Heckel and Jones have made a praiseworthy effort to cover every aspect of infantrymen from the days of King Philip to training, campaigning, marching and fighting along with the rest of the army that accompanied Alexander the Great for more than ten years. They tell about the enlistment of the men, their appearance and equipment (sarissa, shield, body armor), and the overall conditions of service, i.e. their pay, rewards, promotions and punishments – not be taken lightly! Most interesting of all is to read about the phalanx, a formation that never failed Alexander. Very exciting to me anyway is the chapter about the splitting up of these infantrymen into pezhetairoi, asthetairoi, hypaspistai (regular hypaspists), argyraspids, hypaspistai basilikoi (royal hypaspists), taxeis and chiliarchia.
This is a rather small booklet but packed with interesting analysis of every single aspect of this force, with referrals to ancient writers, and plenty of pictures and drawings to clearly illustrate it all. In the back we find a nice glossary of the Greek words as well as museums and websites for those who want to dig in further.
In short, a must for everyone who is interested in the campaigns of Alexander the Great.
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