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

399 Pages·2016·7.918 MB·English
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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. This Page is Intentionally Left Blank 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 utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or 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 This Page is Intentionally Left Blank 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

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