It is 336 BC and Philip II of Macedon is dead.
In his lifetime he had completely overhauled the Macedonian army, transforming it into
the greatest force the Hellenic World had yet seen.
In this episode, we shall cover the evolution and reorganisation of the Macedonian army
during the reign and conquest of Philip’s son, Alexander the Great.
Arguably the element of the Macedonian army that evolved the most during Alexander’s
conquests was his siege machinery.
Just as his father had before him, Alexander quickly embraced the great potential of siege
warfare for his campaign.
Ladders remained the most cost-effective way to capture a settlement and we know Alexander
took many smaller towns using them.
Yet to conquer more formidable defences of the larger Achaemenid fortresses Alexander
required more complex, awe-inspiring engines.
Just as Polyidus was for Philip, one engineer was more crucial to the evolution of siege
machinery during Alexander’s infamous campaign.
His name was Diades.
A resident of Pella, Diades had been a student of Polyidus and succeeded him as chief engineer
at the time of Alexander’s accession.
Diades would create several new siege machines during Alexander’s reign.
Arguably one of the greatest was the trupanon, the borer.
Designed to ram down a settlement’s walls, simple borers had been in existence before
Diades.
Yet it was he who radically improved its design.
Like the ram, Diades’ borer consisted of a wooden beam with a metal head.
It would be attached with ropes that were connected to pulleys and winches.
So, when the mechanics pulled the ropes, it would exert a powerful force on the ram and
cause a large breach in the wall.
Diades not only increased the borer’s power, but also its protection.
The beam was placed inside a mobile wooden shield called a Chelone or ‘tortoise.’
Alongside the borer, Diades invented many other formidable siege engines.
This included a grappling machine, designed for pulling down defences, and a much-improved
drawbridge called an epibathra.
This drawbridge acted as a gangway which soldiers could use to cross over from either a siege
tower or ship.
Although the drawbridge had been in use before Alexander’s time, it was Diades who dramatically
increased its effectiveness.
Diades would also make modifications to many existing siege engines such as the ram (protected
with a tortoise) and the siege tower (increased mobility and better drawbridge).
Many of these engines would be used during Alexander’s successful Siege of Tyre – arguably
Alexander’s greatest military feat.
Consequently, Diades became known as the ‘man who took Tyre.’
There were other engineers that accompanied Alexander.
Talented engineer Charias, was essential in the creation of various siege machines, designed
to counter specific defences.
At Halicarnassus for example, we hear the Macedonians employed ditch-filling tortoises
to aid an assault on the city.
Another prominent engineer – Posidonius would design a modified siege tower for Alexander.
Its wheels were mounted on a sturdy timber chassis, which provided a strong base for
the tower.
Inside the chassis, 150 men would man the contraption that would push the engine’s
wheels towards the enemy wall.
As well as containing other levels for stone throwing torsion catapults, or lithoboloi,
the tower had two main floors.
One floor was placed at a level that would be the same height as the opposing battlements.
The other level was placed higher up, level with the top of a defending tower.
Each level had a drawbridge which would be lowered when the tower reached the wall, through
which the attackers could cross over onto the defences.
Facing such a complex and deadly mobile machine must have been terrifying for any defending
force.
Significant developments would also be made to Alexander’s artillery throughout his
campaign.
Polyidus’ creation of the torsion catapult under Philip was revolutionary for siege warfare
and Diades and his fellow engineers continued to improve upon his initial design.
By the start of Alexander’s Persian conquest, no longer were these torsion catapults used
to primarily fire arrows at the defenders themselves; thanks to further advancements
they were now able to also fire stones with enough power to smash down enemy walls.
They were called lithoboloi, or stone throwers.
Very quickly, Diades, Charias and the rest of the Macedonian engineers made further improvements
to these lithoboloi.
At the sieges of Halicarnassus and Tyre for example, we hear of highly-destructive torsion
stone-throwers called petroboloi being used in Alexander’s army.
These devastating machines could either be wheeled or wheel-less and could be placed
on land, on siege towers and on ships.
Alexander continued to use other types of artillery such as the arrow-firing torsion
catapult – the successor to the non-torsion oxybeles used by his father.
Each of these machines provided covering fire for his troops and were manned by teams of
specialised artillerymen.
What made these great engines even more fascinating was their portability.
It was Alexander who truly embraced the concept of designing siege equipment that could be
dismantled and re-used elsewhere.
Throughout his campaign, both by sea and land, his army’s great siege engines were dismantled,
transported and then reconstructed at various locations.
During the siege of Gaza, for example, Alexander ordered Diades’ siege engines used at Tyre
to be dismantled and transported by sea, to be quickly reconstructed.
The Macedonian infantry and cavalry would also evolve during Alexander’s reign.
Upon his accession Alexander inherited the most revered infantry force of the time.
Yet he would quickly instigate changes to it.
Perhaps to ensure their loyalty, Alexander quickly extended the name pezhetairoi, or
‘foot-companions’ to include the entirety of his phalanx, while the elite infantry of
Philip II became known as the hypaspists.
Whether the pezhetairoi of Philip were the same soldiers who formed the hypaspists of
Alexander is unknown.
The pezhetairoi of Alexander’s army experienced no significant changes for much of Alexander’s
conquest.
Its soldiers remained in basic units of 16 men, called a dekas, which could be combined
to form a lochos of 128 men.
12 of these lochoi combined formed a battalion of 1,536 men.
Small changes in structure, however, do appear to have occurred for the hypaspists.
New sub-commanders, appointed by merit, were introduced into the elite unit.
Companies of 500 men were commanded by a pentakosiarch while units of 1,000 were commanded by a chiliarch.
The hypaspists consisted of 3,000 men in total, so the unit had six pentakosiarchs and 3 chiliarchs
altogether.
Later, following Alexander’s death, his hypaspists would receive a new name to reflect
their high-quality: the argyraspides or ‘silver shields’ – used most notably by Eumenes
during his great campaign against Antigonus.
From the Granicus in 334 BC to the Hydaspes in 326 BC, the Macedonian phalanx was the
nucleus of Alexander’s army.
Yet as Alexander’s campaign went on reinforcements from Macedon ended and the number of his foot-companions
slowly dwindled.
Alexander lost many of his Macedonians due to the death, injury, old-age or being settled
somewhere in his empire and by 324 BC, less than 10,000 remained.
Alexander had no option but to radically reorganise his Macedonian phalanx, incorporating Iranian
infantry into the battalions.
In each dekas, only four of the sixteen men remained Macedonians, stationed at the front
and rear in the formation.
The rest were Persian levies, not trained with the sarissa and instead using their native
armaments: the bow and javelins.
This mixed phalanx lacked the cutting-edge and flexibility of the original and thus did
not stand the test of time following the death of Alexander.
Alexander had seen this as a temporary measure, yet he still needed to bridge the divide between
the conquered and the conquerors in his army if he were to be a legitimate King of Asia.
One way he realised he could do this was by removing his reliance on his Macedonian infantry
and improving the quality of his Asian footmen.
In 327 BC Alexander ordered 30,000 Asians to be recruited and trained in the Macedonian
manner.
Trained by Macedonian veterans, these oriental youths would undergo constant practice in
the use of Macedonian arms and discipline for the next two years – separate from their
Macedonian counterparts.
At the beginning of 324 BC, they were presented to Alexander at Susa, dressed in Macedonian
attire, well-trained in the sarissa phalanx and a rival to the Macedonians themselves
– so much so that Alexander labelled them his epigoni or ‘successors.’
By the end of 324 BC, Alexander’s powerful Macedonian sarissa phalanx was no longer the
undisputed key infantry force in his army; now there was a rival, equally-prestigious
formation in Alexander’s force.
The Macedonian cavalry too evolved during Alexander’s reign most notably with the
Companions.
Philip had arranged his Companions into ile squadrons based on the regions where they
owned their land.
Each squadron – 200 men strong – was commanded by a squadron leader called an iliarch, who
wielded great power in the field.
Alexander altered this.
In 331 BC, perhaps to curb each squadron commander’s power, Alexander began to reform the command
structure.
He divided each ile into two smaller units called lochoi.
In charge of each of these, he appointed new sub-commanders called lochagoi; these appointments
were based on merit and not the region associated with each squadron.
These Lochagoi owed their new-found power to Alexander and their loyalty became unquestionable.
The power of the original iliarch was curbed significantly, as was the regional affiliation
of each of the squadrons.
In 330 BC, Alexander made a crucial decision that would forever change the organisation
of his Companions.
Philotas, the son of Alexander’s second in command, Parmenion and the overall commander
of the entire Companion cavalry body, was accused of being involved in a conspiracy
against the King and duly executed along with his father.
Alexander then divided the command over his Companions between two of his closest friends:
Cleitus the Black and Hephaestion.
Never again would he allow one man total control of his elite cavalry unit.
Furthermore, Alexander changed the name for the basic unit of the cavalry.
From 330 BC onwards, he no longer labelled his Companion regiments as ile squadrons but
hipparchies.
The term ile continued to be used as a subdivision of each hipparchy – with two ile squadrons
together forming one hipparchy.
As for the Royal Squadron, or Basilike Ile, this too appears to have had its name changed
at this time to the agema.
Consequently, Cleitus and Hephaestion also received a new title and were called Hipparchs.
By 327 BC, Alexander had increased the number of Hipparchs commanding Companions to eight
– including men such as Perdiccas and Craterus, who would later become the Diadochi.
Alexander would also introduce oriental horsemen into his companion cavalry.
By 324 BC, four hipparchies of the Companions consisted solely of picked Iranian cavalrymen
and a fifth contained a mixture of oriental and Macedonian horsemen.
We also know that certain Asian nobles were incorporated into the Royal agema.
Consequently, the Companions were no longer a select Macedonian unit from the region’s
nobility.
With the creation of the foreign hipparchies of the companions and the epigoni, certain
oriental units had become just as prestigious as his Macedonians by the end of Alexander’s
reign.
It was not just the Companions that Alexander greatly reorganised however.
Great change also appears probable to the Macedonian light cavalry, the Prodromoi.
Following 329 BC, any reference to the Macedonian light cavalry disappears completely from our
sources.
What happened to the prodromoi is unknown, although many now suspect Alexander merged
them with his reorganised Companions and placed them within the new-look hipparchies.
From then on Alexander’s light cavalry came mostly from his Asian units – such as his
horse archers from Dahae.
By the end of Alexander’s reign, the Macedonian army had significantly evolved from that of
his father Philip.
We will cover other critical parts of his army in the next episodes, so make sure that
you are subscribed to our channel and pressed the bell button to be notified of our videos.
We would like to express our gratitude to our Patreon supporters and youtube sponsors,
who make the creation of our videos possible.
This is the Kings and Generals channel, and we will catch you on the next one.