The Instrument

Alexander crossed into Asia at twenty-two with the best army in the world, an engineering corps, a war plan and an advance force already ashore. He had built none of it.

A course on the thought of Alexander.

Philosophy · Antiquity

What you will learn

• State what Macedonian infantry was before Philip, on the evidence of a contemporary, and why the country's economy produced cavalry and no foot.
• Describe what the sarissa head was designed to do, and why the depth of the formation mattered more than the front rank.
• Explain why only the first three or four ranks levelled their pikes, and what the rest were for.
• State the phalanx's structural weakness and name the enemy who later exploited it systematically.
• Give the range of lengths modern specialists assign the sarissa, and say why none of them can settle it.
• State what Worthington and Fuller both admit before describing a single reform, and what follows for every confident claim about Philip.
• Distinguish testimony from reverse-engineering, and say which of the two most statements about the Macedonian army are.
• Name the one class of evidence in this subject that depends on nobody's reconstruction.

Course outline

1. What the Rabble Became — Macedonian infantry was a force its own king declined to put in the field. Within one reign it was the best in Europe, and the reason is a weapon that is not a long spear but a different object with…
2. Four Scholars, Four Lengths — The sarissa is the most famous infantry weapon in the ancient world and nobody can tell you how long it was. Four specialists give four answers, there are no contemporary descriptions, and the two…
3. The Drill — The best surviving description of this army in operation contains no fighting. Trapped in a defile with an enemy on the heights and a second army behind him, Alexander drilled the phalanx in silence…
4. The Engineers — A phalanx cannot climb a wall, and a Greek army that reached a defended city could do little but wait for hunger. Philip founded a standing engineering department, recruited a Thessalian to run it…
5. Paid, and Carrying Their Own Food — The reforms that made this army are not the ones anybody remembers. Philip paid his soldiers, took away their carts, and kept their officers' sons at court — and the one contemporary who watched it…
6. What Was Left of It — Inheriting a thing and keeping it are different, so the last module asks what Alexander actually changed. The answer is that he spent it: the allies sent home, the regional loyalties unpicked, the…

Works read in this course

• The Anabasis of Alexander — Chinnock's 1884 translation, complete and public domain. Arrian follows Ptolemy and Aristobulus and names them.
• Life of Alexander — Dryden's translation, public domain.
• The History of Alexander — Yardley's translation — IN COPYRIGHT. The most rhetorical of the four historians and the most vivid on court conflict.
• Library of History, Book XVI — Welles, Loeb 1963 — IN COPYRIGHT. The only continuous ancient narrative of Chaeronea and of Philip's murder.

Built from

A synthesis of 8 books.

• Ian Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia
• Donald Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army
• J. F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great
• A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire
• Ernst Badian, Collected Papers on Alexander the Great
• Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great
• Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon
• Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great

Terms introduced

sarissa, phalanx, Companion cavalry, hypaspists, Royal Pages

Part of the Simposeum course library.