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Short description

These men are the bodyguards of high-ranking Ptolemaic officials. Each man is equipped with a machaira and an aspis, and would die for his commander.

Description

In the Ptolemaic military, Machairophoroi were swordsmen, equipped with a machaira sword, a decorated aspis, helmets, and quilted linen tunics. They served as guards for the royal court, but their tasks also included rural policing and the protection of high civil officials – the komarches (Ptolemaic officials responsible for village administration) and the praktor laographias (poll-tax collectors). The members of the Machairophoroi were Egyptians, Semites, and Greeks. On the battlefield, these lightly equipped swordsmen are most useful for protecting the flanks of the phalanx. They can also be used as guard units for the protection of settlements and forts. However, they should not be left alone in a fight with armoured units – it is better to deploy them as reserves, or as mobile infantry to catch enemy units off-guard.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Machairophoroi had a wide array of duties and performed various police, guard, and military tasks. Primarily, they served as a paramilitary force, protected members of the imperial household, and acted as bodyguards for tax officials. Together with the Lonchophoroi, the Machairophoroi formed a regiment of the guard, but they were also registered on the active army list (cf. P.Ryl. IV 585, unknown provenance, early second century BC; P.Fay. 302, Philoteris, second century BC and P.Fay. 101, Euhemeria, c. 18 BC). To pay for their service, the Ptolemaic monarchs established a special tax, the opsṓnion toû machairophórou (Ameling, Walter, s.v. Machairophoroi, in: DNP 2006). In the late Ptolemaic period, they may have been granted land in Egypt as one machairophoros was involved in a kleros transfer during the first century BC (PP II/VIII 4355 et BGU VIII 1770 (64/3 BC, Heracleopolite). Macedonians, Greeks from various places, Egyptians and men bearing Semitic names belonged to the Machairophoroi, meaning that the regiment was ethnically diverse.

The Machairophoroi are documented since the 3rd century BC and remained an important element of Egyptian society throughout the Roman period. In the Augustan archive of Athenodoros Kananites (a stoic philosopher from Tarsos), machairophoroi are mentioned as guarding the sowing and the transport of grain along the Nile, as escorting officials, and as carrying letters and dispatches from one official to another (Livia Capponi, Augustan Egypt. The Creation of a Roman Province (2005), p. 59). One group remained in Alexandria to protect the royal family (BGU IV 1190, 11.3-4), while some were stationed in Memphis and others spent time in the chora, since they were members of socio-religious associations in the Fayyum called synodoi (SB III 6236=I.Fayoum II 114 and Heracleopolite (BGU IV 1190)). High priests, priests, prostatai, secretaries, “First Friends”, and chiliarchoi (chief commanders of the infantry) as well as representatives of different ethnic groups were among the members of the synodoi. Thus, these clubs, which often originated from synodoi of machairophoroi, bound the diverse ethnic and social groups together and engaged them in religious activities. These involved an “unlimited number of Gods”, but were often meant to motivate the members to donate money for the building or restoration of temples (Fischer-Bovet (2014), p. 291-292). In the later Augustan period, however, the influence of the synodoi was suppressed (Capponi (2005), p. 59), and the term “machairophoroi” became simply a synonym for ‘soldier(s)’ (Ameling, 2006).

The ethnic diversity of the synodoi was reflected by the makeup of the machairophoroi at large. Names in the Papyri, as well as a 2nd century BC mural from the Fayyum suggest that they also had non-Egyptian/Greek members, though the ethnic background of the men cannot be determined with certainty (Machairophoroi from Kom Madi, second century BC). Yet, one inscription from Memphis and another from Hermopolis bear Semitic names for machairophoroi members (The Idumeans of Memphis, see OGIS II 737 = SB V 8929 = I.Prose 25 (112 BC); I.Herm.Magn. 5, ll. 239–56 (80/79 BC) = SB I 4206, ll. 2–3). Native Egyptians were probably already recruited into the machairophoroi in the 3rd century BC, as some machairophoroi bodyguards of Ptolemy II came from Egyptian military families (Fischer-Bovet (2014), p. 151-152).

The equipment of the Machairophoroi was provided by the Ptolemaic state (Polyb. V.63.11). Officer and senior soldiers’ helmets probably bore plumes, as can be seen on the Palestrina Nile mosaic (Palestrina Nile Mosaic, c. 100 BC, Praeneste in central Italy - a Roman depiction). They wore Knemides (greaves), embades (boots) or sandals (krepides) (Fischer-Bovet (2014), p. 135-136) and the Machairophoroi of the Kom Madi mural shows them equipped with aspides shields, quilted tunics and machairas, which they probably wore on the battlefield.