Macedonian Warrior by Heckel and Jones

Macedonian Warrior, Alexander’s Elite Infantryman (ISBN 978-1841769509), is a highly informative account of this skilled entity of Alexander’s forces.

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. Fascinating 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 relatively small booklet packed with an interesting analysis of every aspect of this force, with referrals to ancient writers and plenty of pictures and drawings to illustrate it all. In the back, we find an excellent glossary of Greek words as well as museums and websites for those who want to dig in further.

In short, a must for everyone interested in the campaigns of Alexander the Great.