. See below.
Phalanx
(Classical Greek) – The infantry formation used by Greek
hoplites
in warfare, eight to ten deep and as wide as circumstance allowed. Greek commanders experimented with deeper and shallower formations, but the
phalanx
was solid and very difficult to break, presenting the enemy with a veritable wall of spear points and shields, whether the Macedonian style with pikes or the Greek style with spears. Also,
phalanx
can refer to the body of fighting men. A Macedonian
phalanx
was deeper, with longer spears called
sarissas
that we assume to be like the pikes used in more recent times. Members of a
phalanx
, especially a Macedonian
phalanx
, are sometimes called
Phalangites
.
Phylarch
(Classical Greek) – The commander of one file of
hoplites
. It could be as many as sixteen men.
Porne
(Classical Greek) – A prostitute.
Pous
(Classical Greek) – Measurement; About one foot.
Prodromoi
(Classical Greek) – Scouts; those who run before or run first.
Psiloi
(Classical Greek) – Light infantry skirmishers, usually men with bows and slings, or perhaps javelins, or even thrown rocks. In Greek city-state warfare, the
psiloi
were supplied by the poorest free men, those who could not afford the financial burden of
hoplite
armour and daily training in the gymnasium.
Sastar
(Avestan) – Tyrannical. A tyrant.
Stade
(Classical Greek) – About 1/8 of a mile. The distance run in a ‘stadium’. 178 meters. Sometimes written as
Stadia
or
Stades
by me. Thirty
Stadia
make a
Parasang
.
Taxeis
(Classical Greek) – The sections of a Macedonian
phalanx
. Can refer to any group, but often used as a ‘company’ or a ‘battalion’. My
taxeis
has between 500 and 2,000 men, depending on losses and detachments. Roughly synonymous with
phalanx
above, although a
phalanx
may be composed of a dozen
taxeis
in a great battle.
Xiphos
(Classical Greek) – A straight-bladed infantry sword, usually carried by
hoplites
or
psiloi
. Classical Greek art, especially red-figure ware, shows many
hoplites
wearing them, but only a handful have been recovered and there’s much debate about the shape and use. They seem very like a Roman gladius.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am an author, not a linguist – a novelist, and not fully an historian. Despite this caveat, I do the best I can to research everything from clothing to phalanx formations as I go, and sometimes I disagree with the accepted wisdom of either academe or the armchair generals who write colourful coffee table books on these subjects.
And ultimately, errors are my fault. If you find a historical error, please let me know!
One thing I have tried to avoid is altering history as we know it to suit a timetable or plotline. The history of the Wars of Alexander is difficult enough without my altering it. In addition, as you write about a period you love (and I have fallen pretty hard for this one) you learn more. Once I learn more, words may change or change their usage. As an example, in Tyrant, I used Xenophon’s Cavalry Commanderas my guide to almost everything. Xenophon calls the ideal weapon a machaira. Subsequent study has revealed that Greeks were pretty lax about their sword nomenclature (actually, everyone is, except martial arts enthusiasts) and so Kineas’s Aegyptian machairawas probably called a kopis. So in the second book, I call it a kopiswithout apology. Other words may change – certainly my notion of the internal mechanics of the hoplite phalanxhave changed. The more you learn…
A note about history. I’m always amused when a fan (or a non-fan) writes to tell me that I got a campaign or battle ‘wrong.’ Friends – and I hope we’re still friends when I say this – we know less about the wars of Alexander than we do about the surface of Mars or the historical life of Jesus. I read Greek, I look at the evidence, and then I make the call. I’ve been to most of these places, and I can read a map. While I’m deeply fallible, I am also a pretty good soldier and I’m prepared to make my own decisions in light of the evidence about everything from numbers to the course of a battle. I may well be “wrong,” but unless someone produces a time-machine, there’s no proving it. Our only real source on Alexander lived five hundred years later. That’s like calling me an eye-witness of Agincourt. Be wary of reading a campaign history or an Osprey book and assuming from the confident prose that we know. We don’t know. We stumble around in the dark and make guesses.
And that said, military historians are, by and large, the poorest historians out there, by virtue of studying the violent reactions of cultures without studying the cultures themselves. War and military matters are cultural artefacts, just like religion and philosophy and fashion, and to try to take them out of context is impossible. Hoplites didn’t carry the aspis because it was the ideal technology for the phalanx. I’ll bet they carried it because it was the ideal technology for the culture, from the breeding of oxen to the making of the bowl, to the way they stacked in wagons. Men only fight a few days a year if that, but they live and breathe and run and forage and gamble and get dysentery 365 days a year, and their kit has to be good on all those days too. The history of war is a dull litany of man’s inhumanity to man and woman, but history itself is the tale of the human race from birth until now. It’s a darn good story, and worth repeating. History matters.
Why does history matter? I should spare you this rant, after all if you’re reading this part of the book, chances are you’re a history buff at least, possibly a serious amateur historian, maybe a professional slumming in my novels. But just for the record, a week after I finished the final page proofs of this book, I happened to read a Facebook post by a Holocaust denier. I’m still mad. It’s not just the tom-fool anti-Semitism, it’s the anti-history. A person who denies the Holocaust happened is denying that history exists; that research and careful documentation, eye-witness accounts and government archives have any meaning. In this kind of relativism, there is no truth. Pontius Pilate wins. And historical fiction is just fantasy without magic.
Well, I happen to believe that the past really happened. And that the more we know about it, the more we are empowered to deal with the present.