Royal stalemate - Hellenistic kingdoms at war
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Jasper, Murray, Michael and Lindsay discuss a the post Alexander Hellenistic world looking at uniforms (or lack of) and the colours they might be, Ross Cowans article sticks and stones and the use of low tech improvised weapons. Michael elaborates on his piece covering the Amphipolis regulation, disciplinary measures of the Macedonian army. And other issues such as Gigantism that the last issue of the magazine touched upon.
Welcome to the Ancient Warfare magazine podcast, produced by the History Network. If you have any comments or ideas, email [email protected] and for other discussions check out the Ancient Warfare forum, which you can find a link to at www.ancient-warfare.com. You can also find all the History Network podcasts by going to www.thehistorynetwork.org. Hello everyone, we're back with the Ancient Warfare podcast. My name is Jasper Ortiz, I'm the editor and with me tonight are Michael Taylor, Lindsey Powell and Murray Don. And this time we're going to discuss issue 46 Royal stalemate Hellenistic Kingdoms at War. It's a pretty wide topic, of course it's almost two centuries. Plus it's pretty much the entire Eastern Mediterranean where lots of stuff is going on. We have the big battles, we have the small battles, we have a naval warfare going into really pretty crazy levels of arms races and actually on the land too. So where to start it's kind of difficult. Well what came out for me, Jasper, was sort of Macedonians and Thracians. That's sort of Eastern Balkans part of the world and how they evolved and got to be used in different ways by the powers. The thing for me always is basically the lessons of an arms race when you've got a group of people who are creating the same weapon in the fall out acts and that stagnation that occurs and then by Pydna and Kynis Kiffleye, you can see the effect of a different way of thinking and how it can completely overthrow what was once seen as the most impenetrable and undefeatable force. I'm actually of perhaps the minority opinion that the Hellenistic phalanxes perhaps excessively underrate, defeated on several occasions. I don't know, I think I think it sometimes overlooked that both Kynis Kiffleye and also Pydna were exceedingly close battles. There were, and it also magnetially, there were major elements of Roman and Italian legions that were repulsed, thrown back, had those battles gone the other way. We might be sitting here talking about the fragility of the manipular legion and the overwhelming domination of the Macedonian phalanx. Yeah, that pesky rebellion by that northern Italian province who didn't know they were conquered yet. But I think the other problem of course is that they were always pitched at Raffia and an emphasis they were pitched against one another. A, that they couldn't shine and B, it was a mutually assured stalemate because they're still huge impenetrable blocks of infantry, thousands and thousands of men pushing against one another in phalanx warfare. So they're still solid and impenetrable, but they're doing it against one another. So it's a very hard place for them to sort of shine. I guess the military development is a very obvious point to discuss some more. We didn't do anything with the naval warfare in the era, but there of course you get wonderful examples of trends in gigantism and outdoing each other, to a point where it becomes probably completely impregnable. The famous example is of course the so-called 40 of, I forget which, Ptolemy, really quite a lot of attention paid to this thing, how it would have looked because it implies that there were 40 rowers in one sort of, well you know what they mean by a trireme. It's three rowers on one side of the ship sort of staggered above each other, each with one war. Three is the maximum number of levels, so then you would have had, I think the current explanation is more that it would have been a sort of a catamaran, so it's sort of two twenties with a construction in the middle. A huge ship that clearly would have was designed for all, more than any direct use in a naval battle. Well I think it was designed for all because it must have been utterly cumbersome, a crew of 7,000 to however many, not that many, but yeah a ridiculous number. Well the ancient discovery series actually did one episode where they looked at these ancient navies and they tried to attempt to depict what one of those looked like and it just struck me that it would be capable of building a hull that big, I mean it was just a colossal thing, almost the realm of fantasy here. It was sort of ancient Greek or the Macedonian area 51, you know you never actually get to see one but oh the room is a terrible, oh a 40 banker ship my god. My dream of rumours would have been enough probably. Well I did like that story in one of the articles here wasn't it, is it Philip or so that actually
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