which is now called the Biga River in Turkey. In the battle Alexander defeated the field army of the Persian satraps of Asia Minor, which defended the river crossing. After this battle, the Persians were forced on the defensive in the cities that remained under their control in the region.
A peltast was a type of light infantry originating in Thrace and Paeonia and named after the kind of shield he carried. Thucydides mentions the Thracian peltasts, while Xenophon in the Anabasis distinguishes the Thracian and Greek peltast troops.
The Companions were the elite cavalry of the Macedonian army from the time of King Philip II of Macedon, achieving their greatest prestige under Alexander the Great, and regarded as the first or among the first shock cavalry used in Europe. Chosen Companions, or Hetairoi, formed the elite guard of the king (Somatophylakes).
The Battle of Raphia, also known as the Battle of Gaza, was fought on 22 June 217 BC near modern Rafah between the forces of Ptolemy IV Philopator, king and pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt and Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid Empire during the Syrian Wars. It was one of the largest battles of the Hellenistic kingdoms and of the ancient world, and determined the sovereignty of Coele Syria.
A hypaspist is a squire, man at arms, or "shield carrier". In Homer, Deiphobos advances "ὑπασπίδια" or under cover of his shield. By the time of Herodotus (426 BC), the word had come to mean a high status soldier as is strongly suggested by Herodotus in one of the earliest known uses:
Now the horse which Artybius rode was trained to fight with infantrymen by rearing up. Hearing this, Onesilus said to his hypaspist, a Carian of great renown in war and a valiant man ...
The Agrianes or Agrianians, were a tribe whose country was centered at Upper Strymon, in present-day central Western Bulgaria as well as southeasternmost Serbia, at the time situated north of the Dentheletae. Per Strabo the source of the river Strymon was within Agrianes' territory. In the times of Philip II of Macedon, the territory of the Agrianes was administered by Pella. They were crack javelin throwers and an elite unit of Alexander the Great's light infantry, who fought under the command of General Attalus.
The army of the Kingdom of Macedon was among the greatest military forces of the ancient world. It was created and made formidable by King Philip II of Macedon; previously the army of Macedon had been of little account in the politics of the Greek world, and Macedonia had been regarded as a second-rate power.
The pezhetairoi were the backbone of the Macedonian army and Diadochi kingdoms. They were literally "foot companions".
The Argyraspides were elite Macedonian soldiers who carried silver-plated shields, hence their name. The original unit were hypaspists serving in the army of Alexander the Great. During the Wars of the Diadochi, they initially served Eumenes, but betrayed him to Antigonus I Monophthalmus at the Battle of Gabiene in 316. After their dispersal under Antigonus, later units of the Seleucid Empire and Roman Empire would be modeled after them.
The Hellenistic armies is the term applied to the armies of the successor kingdoms of the Hellenistic period. The Hellenistic armies emerged after the death of Alexander the Great, when his vast empire was split between his successors, also known as the Diadochi. During the Wars of the Diadochi, the Macedonian army under Philip II and Alexander gradually adopted new units and tactics, further developing Macedonian warfare and improving on the tactics used in the Classical era. The armies of the Diadochi bear few differences from those of Alexander, but during the era of the Epigonoi, the differences were obvious, favoring numbers over quality and weight over maneuverability. The limited availability of Greek conscripts in the east led to an increasing dependence on mercenary forces, whereas in the west, Hellenistic armies were continuously involved in wars, which soon exhausted local manpower, paving the way for Roman supremacy. The major Hellenistic states were the Seleucid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt and Macedonia during the Antigonid kingdom. Smaller states included Attalid Pergamum, Pontus, Epirus, the Achaean League, the Aetolian League, Syracuse, and other nations such as Athens, Sparta, etc.
The Seleucid army was the army of the Seleucid Empire, one of the numerous Hellenistic states that emerged after the death of Alexander the Great.
The Antigonid Macedonian army was the army that evolved from the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia in the period when it was ruled by the Antigonid dynasty from 276 BC to 168 BC. It was seen as one of the principal Hellenistic fighting forces until its ultimate defeat at Roman hands at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC. However, there was a brief resurgence in 150-148 during the revolt of Andriscus, a supposed heir to Perseus.
The first government of ancient Macedonia was established by the Argead dynasty of Macedonian kings during the Archaic period. The early history of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia is obscure because of shortcomings in the historical record; little is known of governmental institutions before the reign of Philip II during the late Classical period. These bureaucratic organizations evolved in complexity under his successor Alexander the Great and the subsequent Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties of Hellenistic Greece. Following the Roman victory in the Third Macedonian War over Perseus of Macedon in 168 BC, the Macedonian monarchy was abolished and replaced by four client state republics. After a brief revival of the monarchy in 150–148 BC, the Fourth Macedonian War resulted in another Roman victory and the establishment of the Roman province of Macedonia.
The Macedonian phalanx was an infantry formation developed by Philip II from the classical Greek phalanx, of which the main innovation was the use of the sarissa, a 6-metre pike. It was famously commanded by Philip's son Alexander the Great during his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire between 334 and 323 BC. The Macedonian phalanx model then spread throughout the Hellenistic world, where it became the standard battle formation for pitched battles. During the Macedonian Wars against the Roman Republic, the phalanx appeared obsolete against the more manoeuvrable Roman legions.
The military tactics of Alexander the Great show that he was one of the greatest generals in history. During the Battle of Chaeronea, won against the Athenian and Theban armies, and the battles of Granicius and of Issus, won against the Achaemenid Persian army of Darius III, Alexander employed the so-called "hammer and anvil" tactic. However, in the Battle of Gaugamela, the Persians possessed an army vastly superior in numbers to the Macedonian army. This tactic of encirclement by rapid shock units was not very feasible. Alexander had to compose and decide on an innovative combat formation for the time; he arranged his units in levels; he pretended to want to encircle the enemy in order to better divide it and thus opened a breach in its defensive lines.