Introduction

The army of Alexander the Great has been a personal favorite of mine for the 17+ years I've been wargaming with miniatures. What I propose to do in the following piece is to lay out several Alexandrian army lists for AW that reflect some of the reading and thinking I've done in that time. This is not meant to be a critique of current Alexandrian lists in AW, which are good to go as they are, rather it is a forum for the presentation of some ideas and interpretive material on the subject. Unless otherwise indicated, all dates are BCE.

Numbers

In the series of army lists I've published in SAGA to date, 200 has been the standard maximum number of stands allowed, excluding artillery, elephants, generals, heroes, scythed chariots, ships and supply units. Since 40,000 is a good upper limit for Alexander's army at Gaugamela, comprised of 32,000 foot and 8,000 cavalry, then 200 men per stand is our nominal scale, yielding 160 stands of infantry and 40 stands of cavalry for the army. All lists below are benchmarked on a 200/200 scale (200 stands @ 200 men per stand).

In order to provide a list scale-wise comparable to the Achaemenid lists appearing in Saga # 81, however, the column "Army @500" in the table below has the re-scaled minimums and maximums at 500 men per stand, 100 stands total for the Gaugamela army.

Technical Terms

Agema

Literally the "lead" unit. The elite cavalry and infantry units of the Macedonian royal army bore the designation agema.

Agrianes

There are contradictory references to the Agrianes in the sources concerning the battlefield their role. It is apparent from accounts (Arrian) of Alexander's Balkan's campaign of 335 that these troops excelled in hand-to-hand combat versus neighboring Illyrian and Thracian tribes. Furthermore, from the key roles they were (usually) assigned in the Persian campaigns it is clear that they were the elite non-Macedonian light infantry in the army. Where the confusion arises is in the fact they were often brigaded with a unit of archers to screen (e.g.) the Hypaspists' main battle line (MLB). Alexander's Agrianes were apparently recruited from the shieldbearers - hypaspists - of their king, Langarus. Green's suggestion that the Agrianian hypaspists were actually incorporated into the Macedonian hypaspists probably goes too far. The Agrianes are practically universally represented in wargaming army lists as relatively poorly equiped psiloi; most lists add insult to injury by including superior units of relatively anonymous "Thracian" peltasts. The lists below set the record straight.

Argyraspists

"Silvershields" See Comments re: hypaspists below.

Asthetairoi

There is an apparent controversy in the formal literature involving the term asthetairoi, concerning whether it was used for elite units of the foot companions (pezhetairoi), or alternatively, whether it is a marker for the phalangites recruited in upper Macedon. Devine uses the term in the former sense, but I have chosen to follow Brunt, A.B. Bosworth, Peter Green, and N.G.L. Hammond and use the term in the latter sense. It may literally mean "city companions", but these were rural troops grouped into units bearing the names of their unit commanders and the towns of their home districts.

The asthetairoi were stout mountaineers, poor of means but hardy fighters. I have followed a suggestion (inferred) from Brunt and based them in loose order (with cut-down pikes) for the Philip is a Barbarian, Pursuit To The East and (optionally) Indica variants below, as they were used by Philip and Alexander for overland campaigning in rugged terrain. The pezhetairoi may have been better armoured - equipped with a full or partial linen cuirasses - at some point during the campaign. Alexander took six units of phalangites into Anatolia, three each of pezhetairoi and asthetairoi. A seventh unit (of pezhetairoi) was added later (ca. 330), see the Indica variant below.

Hetairoi

Macedonian institutions were monarchial in practice. Thus, the king's closest retainers were gathered together in a Mannerbund of aristocratic "friends" or companions - hetairoi -- not unlike an heroic warband in Homer. The young bloods of the Macedonian aristocracy formed the famed shock cavalry of Alexander's army; apart from selected unit commands, Alexander's inner circle was gathered into an elite squadron, the agema.

Hypaspists

There has been regular traffic in the gaming press regarding the arms and tactics of the hypaspists. The more formal historical literature is no clearer. There is apparently no dispute that they were not average line troops, rather, they were guardsmen. The hypaspists were the best trained and equipped foot in the army. Often there are statements to the effect they were more lightly equipped than the pikemen of the line (pezhetairoi). Most concede the latter were very lightly equipped themselves; thus, unless the hypaspists ran naked, they could not have been more lightly armed than the pezhetairoi.

There is also much discussion regarding the length of the thrusting weapons they wielded: pikes or long spears? Since the multi-part Macedonian sarissa was designed to be easily broken down into components, there is no reason not to believe (especially) the hypaspists deployed weapons of a length suitable to their immediate mission. I would argue that they were prototypical of the later professional Hellenistic peltasts described below. Whether one bases them "loose" or not is a personal choice; there is nothing in their kit to suggest one order or another. Their nimbleness on the battlefield was a function of their superb training, because if anything they were clearly better equipped -- read more and better armor -- than the peasants in the national army, who provided the balance of the Macedonian pike.

Loose order

The concept "loose order" is a wargaming construct, providing a useful abstraction for wargaming purposes, otherwise lying outside the scope of normal historical or military literature. What I have understood this construct to represent on the wargames table is an average formation for those troops who usually fought in a more or less well-formed manner (of ordered ranks and files), but oft times did not, preferring instead to fight in gangs (warbands) or to skirmish (not formed in units, rather as individuals).

Thus, trained loose order troops, such as Macedonian hypaspists or professional, mercenary Greek peltasts, may be assumed to have reliably formed into effective close order units to counter mounted threats or good quality enemy infantry, and yet skirmished - including dueling between champions and unformed pursuit-- when it was to their advantage.

Peltasts

Classical Greek conventionally names its warriors by the arms they bear, usually the shield, sometimes the spear. There is no particular consistency in the extant sources, except the hoplitoi -- bearers of the hoplon, a large, heavy round shield -- were closely ordered heavy infantry. After that, things get dicey. Terms such as pelta (usually) and aspis (sometimes) designate lighter shields carried by a wide variety of troops, and the further one gets from the fifth century (BC), moving forward in time, the more confusion reigns. Thus, there is less ambiguity regarding the conventional views that the hoplite is as above, and the term peltast (peltastes) usually designates a lightly armed skirmisher through the end of the fifth century.

As the practices of war changed thereafter, so the significance of the form of shield is unclear. The earlier pelta may take the form of the Thracian "crescent" or not, but the later pelta is more often round. I would argue that by the late fourth century (if not earlier), practically all Greek and Macedonian close order infantry would have been equipped with "peltas" and pikes, the common kit of the professional Hellenistic infantryman, and body armor to "budget and taste". The thureos, the Greek term for the Celtic oblong shield (Latin: scutum] came into the Hellenistic world with the Galatian invasions of Anatolia and the Balkans in the third century, and is often pictured with Seleucid infantry thereafter; references to the thureos in an Alexandrian context are clearly anachronisms. As for the conventions in our wargames, the classical (5th Century) peltast is a skirmisher (in AW terms, SI with strength 2). The Hellenistic peltast (late 4th C) is commonly a professional, MLB mercenary soldier (in AW; UI, LAI or even HI; LS or Pike; strength 4 and "loose order").

Pezhetairoi

A term literally meaning "foot companions", it is generally taken to mean the rank-and-file line infantry in Macedonian service. There are alternative interpretations. Some view the pezhetairoi as an elite brigade of the line infantry; others argue that the terms pezhetairos and hypaspistes are synonyms. The interpretation adopted here applies the term to the older phalanx brigades recruited from lower Macedonia. Later additions to the army, raised in the wilds of upper Macedonia are here denoted "asthetairoi" (see above). The lists below adopt a simple rule: the pezhetairoi are generally better armored than the asthetairoi, but the latter are better suited to fighting in delaying terrain.

More Armies of Alexander the Great

Introduction and Technical Terms
Philip the Barbarian to 336 BC
Alexander Invades Persia 335-330 BC
Pursuit to the East 330-327 BC
India 326-323 BC
The Alexandrian Imperial Army, 323 BC