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Short description

These elite phalangites are equipped with the finest panoply available to the Achaians, and their wealth of experience makes them a formidable force on the battlefield.

Description

The ‘Epilektoi’ elite phalangites are equipped with the finest panoply available to the Achaians and their wealth of experience makes them a formidable force on the battlefield. These wealthier and most able men of both city and phalanx were armed with bronze shields that were silvered over, gilded breastplates, plumed helmets, and bronze greaves that display their somewhat more elevated social status. Remaining permanently under arms, the Epilektoi must have been the strongest force in the Achaian army.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the 220s BC, the Achaian League found itself as a crossroads. Faced with a formidable, rejuvenated Sparta under its bold and ambitious king Kleomenes III (254-219 BC), its Thureophoroi based army proved inferior. The Lakedaimonians threatened not only to take the Achaian gains of recent decades away from them, but even their very existence. The federal council was so desperate that they turned to their ultima ratio: asking their arch-enemy, the Antigonids of Macedon, for help. Antigonos III Doson (ca. 261-221 BC) demanded no less than the surrender of Corinth, the greatest price of the Achaians. Yet, the council agreed: it could see no alternative (Gruen, Achaean Alliance with Macedon 1972).

In the course of what was to become known as the Kleomenean War (229/229-222 BC), Antigonos Doson equipped one regiment of his new allies, 1,000 men from Megalopolis, with the bronze shields and sarissa pikes of his Chalkaspides (Polyb. II, 65, 3; 69, 4-5). In 217 BC, after a defeat against the Aitolians, the federal assembly of the Achaians followed the advice of their leader, Aratos of Sikyon (271-213 BC), and decreed to keep 500 of these men permanently under arms (Polyb. V, 91, 6). This proved to be not enough: Aratos’ successor Philopoimen of Megalopolis (253-182 BC) undertook further reforms, and replaced most of the league’s Thureophoroi with phalangites in 207 BC (Plut., Life of Philopoimen 9, 1-2).

Plutarch also mentions, with certain moralistic undertones, that the Achaian nobles possessed many costly ornaments and decorations in their houses and were persuaded by Philopoimen to melt them and have them worked into breastplates, greaves and silver for their shields. Hence, the wealthier and most able men in the phalanx were armed with bronze shields that were silvered over, gilded breastplates, plumed helmets and bronze greaves. This became the equipment of the Epilektoi, the picked force of the Achaians. They existed before Philopoimen’s reforms, but were probably armed as Thureophoroi, numbering 3,000 men in 217 BC (Polybios, Histories, V, 91, 6). They are mentioned on campaigns in the following years (e.g., Polyb. XVI, 37, 2) and must have been the strongest force in the Achaian army.