Info about Ethiopiai Agemata

[paullus]

oooh! I'm researching some related issues at the moment. The depiction of the Ethiopian agemata is based--I think--off of artistic depictions of them. They should probably be called "Trogodutai" rather than Ethiopians, since that is what they are called in the papyri. I haven't seen full evidence that they were given land allotments (thus becoming klerouchoi), though they may have been given some sort of settlement incentive. The few things I have seen on them have them fighting rebels along the upper Nile. I don't know if they were even really hired until after the first major rebellions (which followed Raphia). Perhaps the EB team has a historian who has done more work on the Ptolemaic military than I have at this point, and could give you some more info.

Now, as a counter example, Harkonesis, a mercenary horseman in Pathyris, in the Fayum, sold (in about 109 BC) a fourth of his government land allotment (sounds similar to the klerouch arrangement, though it also seems he is still in active service, so its complicated--perhaps it is inherited) to make a grain payment. Now, he's identified as black-skinned, and therefore broadly defined as "Ethiopian," but beyond that, we don't know much more about him (he's also very big), except he almost certainly wasn't one of the axe-carring agemata, in whatever form it may have existed.

So while I can't say specifically what EB's Ethiopian agemata was doing, and how they were recruited, I will say that many Galatai, Trogodutai, and Thraikoi were recruited from military settlements along the Nile. Even with the Galatians, many of them were probably recruited from the epigones (military settlers) and possibly klerouchs (more wealthy military settlers). However, I'd like to see some evidence Galatians were klerouchs, most of the few I've located in papyri were epigones.

On that note, where are the Thraikoi klerouchoi? They are far more visibile in the sources than either Galatians or Ethiopians.

And on a note for my own interests, what sort of visual sources did you EB guys use in figuring out the Ptolemaic armies? There's a gaesatae figuring from Alexandria in the British museum...perhaps there could be a way to recruit them in Egypt, or at least to go pick up a group of 'em in Anatolia?

[VandalCarthage]

Trogodutai is a far too specific term for this particular unit.

Though to my knowledge there was archaeological evidence behind their inclusion, I'm most familiar with the political events leading up to them. Ptolemy II Philadelphos launched what we can only conclude was a highly successful campaign along the Red Sea coast and far into Nubia, founding several Greek cities as he went along (Ptolemais Theron, Berenike Panchrysos, Berenike Trogodytike, etc). When he returned, he paraded a huge number of souvenirs of the whole event in an equally enormous military parade. Only a few years after the campaign in around 275, the a proclamation stelae on Philae records the addition of several Nubian nomarchies.

The Ptolemies had a very standard practice of recruiting mercenaries, and when you hear of a Ptolemy recruiting mercenaries, you can safely bet that they were klerouchs of some variety or another. The Ptolemaic system of military hiring wasn't like others, where "mistophoroi" (wage-earners) were just paid, nor would such a system have been productive. Ptolemy I had a left a very long border, much of which was unsettled before hand. To garrison these areas, the most efficient thing you could do, was either set up some Greeks or Macedonians in the area or settle natives around a strategic location - both were usually the case, though sometimes distinctly Hellenic peoples weren't always present. There are extensive records of all manner of people being settled in this fashion; the Jews for example were used as garrison troops in a lot of cities. The grand-nephew of the last native Pharaoh Nectenabo himself was the commander of the Ptolemies Southern Frontier fairly early on, as his stelae records, and his command was largely of Egyptians. Though the average soldier might not get a fertile land alotment, they were "military settlers" in the technical sense. The Fayyum settlers just had the fortune to be around when the depression was just being settled and doled out. Beyond settling a certain mix there, they had to make sure that other peoples weren't left to their own devices, so there weren't often huge concentrations of any particular people in any particular place.

There are some limited records of the recruited mercenaries in the far Nubian South, and of their use. With the Nile flowing towards the most productive regions of the Ptolemaic Empire, it was pretty easy to move troops around.

[paullus]

I guess Trogodutai might be too specific, though I've seen a couple of places where they are mentioned alongside machimoi, fleet rowers, and a few other military groups. I've also seen them called machairaphoroi ("swordbearers"), so maybe y'all are right not to identify them with an Ethiopian agema.