The Antigonid army, as with the army of Philip II and Alexander the Great that came before it, was based principally around the Macedonian phalanx, which was a solid formation of men armed with small shields and long pikes called sarissae. The majority of Macedonian troops serving in the army would have made up the numbers of the phalanx, which took up to one-third to two-thirds of the entire army on campaign.[1] Alongside the phalanx, the Antigonid army had its elite corps, the Peltasts, numerous Macedonian and allied cavalry and always a considerable amount of allied and mercenary infantry and auxiliary troops.
The Macedonian army continued to evolve under the Antigonid dynasty. It is uncertain how many men were appointed as somatophylakes bodyguards, which numbered eight men at the end of Alexander the Great's reign, while the hypaspistai seem to have morphed into assistants of the somatophylakes rather than a separate unit in their own right.[2] At the Battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BC, the Macedonians commanded some 16,000 phalanxpikemen.[3] Alexander the Great's 'royal squadron' of companion cavalry were similarly numbered to the 800 cavalrymen of the 'sacred squadron' (Latin: sacra ala; Greek: hiera ile) commanded by Philip V of Macedon during the Social War of 219 BC.[4] Due to the Roman historian Livy's accounts of the battles of Callinicus in 171 BC and Pydna in 168 BC, it is known that the Macedonian cavalry were also divided into groups with similarly named officers as had existed in Alexander's day.[4] The regular Macedonian cavalry numbered 3,000 at Callinicus, which was separate from the 'sacred squadron' and 'royal cavalry'.[4] Thanks to contemporary inscriptions from Amphipolis and Greia dated 218 and 181 respectively, historians have been able to partially piece together the organization of the Antigonid army under Philip V, such as its command by tetrarchai officers assisted by grammateis (i.e. secretaries or clerks).[5]
Antigonid army under Antigonus Gonatas
When Antigonus Gonatas took over from his father, Demetrius I of Macedon, he inherited little more than a few mercenary garrisons spread across Greece.[1] But using his mercenary forces, he was able to defeat an invading Celtic army at Lysimachea in 277 BC. This gave Gonatas the Macedonian throne, which had been in turmoil since the Galatian invasions of 279 BC. However, when Pyrrhus of Epirus invaded Macedon in 274 BC, Antigonus' army suffered some minor defeats and desertions before eventually defecting en masse to Pyrrhus.[6] Once again Gonatas was left with but a mere handful of followers and mercenaries. These forces were of considerable aid to Sparta when Pyrrhus assaulted the city in 272 BC.[7] Pyrrhus was soon killed by a combined effort of the Spartans, the Argives and Antigonus Gonatas. Having now recovered Macedon after the death of Pyrrhus, Gonatas ruled until 239 BC. At this point, the Antigonid kingdom probably had no standing army; the only permanent corps, besides the mercenaries, being the 'horse guards... and the foot guards, the agema'.[8] The army was probably formed by a levy of farmers called out when a serious campaign was expected.[9] Almost all overseas and garrison work was performed by mercenaries. Due to the financial strains that plagued the kingdom, Gonatas primarily hired Galatian and Celtic mercenaries, as they were much cheaper than Greeks.[10] Antigonus Gonatas ruled directly over the original Macedonian kingdom, however he put the newly acquired territory under the control of a strategoi with military powers.[11] By the time of his death, Gonatas had cemented Antigonid dominance in Macedon; however, in Greece itself, Macedon was weaker than it had been under Alexander the Great. This would change with his successors though.
Demetrius II, father of the future Philip V of Macedon, only ruled for 10 years, but in his reign he fought many campaigns against the northern Thracian, Celtic and Illyrian tribes as well as an Achaean-Aetolian alliance. However his swift death left Antigonus Doson as regent for the young Philip. A resurgent Sparta under Cleomenes III led to war in the Peloponnese and the Achaean League under Aratus of Sicyon turned to Antigonus Doson for help. Doson campaigned against Cleomenes in 224-22 BC. This culminated with the Battle of Sellasia in 222 BC, in which Cleomenes was defeated by an allied army, mainly anchored by a Macedonian army of 13,300 Macedonians and 5,300 mercenaries.
After the death of Doson, Philip took the throne and almost immediately began to campaign. Wars against the Aetolia, Sparta and Elis, as well as a Dardanian invasion kept Philip busy in the years 220-217 BC and gave him a great deal of military experience. Yet Philip's rule would be marked by war with Rome, which culminated with a treaty with Carthage which led to the First Macedonian War.[12] The first war ended in a stalemate and the Peace of Phoinike, which allowed Philip to keep his newly acquired land from his campaigns against the Aetolians, Rome's ally. Between 205 and 201/200 BC Philip used the peace to reorganize his army recruitment system and introduce new strict disciplinary codes for the army.[13]
Peace did not last and an alliance with Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, which allowed Philip to campaign in Asia Minor, led to an alliance of Pergamon, Athens and Rhodes who appealed to Rome for help.[14] By 199 BC, the Romans had inflicted some minor defeats on the Macedonians and had also recruited the Aetolian and Achaean Leagues to their side.[15] An army under Titus Quinctius Flamininus was sent to Greece and campaigned against Philip V in 198 BC in the Aous Valley, which Philip defended by using carefully placed artillery and missile troops, leading to many Roman casualties.[16] Using a flanking maneuver, Flaminius managed to dislodge Philip and chase him into Thessaly, where in 197 BC the two sides met at the Battle of Cynoscephalae. Here, Philip was decisively beaten, with 8,000 of his men killed and 5,000 taken prisoner, about half of his entire army.[17][18]
The defeat left Philip with a weakened kingdom. Consequently, the king set about a system of reforms and reorganized his kingdom, especially in increasing his manpower base for future campaigns. He encouraged large families and imported Thracians from districts he had recently annexed into Macedon proper.[19] Thus, in the autumn of 187 BC, Philip transported segments of the populations of the coastal towns and cities to the northern Paeonian frontier and then moved Thracians and so forth into the evacuated districts of the towns. This 'Macedonised' the frontier and also made it easier to defend. The Thracians moved to the cities and towns were people directly responsible to Philip as king and also a useful force to watch over suspect citizens. New mines were created, old ones were deepened and agricultural and harbour duties were increased to increase the kingdom's revenue.[20]
Overall, these social and economic moves strengthened the kingdom by Philip's death and the accession of his son Perseus of Macedon. By the eve of the Third Macedonian War, Perseus, thanks to his father, had enough grain to last the army 10 years without drawing on harvests in or outside Macedon, enough money to hire 10,000 mercenaries for 10 years, a fully reconstituted army and "arms for three such armies as Perseus possessed in his armouries".[21] In fact, when Aemilius Paullus, the Roman commander who defeated Perseus at Pydna in 168 BC, took the Antigonid royal treasury, he found 6,000 talents left.[22][23] The army fielded by Perseus in the Third Macedonian war was 43,000 strong, 29,000 of them Macedonians. Compare this to the army of Doson at Sellasia, which had 13,300 Macedonians, or the army of Philip at Cynoscephalae (18,000 Macedonian foot, 2,000 cavalry and 5,500 mercenaries). The years of peace and consolidation had increased the national levy by 9,000 men.[21] However, at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC, Perseus was severely defeated, with the loss of 20-25,000 killed and 11,000 captured.[24][25][26] After this defeat, the Antigonid kingdom was quickly disbanded, with Perseus becoming a Roman prisoner and Macedonia being split up into several autonomous republics.
Sometime around the beginning of the second century BC, Philip V introduced a set of new codes for discipline in his army - the Amphipolis codes. As an example, these new measures included fines for missing equipment and weaponry: two obols for not having the konos (helmet), 3 obols for missing a sarissa and a drachma for missing the shield.[27] We also know from this code that the ordinary phalangite would have been equipped with a leather or linen jerkin known as a linothorax and not a full metal cuirass, as the fines for missing cuirasses are limited to officers only. They also dealt with the organization of encampments. Hypaspists were to set up their tents "immediately after those of the king and his immediate entourage".[28]
Peltasts and the agema
The most elite, veteran Antigonid-period Macedonian infantry from at least the time of Antigonus III Doson were the peltasts, lighter and more maneuverable soldiers wielding peltaijavelins, swords, and a smaller bronze shield than Macedonian phalanx pikemen. They sometimes served as a more mobile phalanx, using smaller sarissas rather than swords.[29][30] The premier guard infantry unit of the regular army, they are not to be confused with the skirmisher troops of the same name, denoted by their shield, the pelte. Among the peltasts, roughly 2,000 men were selected to serve in the elite agemavanguard, with other peltasts numbering roughly 3,000.[31] The amount of peltasts varied over time, perhaps never more than 5,000 men (the largest figure mentioned by ancient historians, an amount that existed in the Social War of 219 BC).[32] They fought alongside the phalanx pikemen, notably the chalkaspides ('bronze shields'), up until the very end of the kingdom in 168 BC.[33]
Malcolm Errington writes that by the time of Antigonus III, the peltastai formed a separate unit from the Macedonian phalanx and "operated as a form of royal guard similar in function to the earlier hypaspistai."[34] According to Walbank the peltast corps was "an infantry force... which fought beside the phalanx in battle, but at other times employed for ambushes, forced marches and special expeditions".[35][36] Examples of their special actions would be their ambush in Lyncestis[37] and their use, as shock troops, in the storming of Cephallenia.[38] At Pydna, the corps fought as part of the phalanx, in which they were butchered to the last man. The Peltast corps was probably 5,000 strong, with an elite battalion of 2,000 called the agema.[1][39][40] The corps was probably organized into chiliarchiai and subdivided like those of the phalanx.[1]
As for term Hypaspist, it still lived on in the army. However, instead of a combat unit, it was a staff corps and bodyguard force for the king. For instance, a Hypaspist was sent by Philip V to Larissa to burn state papers after the defeat at Cynoscephalae.[41]
Chalkaspides and Leukaspides
Like Alexander's phalanx, the phalanx of the Antigonids was mainly based on men "enrolled territorially from the Macedonian peasantry".[42][43] "Barbarians" settled in Macedon, like the Thracians and so forth, were given land in return for serving in the phalanx.[1] The phalanx under the Antigonids made up a much higher proportion of the army than under Alexander. At Sellasia, it was 34% of the army (with 10,000 men reported in the phalanx), at Cynoscephalae it was 62% and at Pydna it was 49%.[1] The Antigonid phalanx itself may have been divided into two separate corps, the Chalkaspides ("bronze-shields") and Leukaspides ("white-shields").[1][44][45] The Chalkaspides were probably more prepared for prolonged combat service than the Leukaspides as they are sometimes found on distant expeditions without the other corps.[1] The leukaspides are referred to rarely in sources, suggesting that they may have been a supplemental force only raised in times of need. Nicholas Victor Sekunda suggests an alternate view, that the leukaspides were not a phalanx force, but rather a term used to describe non-Macedonian auxiliaries and mercenaries such as Thracians, reported as using white shields in other sources, but not always fighting in the style of a Macedonian phalanx.[46]
Cavalry
The importance and proportion of cavalry in the Antigonid army was far less than in Alexander's army. Whereas the proportion of cavalry to infantry in Alexander's army was about 1:6, in the later Antigonid armies the proportion was about 1:20.[28] However, we must remember that Philip II had a similar proportion of cavalry to infantry and the reasoning for the higher amounts of mounted forces in Alexander's campaigns was due to the vast distance of territory needed to be travelled, especially in Persia. In Alexander's campaigns, swift advances and the ability to cover vast distances were the key to success. In comparison, for the Antigonid commanders, the lack of any real enemy cavalry and short distances meant cavalry were not needed as much and they reverted to pitched heavy infantry battle.[47] Antigonus III Doson had only 300 Macedonian horse with him at Sellasia in 222 BC, though by the reign of Philip V the amount of cavalry had increased, with Philip fielding about 2,000 Macedonian and Thessalian horse in 197 BC.[1] A sizeable part of the Macedonian cavalry was actually supplied by Thessaly, whose city-states continued to supply horse for the Antigonid kings as they had for Alexander and his father. However, the use of Thessalian cavalry decreased in 196 BC, when the Romans, triumphant after Cynoscephalae, gave parts of Macedonian Thessaly to their allies, the Aetolians.[48] Perseus, due to his father's extensive recruitment drive and a period of 30 years of peace, was able to field 3,000 purely Macedonian cavalry to serve with him in the Third Macedonian War. The core guard cavalry unit was the small royal or 'sacred' squadron. This unit seems to have been between 300 and 400 strong, as Doson had that amount with him at Sellasia and Philip V had 400 'household' cavalry with him on his campaigns.[1] Due to the general lack of native horse, the Macedonians usually supplemented their cavalry with that of allies and mercenaries. At Sellasia, alongside Doson's 300, there were 600 allied and 300 mercenary cavalry.[49] Meanwhile, at Pydna, Perseus had a 1,000 picked allied Thracian horse under Cotys IV, the king of the Odrysai.[50] The infantry phalanx depended heavily on the cavalry, which of course the Antigonids lacked in numbers. The weakness and neglect of forces on the flanks, most importantly cavalry forces, led to the exploitation of gaps in the phalanx at Cynoscephalae and Pydna.[51]
In 149 BC, nearly 20 years after the defeat of Perseus at Pydna, Andriscus, a mercenary and supposed heir to Perseus, went to Demetrius I of Syria for aid, but was sent as a prisoner to Rome.[56] He quickly made his escape and sought refuge amongst the Thracian tribes to the north of Macedon. There, Andriscus gained the support of the Thracian king Teres III and was given a troop of 100 men, with another 100 sent by other Thracian chieftains.[57][50] Andriscus quickly defeated the forces of the several autonomous Macedonian republics in battle beyond the Strymon in the lands of the Odomanti tribe.[58] The Thracian troops of Andriscus would have primarily been Peltast skirmisher infantry and light cavalry. Andriscus, having established himself as the new king of Macedon, under the name Philip VI, decisively defeated a Roman army under Publius Juventius. Having defeated the Romans, Andriscus invaded Thessaly in 148 BC, where he suffered a setback in battle against the Achaean League, commanded by Scipio Nasica. A Roman army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus then invaded Macedon and defeated Andriscus at the Second Battle of Pydna.[59] The defeat was probably helped by the defection of Telestes, the general appointed by Andriscus to command his cavalry. The Macedonian aristocratic cavalry joined Telestes, as the richer classes supported the Romans more than they did Andriscus, and any hope of success was dead.[60]
Andriscus, also often referenced as Pseudo-Philip, was a Greek pretender who became the last independent king of Macedon in 149 BC as Philip VI, based on his claim of being Philip, a now-obscure son of the last legitimate Macedonian king, Perseus. His reign lasted just one year and was toppled by the Roman Republic during the Fourth Macedonian War.
The Antigonid dynasty was a Macedonian Greek royal house which ruled the kingdom of Macedon during the Hellenistic period. Founded by Antigonus I Monophthalmus, a general and successor of Alexander the Great, the dynasty first came to power after the Battle of Salamis in 306 BC and ruled much of Hellenistic Greece from 294 until their defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC, after which Macedon came under the control of the Roman Republic.
Macedonia, also called Macedon, was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, which later became 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 Cynoscephalae was an encounter battle fought in Thessaly in 197 BC between the Roman army, led by Titus Quinctius Flamininus, and the Antigonid dynasty of Macedon, led by Philip V, during the Second Macedonian War. It was a decisive Roman victory and marked the end of the conflict.
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.
Philip V was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon from 221 to 179 BC. Philip's reign was principally marked by the Social War in Greece and a struggle with the emerging power of the Roman Republic. He would lead Macedon against Rome in the First and Second Macedonian Wars. While he lost the latter, Philip later allied with Rome against Antiochus III in the Roman-Seleucid War. He died in 179 BC from illness after efforts to recover the military and economic condition of Macedonia and passed the throne onto his elder son, Perseus of Macedon.
The Fourth Macedonian War was fought between Macedon, led by the pretender Andriscus, and the Roman Republic. It was the last of the Macedonian Wars, and was the last war to seriously threaten Roman control of Greece until the First Mithridatic War sixty years later.
The Achaean League was a Hellenistic-era confederation of Greek city states on the northern and central Peloponnese. The league was named after the region of Achaea in the northwestern Peloponnese, which formed its original core. The first league was formed in the fifth century BC. The second Achaean League was established in 280 BC. As a rival of Antigonid Macedon and an ally of Rome, the league played a major role in the expansion of the Roman Republic into Greece. This process eventually led to the League's conquest and dissolution by the Romans in 146 BC.
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.
Antigonus III Doson was king of Macedon from 229 BC to 221 BC. He was a member of the Antigonid dynasty. He was called Euergetes, Soter and Guardian (ἐπίτροπος) as he was the guardian of Philip V of Macedon.
The sarissa or sarisa was a long spear or pike about 5 to 7 meters in length. It was introduced by Philip II of Macedon and was used in his Macedonian phalanxes as a replacement for the earlier dory, which was considerably shorter. These longer spears improved the strength of the phalanx by extending the rows of overlapping weapons projecting towards the enemy. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, the sarissa was a mainstay during the Hellenistic era by the Hellenistic armies of the diadochi Greek successor states of Alexander's empire, as well as some of their rivals.
The Battle of Sellasia took place during the summer of 222 BC between Macedon and the Achaean League, led by Antigonus III Doson, and Sparta under the command of King Cleomenes III. The battle was fought at Sellasia on the northern frontier of Laconia and ended in a Macedonian-Achaean victory.
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 Battle of Pydna was fought in 148 BC between Rome and the forces of the Macedonian leader Andriscus. The Roman force was led by Quintus Caecilius Metellus, and was victorious. The battle played an important role in deciding the outcome of the Fourth Macedonian War, and saw the annihilation of the last military-political force of Macedon.
The Hellenistic armies is a term which refers to the various armies of the successor kingdoms to the Hellenistic period, emerging soon after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, when the Macedonian empire was split between his successors, known as the Diadochi.
The Cleomenean War was fought between Sparta and the Achaean League for the control of the Peloponnese. Under the leadership of king Cleomenes III, Sparta initially had the upper hand, which forced the Achaean League to call for help the Macedonian king Antigonos Doson, who decisively defeated Cleomenes in the battle of Sellasia in 222.
The Leukaspides were a group in the Antigonid Macedonian army. Scholars suggest two main possibilities for what precisely they were. The first is that they were equipped in the style of the Macedonian phalanx and were a counterpart to the Chalkaspides, a group uncontroversially known to be sarissa-wielding hoplites with bronze shields. In this possibility, they were probably only mustered when the Macedonians needed more manpower as a supplemental corps. The second possibility is that the Leukaspides referred to ethnically non-Macedonian troops hired as auxiliaries or mercenaries who fought using thyreos shields, which were wooden, oval-shaped, and covered with hide or felt. Ancient sources refer to a "phalanx" of Leukaspides several times, but in the second possibility, it is assumed that the word "phalanx" is meant in the broad sense of any organized military troop, rather than the specific sense of Greek-style spear phalanxes. Auxiliaries probably fought using whatever their locally trained weaponry was—swords, slings, battle axes, and so on.
Chalkaspides is a poetic term used by writers of Koine Greek to refer to a Macedonian phalanx. The most notable group called chalkaspides was the main phalanx force of the Antigonid Macedonian army in the Hellenistic period. The group were hoplites who fought in phalanx formation using long sarissas and bronze shields, either a pelta or an aspis. They may have been supplemented by another Antigonid force called the Leukaspides when more manpower was necessary, although the leukaspides are less well-attested to in ancient sources. The leukaspides may have been very similar to the chalkaspides and also fought as a phalanx, or they might be a term for non-Macedonian allies and mercenaries who used wooden thyreos shields rather than the bronze pelta.
The kingdom of Macedonia was an ancient state in what is now the Macedonian region of northern Greece, founded in the mid-7th century BC during the period of Archaic Greece and lasting until the mid-2nd century BC. Led first by the Argead dynasty of kings, Macedonia became a vassal state of the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Persia during the reigns of Amyntas I of Macedon and his son Alexander I of Macedon. The period of Achaemenid Macedonia came to an end in roughly 479 BC with the ultimate Greek victory against the second Persian invasion of Greece led by Xerxes I and the withdrawal of Persian forces from the European mainland.
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.
↑ Sekunda 2010, p.459; Errington 1990, p.245: "Other developments in Macedonian army organization are evident after Alexander. One is the evolution of the hypaspistai from an elite unit to a form of military police or bodyguard under Philip V; the only thing the two functions had in common was the particular closeness to the king."
Errington, Robert Malcolm (1990). A History of Macedonia. Translated by Catherine Errington. Berkeley, Los Angeles, & Oxford: University of California Press. ISBN0-520-06319-8.
Errington, R. Malcolm (2008), "A History of the Hellenistic World 323-30 BC"
Hammond, N.G.L (1965), "The Opening Campaigns and the Battle of the Aoi Stena in the Second Macedonian War", JRS, Vol.56, p.39-54
Hammond, N.G.L (1984), "The Battle of Pydna", JHS, Vol.104, p.31-47
Hammond, N.G.L (1988), "The Campaign and the Battle of Cynoscephale in 197 BC", JHS, Vol.108, p.60-82
Hammond, N.G.L & Walbank, F.W. (1988), "A History of Macedonia: Volume III, 336-167 BC"
Hammond, N.G.L (1989), "The Macedonian State"
Head, Duncan (1982), "Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars 359 BC to 146 BC"
Heckel, Waldemar & Jones, Ryan (2006), "Macedonian Warrior"
Penrose, Jane (2005), "Rome and her Enemies: An Empire created and destroyed by War"
Saddington, D. B. (2011) [2007]. "Classes: the Evolution of the Roman Imperial Fleets". In Erdkamp, Paul (ed.). A Companion to the Roman Army. Oxford, Chichester, & Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. pp.201–217. ISBN978-1-4051-2153-8.
Sekunda, Nicholas Viktor (1995). Seleucid and Ptolemaic Reformed Armies 168-145 BC, Volume 2: The Ptolemaic Army.
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