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A Note on the Hipparchies of Alexander

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. T. Griffith
G. T. Griffith
Affiliation:
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
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Extract

By the courtesy of Mr P. A. Brunt whose admirable paper now published (p. 27 ff.) I had the pleasure of reading at an early stage, and of the Editor in allowing me at Mr Brunt's suggestion to add a short note here, I am enabled to write about a point on which I was unable to follow Mr Brunt in his interpretation. It concerns the date at which Oriental cavalry was first introduced by Alexander into the hipparchies of Companion Cavalry, which (following Mr Brunt) I now believe to have become eight in number by a reorganisation of the year 328.

About the Oriental cavalry actually named by Arrian (at the Hydaspes battle) as participating in the invasion of India there is no disagreement between Mr Brunt and myself: the Arachosians and the Parapamisadae horse, the Bactrians, Sogdians, Scythians and Dahae are mentioned by Arrian in terms that show clearly that they were not included in the hipparchies at this time but were serving as separate units (A. v 11.3, 12.2: Brunt, 43 f.). These people, however, represent only a part of the Oriental cavalry forces available to Alexander, if he chose to use them, at any time after (say) early 330 B.C. for the central satrapies of the Persian Empire (Susiana, Persis and Media), and after the end of 330 for the satrapies occupied with little resistance during that year (‘Parthia’, Tapuria with Hyrcania, Areia and Drangiane). These Western or Central Iranians are never named by our sources as having participated in any of Alexander's campaigns, though the Far Eastern Iranians (Bactrians, Sogdians, etc.) are so mentioned by Arrian at the Hydaspes battle, and indeed as early as the year 328 (A. iv 17.3, Bactrians and Sogdians only).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 83 , November 1963 , pp. 68 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1963

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References

1 Brunt, 28 ff. I do not propose to refer to modern works already cited by Mr Brunt, except where it seems essential. Everywhere I have found the books both of Berve and of Tarn indispensable.

References to Arrian's Anabasis are abbreviated as A.

2 This I take to be the view of Berve, , Das Alexanderreich 107 f.Google Scholar: though his use of A. iii 30.6 to support it is inadmissible, I hope to show that his account of what actually happened was correct.

3 A. vii 8.2.

4 A. ii 14.7. The authenticity of this exchange of letters has naturally been questioned, but there is no cause to doubt that Arrian's version, derived from Ptolemy, gives the gist of what was really written. See now Pearson, L., Historia iii (1955) 447–50.Google Scholar

5 See below, p. 73.

6 Berve, 151.

7 A. iii 19.5, Thessalians and allies: ibid., 20.1, Companions, prodromoi, mercenaries under Erigyius: ibid., 7, mercenaries and Thracians, etc. (above).

8 See below, p. 71 f.

9 Brunt, 29.

10 Diod. xvii 57.1 ff.

11 A. i 28.4: for the winter campaign, i 24.3–29.3.

12 Best illustrated perhaps by Polyb. x 23.4 The textbook hipparchy of Asclepiodotus (7.11) contains 8 ilai.

13 The only ‘totals’ for troops on campaign hereafter, those for the troops with Alexander himself at the Hydaspes battle, are hard to accept, and seem certainly understated.

The cavalry total (5000, A. v 14.1) includes 1000 Dahae hippotoxotai (12.2; 16.4), + the Scythians, + the Bactrians and Sogdians (12.2; certainly 1000 together, and perhaps nearer 2000): this leaves 3000 (maximum, but probably less) for the hipparchies, of which five are named, but seven may have been there (only one was left with Craterus, 11.3).

Likewise the infantry total (6000—v 14.1; 18.3) will hardly stretch to cover the hypaspists, two brigades of the phalanx, the archers, the Agrianians (12.2), and some akontistai (13.4): at the start of the Indian expedition we hear of ‘two chiliarchies’ of the archers (iv 24.10), and these are not the whole force if Arrian is writing exactly.

14 For the λόχοι, A. iii 16.11.

15 Hdt. v 49.3, with vii 84 and 86, v 61–7: Xen. Anab. i 9.5; cf. ibid., i 8.3 and 27. See in general Olmstead, A. T., History of the Persian Empire 338–46.Google Scholar

At Cyrus the Great's review as described by Xenophon, (Cyrop. viii 3.15 ff.)Google Scholar there were 4000 δορυφόροι and 2000 ξυστοφόροι, but 40,000 Persian horse whose style is not named and presumably not lancers, as well as Medes, Armenians, Hyrcanians, Cadusians, and Sacae (with no figures given): though the figures here are valueless, the proportion of lancers to others may perhaps reflect the conditions of Xenophon's own day.

16 It seems even possible that the naming by Arrian of only 6 hipparchies (out of 8) at the Hydaspes could be due to a temporary amalgamation, if (e.g.) the hipparchies were under strength. Some Macedonians could be among the 3500 cavalry, 10,000 infantry left as army of occupation in Bactria-Sogdiana (A. iv 22.3), where nationalist or independent spirit had been greatest.

Berve's view that the mysterious ἑκατοστύες of A. vi 27.6 (cf. vii 24.4) may have been the Oriental units inside the hipparchy, while the ilai remained Macedonian, is attractive, but depends overmuch on his belief (based on vi 27.6) that the ἑκατοστνς cannot be a subdivision of the ile. Myself I think that the passage does admit of the interpretation that Berve excludes, and that vii 24.4 makes it probable that the cavalry λόχος came to be called ἑκατοστνς (so Tarn, , Alexander ii 160 f.Google Scholar).

17 A. vii 14.10. According to Berve (p. 112) there was only one hipparchy called ‘chiliarchy’ (namely the 1st), because there could be only one chiliarch (= Vizier of the Empire). This may be right; but the language of Arrian seems to me to imply that the unit had been called ‘the chiliarchy of Hephaestion’ before his death, and if so it can only have been to distinguish it from other chiliarchies, one would think.

18 Thus in the disputed succession after Alexander's death, the cavalry evidently supported the claim on behalf of Roxane's unborn son by Alexander, against that of Alexander's half-brother Arrhidaeus, the infantry's candidate: Arrian F. i 1 ff. (Jacoby, F. Gr. Hist. no. 156), with Diod. xviii 2.

19 A. vii 11.9.