Asiatic Successor mercenary infantry

[nikgaukroger]

Just starting to read about the Ptolemaic army so as this list covers Ptolemy I Soter i was looking at it. I am wondering why the Greek mercenaries in the list are classified as pikemen - seems rather early for this and certainly what I have read so far about Ptolemy I does not suggest that mercenaries at this time were being trained "in the Macedonian manner", or some such description.

[lionheartrjc]

Okay, the list does run from 323 BCE and I would accept that hoplites are under-represented in the earliest armies.

Judging from the accounts of their battles, by 317 BCE it appears the armies of Antigonus and Eumenes were training mercenary infantry as pikemen, so I would expect Ptolemy to be doing the same thing.  Macedonian armies equipped with pike had been defeating Greek armies and in the wars of the successors, I am not sure I would want to be the successor with an army of hoplites facing an army of pikemen.

I suppose I would ask the question the other way around, what evidence is there for larger numbers of Greek mercenary hoplites in the armies of the successors? 

Richard

[nikgaukroger]

A tricksy one to answer whichever way around you ask the question, although I would certainly suggest that as being armed in the Macedonian manner was the new incoming thing you really need evidence of that rather than for the status quo and that silence would be more indicative of that status quo.

Looking back at the SoA Battle Day for Paraitakene I note that the battle pack suggested that the troops identified there as mercenaries would not be pikemen and that unlike other troops in the armies were not described as armed as Macedonians.

Even at the end of the C3rdBCE (Raphia) we get statements about which troops have been armed/trained as Macedonians which suggests that they otherwise weren't.

[nikgaukroger]

In a current topic on the SoA forum about phalangites in Hellenistic armies Duncan has reminded us about this quote from Diodoros:

Of the infantry, more than nine thousand mercenaries were placed first, next to them three thousand Lycians and Pamphylians, then more than eight thousand mixed troops in Macedonian equipment (pantodapoi d'eis ta Makedonika kathoplimenoi)

Which certainly reads to me that the 9000+ mercenaries (along with the Lycians and Pamphylians) are not armed with Macedonian equipment (i.e. are not pikemen) as only the mixed troops (pantodapoi) are so described.

[badhabum]

We all read what we want to read  reminds me of a discussion about FA nellies ...ok I flee