Alexander's Marshals: A Study of the Makedonian Aristocracy and the Politics of Military Leadership

399 Pages·2016·7.918 MB·English

by  Waldemar Heckel

Alexander’s Marshals
This substantially revised and updated second edition of The Marshals of
Alexander’s Empire (1992) examines Alexander’s most important officers,
who commanded army units and were involved in military and political delib-
erations. Chapters on these men have been expanded, giving greater attention
to personalities, bias in the sources, and the social as well as military setting,
including more on familial connections and regional origins in an attempt to
create a better understanding of factions. The major confrontations, military and
political, are treated in greater detail within the biographies, and a discussion
of the organization and command structure of the Makedonian army has been
added.
Waldemar Heckel is a Research Fellow in the University of Calgary’s Centre for
Military and Strategic Studies, and was previously Professor of Classics.
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Alexander’s Marshals
A study of the Makedonian aristocracy
and the politics of military leadership
Second edition
Waldemar Heckel
First published 1993
This edition published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Waldemar Heckel
The right of Waldemar Heckel to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heckel, Waldemar, 1949- author.
Title: Alexander’s marshals: a study of the Makedonian aristocracy and the
politics of military leadership / Waldemar Heckel.
Other titles: Marshals of Alexander’s empire
Description: Second edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002278| ISBN 9781138934696
(hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315677781 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Alexander, the Great, 356 B.C.-323 B.C.—Friends and
associates. | Generals—Macedonia—Biography.
Classification: LCC DF234.2.H38 2016 | DDC 938/.07—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002278
ISBN: 978-1-138-93469-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67778-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
In Memoriam
Brian Bosworth
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Contents
Preface ix
List of abbreviations xiii
Map of Alexander’s empire xxvi
Introduction 1
PART I 5
1 The house of Attalos 7
2 The house of Aëropos 19
3 Antipatros son of Iolaos 33
4 Parmenion and Philotas 44
5 Black Kleitos and his relatives: the house of Dropidas 60
6 Koinos son of Polemokrates 67
7 Hephaistion son of Amyntor 75
8 Meleagros son of Neoptolemos 101
9 Leonnatos son of Anteas 107
10 Krateros son of Alexandros 122
11 Perdikkas son of Orontes 153
12 The sons of Andromenes 189
13 Polyperchon 200
14 The family of Harpalos 217
15 Ptolemy son of Lagos 230
viii Contents
PART II
The instruments of power 241
A Alexander and the Makedonian aristocracy 243
B The organization of the army 260
Appendices 281
I Sirrhas (Irrhas) the Illyrian 283
II The so-called conspiracy of Amyntas Perdikka 287
III Asandros son of Philotas 291
IV Artakoana 292
V The office of chiliarch and Hephaistion’s chiliarchy 294
VI White Kleitos and the naval war in the Aegean 298
VII Neoptolemos archihypaspistes 305
VIII Antigenes, commander of the Silver Shields 308
IX The sons of Larichos: Erigyios and Laomedon 315
Stemmata 319
I The house of Attalos 321
II The Lynkestian royal house 322
III The house of Iolaos 323
IV The house of Parmenion 324
V The family of Black Kleitos 324
VI The family of Krateros of Orestis 325
VII The house of Andromenes and the family of Perdikkas 326
VIII The family of Harpalos 327
IX The house of Ptolemy 328
X The Argead royal house 329
XI The last of the Achaimenids 330
XII The family of Pharnabazos 331
Bibliography 332
Partial index 363
Preface
Much of what is contained in the pages that follow was published in 1992 under
the title The Marshals of Alexander’s Empire. But the intervening twenty-four
years have seen a large number of new publications in the field of Alexander
studies (to say nothing about the resurgence of interest in the Diadochoi), and
it is perhaps fair to say that more work has appeared on the individuals who
helped to create Alexander’s Empire than was available to me when I wrote the
previous versions of this study; the first was my doctoral dissertation, Marshals
of the Alexanderreich, submitted to the University of British Columbia in 1978,
and examined by Truesdell S. Brown. Furthermore, the appearance of my Who’s
Who in the Age of Alexander the Great: Prosopography of Alexander’s Empire
(Oxford and Malden, MA, 2006) has led many scholars to bypass the detailed
treatment in the Marshals in favor of the more succinct entries in the Who’s Who,
which admittedly has the attraction of offering vitae of all the known individuals
of the period. That the original Marshals was more than a catalogue of individuals,
accompanied by complete references to the primary sources and modern schol-
arly literature, escaped even some of the book’s reviewers. I was thus extremely
grateful to Graham Shipley, whose belated review in Classical Review (1999),
drew attention to my true aim:
to focus on the men (and they are all men) who are arguably the real authors
of Alexander’s success, and to straddle the divide between Alexander’s reign
and the early years of the Successors, who owed their positions to having
served with the king.
(p. 481).
When I came to consider a revised and updated version of the book, it became clear
to me that the discussions of the lesser individuals had indeed been superseded
by the entries in the Who’s Who, but that those of the important commanders—
those who could truly be classified as marshals—needed to be rewritten in order
to take into account the fine and thought-provoking comments of scholars who
published their works after 1992. Not surprisingly, much of this new scholarship
has dealt with the last years of Alexander’s life and the first years of the age of
the Diadochoi. As a result, I have chosen to focus on the major players and have