Historians of EB Team UNITE!!

Okay, two questions for the historical know-it alls of the EB team (no disrespect intended).

#1:
I've run across several mention of Rhodian slingers as being incredibly good and far beyond any normal Hellenic slingers, but they are all well before the time period. During the period that the mod is set, were Rhodians any better than your average Hellenic Slinger?

#2:
Okay, we have Hetairoi who are the Companions of the King. We have the Pezhetairoi who were the Foot Companions. So can anyone tell me what the feth are Asthetairoi?

1. Yes.

2. Elite Pezhetairoi

2. What's it mean then (literaly).

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Originally Posted by Sarcasm

1. Yes.

2. Elite Pezhetairoi

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Then what the heck are the Argyraspidai?

and why aren't Rhodian slingers available as mercenaries/regionals in Rhodos?

hum... re-read the descriptions Gran Guitarra :book:

very quickly:
The Pezhetairoi are proffecional pike men, men who are trained, drilled, & disiplined. They are all land owners with voting rights. The Asthetairoi are reformed pezhetaroi brough up by the Makedonian king to stem the rise of Rome, they wear chainmail instead of linothorax and they are made up of a larger pool of people than the original. The Argyraspidai are the most expirienced of the pezhetairoi are wealthier and have more armor.

i encourage u to reread it to get more details

So the Hysteroi pezhetairoi are gone from eb1.0? :no:

I thought those were the Hysteroi Pezhetairoi.

And if they were created to check the rise of Rome, how come there are mentions of them being used by ALEXANER THE GREAT in his campaigns?

and why no Rhodian slingers if they were so much better than the average Hellenic SLinger in the time period?

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Originally Posted by Pharnakes

2. What's it mean then (literaly).

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ασθεταιροι probably means something akin to "Citizen companions". Αστος means "a townsman, citizen", and obviously εταιροs is "companion". (Πεζεταιροι, by the same token, is a combination of "foot" and "companion", so you get the general idea).

Cheers.

Exactly.
For Rhodian slingers, we are considering them. You might also want to research pisidian slingers. Or the Syracuse slingers that Hiero sent to aid the Romani in the First Punic war, IIRC. There were many territories that were famous for their slingers. As I said before Rhodians are under consideration.

Okay, thank you for the information.

But,
if the Asthetairoi were created to combat the rise of Rome and were merely a super heavy phalanx, why are there mentions of them fighting in Alexander's campaigns?

Out of curiosity, exactly where are these mentions that you're... mentioning?

Cheers.

@Gran Guitarra

I believe that Arrian and other historians who recorded Alexander's campaigns were very loose with their terminology. The argyraspidai were created in India by Alexander, but every now and then they were still referred to as 'hypaspistai'. Not to mention things like the so-called 'Seleukid legionnaires' still being referred to as argyraspidai. In fact, records of the Seleukid-Roman Thermopylae refer to the Argyraspidai as peltastai! So it would not be wise to take the naming literally.

Especially when the Asthetairoi refer clearly in the Alexandrian case to a phalanx soldier who was a townsman or citizen, it could just as easily be just a synonym for the Pezhetairoi, who were Makedonian citizens. After all, one is 'Foot Companions' and one 'Citizen Companions', they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It would be the equivalent of Homer using different adjectives to describe Iliad heroes. 'Well-greaved Achilles' and 'Stout-speared Achilles' do not indicate different people named Achilles.

For some idea of just how confusing the Greek historians made naming conventions, refer to 'The Seleucid Army: Organisation and Tactics in the Great Campaigns' by Bezalel Bar-Kochva. There's a whole chapter on the nature of recruitment of Klerouchoi and Argyraspidai that should utterly confuse you by the time he finishes discussing the different contexts and usages of the words. As said before, Agema, Hypaspistai, Peltastai, Chrysaspides, Chalkaspides and Hetairoi all enter into the chapter at some point or other.

I read a book about Alexander, and it clearly stated that they were two different forces.

According to the book there were too few mentions (at least available or known to the author) to be able to successfully/surely determine their equipment and purpose. They were also clearly separate from both the Hetairoi and Pezhetairoi, at least in what I read.

Except Chrysaspides never existed. Bar-Kochva made an error, which I assume he will correct if he ever gets the chance.

The Astheteroi can be translated as "closest companions". Whether that means a higher rank or higher quality I do not know. It is probable, but we do know they occupied the "position of honor" - as in, they were deployed on the right of the phalanx closest to the king.

The Hysteroi Pezhetairoi are still in EB. They are the reformed phalanx.

The Argyraspides developed during Alexander's campaigns and were formed from the older members of the phalanx. This seems to have changed by EB's time and in the Seleukid army they are formed by the sons of military settlers. The Makedonians are still a bit of a mystery. We see a corps d'elite at Pydna, but I do not know if that is them.

The term of peltastai for the elite phalanxes seems to have arisen because they had used the larger pelte shield rather than the smaller, regular phalanx shield.

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Originally Posted by abou

The term of peltastai for the elite phalanxes seems to have arisen because they had used the larger pelte shield rather than the smaller, regular phalanx shield.

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What, like the Basilikon agema in EB, you mean? Or did they still use the full length sarrisa?

This long but useful article describes the evolution of Hellenistic Infantry from the Iphikrates "reforms" to the end of the Hellenistic Infantry (it is splitted in two parts).
It gives information about peltasts, thureophoroi, phalangites, pezhetairoi , etc.

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The term of peltastai for the elite phalanxes seems to have arisen because they had used the larger pelte shield rather than the smaller, regular phalanx shield.

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This is true. Moreover it seems that the professional Makedonian pezhetairoi were trained as skirmishers / peltasts too, in order to be able to perform a dual role in the battle field.

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Originally Posted by Pharnakes

What, like the Basilikon agema in EB, you mean? Or did they still use the full length sarrisa?

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You're confusing the pelte with the thuros. The pelte is circular.

And yes, they did use the full sarissa.

Nice article that. Amazing the things you can find on the internet... About the chrysaspides. Without reopening that long and drawn-out debate over it, I would just like to say that I believe the existed, not as a separate military unit per se, but just for the military parade at Daphne, they were probably specially created. In other words, I believe they had no separate training whatsoever, but were probably just argyraspidai with shields faced in a different colour for variation, like the chalkaspidai also mentioned. But they were all argyraspidai.

@gran guitarra: What book about Alexander did you read? Title please? I should like to locate in my local libraries if possible and devour it. Before this thread to be sure, I had never heard of the Asthetairoi, not even in my battered copy of JFC Fuller.

What do you mean, Pez? The actual word chrysaspides doesn't even show up in the Daphne parade description.

We did this chrysaspides thing before, here's a link to the thread. There's actual greek in it!

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...t=chrysaspides

the surviving text from Polybius is highly fragmentary, and "5000 chrysaspides" was one possible filler for the missing space, which most scholars have rejected.

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Originally Posted by pezhetairoi

@gran guitarra: What book about Alexander did you read? Title please? I should like to locate in my local libraries if possible and devour it. Before this thread to be sure, I had never heard of the Asthetairoi, not even in my battered copy of JFC Fuller.

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The book is in Spanish, and unless you are extremely fluent in Spanish I do not recommend trying to read it. It was hard for me to do it, and its my first language.

Still, if you want to try, the book is called: Alejandro Magno (from a series called Los Grandes).
Just so you know, the only moment it mentions the Asthetairoi is at the end. Saying that they formed part of Alexander's army, but that there is too little information about them to have a conclusive picture of what they function they served and how they were equipped.

re: Chrysaspides

Alright, Bar-Kochva mentions chrysaspides in his book with connection to Daphne. Whoops. And I did read the whole chrysaspides thread, btw, I just wasn't fully convinced. Call me stubborn. :D

@Gran Guitarra

Oh dear, Spanish. I never did get past elementary Spanish, and that was five years ago. Ah well.