Unit Browser for RTR: Imperium Surrectum

Short description

Mercenary Thessalian Peltasts are a light skirmisher unit, capable of raiding and flanking actions, but are not reliable in a protracted melee.

Description

Thessalian Peltasts are a light skirmisher unit of some renown. As their names implies, the Thessalian Peltasts are equipped with javelins and pelte shields that are roughly large enough to protect their chests. When out of javelins, they can function as harassing units with their straight-bladed xiphon swords. They have very little protective clothing; just chitons and other day-to-day wear for their bodies, while their heads are protected by petasos hats – or bronze petasos helmets for the richer peltasts. Thessalian Peltasts are brave but lightly equipped skirmishers, capable of raiding and flanking actions, but cannot be relied on to fight in a protracted melee.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Peltasts derived their name from their small shield, the pelte. They were generally lightly equipped skirmishers from lower social classes. However, despite their lack of heavy equipment and their guerrilla style of warfare, peltasts were often well-trained and deemed a valuable asset in early Greek armies (Konijnendijk, Classic Greek Tactics (2017), p. 40). The Greeks recognised that a well-practiced skirmisher was an effective one, and the Thessalians were no exception. The geography of ancient Thessaly was more diverse than its reputation for excellent cavalry may imply. It not only had great plains, brimming with agriculture, but was also surrounded by mountains. Although to the modern and even possibly the ancient reader, the name of Thessaly was most associated with its excellent cavalry, its peltasts, too, were of some renown. Xenophon stated that the Thessalians’ excellent javelin-throwers, or akontistai – a word he uses carefully and selectively, only three times in the Hellenika (and in Anabasis). This emphasis of Thessalians being the more carefully attributed akontistai can be compared to the sixty times he referred to peltasts in general, because he uses the latter term to refer to contingents of light troops, in contrast to Thucydides, who uses psiloi.

Furthermore, Thessalian peltasts were not just of high quality, but were available in quite large quantities. According to Xenophon (Hell. 6.1.9), Jason of Perai (the ruler of Thessaly before Phillip II of Macedon came to power) stated that: ‘almost all who dwell in these neighbouring regions are javelin-men (akontistai), so that it is likely that our force would be far superior in peltasts also’. Jason’s assertion of numerical superiority is supported by Xenophon, who states:

‘Having become tagus, he [Jason] assessed the contingents of cavalry and hoplites that the cities were to furnish, according to the ability of each. And the result was that he had more than eight thousand horsemen, including the allies, his hoplites were reckoned at not fewer than twenty thousand, and there were peltasts enough to be set in array against the whole world; for it is a task even to enumerate the cities which furnished them.’

Thessaly thus had an incredible number of peltasts, later affirmed by Isocrates (8.118). In 355 BC, he stated that the Thessalians were able to raise ‘a cavalry of more than three thousand horse and peltasts beyond number’.

Slawomir Sprawski uses material evidence to prove the importance of peltasts in central and northern Greece (Aitolia, Lokri, Akarnarnia). Using Thessalian coins from roughly 500-400 BC to analyse the themes and icons that the Thessalians deemed worth commemorating on their money, it appeared that the coins minted in the Thessalian city of Pelinna depict both peltasts and cavalry. Although it is difficult to draw any definite conclusions from these images, the shields of infantrymen from Pelinna seem different from the classic hoplite shields which were displayed on other coins. The shields are smaller and have a curved or concave shape that rather resembles the pelte of a peltast than the aspis of a hoplite (Sprawski, Peltasts of Thessaly (2014), p. 103, figure 5.3). This impression is further strengthened by a pattern of stars that can be seen on some of the images (Figure 5.4). There is an interesting image on the bronze coins, showing a horseman with a spear, striking a fallen warrior who is defending himself with a slightly bigger shield with a visible rim. The fallen warrior seems to be armed like a hoplite, unlike the one shown on the previously mentioned coin of a possible peltast (Figure 5.4 and 5.5). The presence of peltasts on coins indicates their importance in the eyes of Thessalians themselves, rather than just relying on the word and perspective of Athenian authors. Jason of Perai’s aforementioned claim could infer that he drew peltasts from other regions, however, the currently available material evidence would not appear to support this argument, as coins finds from neighbouring areas do not highlighting peltasts at all in the same way as the Thessalian examples. Instead, they focus on displaying heroic figures or gods with large hoplite shields and spears held in a thrusting motion – both of which are not commonly associated with artistic interpretations of peltasts. This emphasis upon the equipment of non-peltast warriors is also shown in Lamian bronze coins from 400-344 BC, which display a naked archer, and Oetaian bronze coins, which show figures with spears, short curved swords, and bows.

Coins are not the only evidence of Thessalian peltasts, there is also a stele (a wooden or in this case stone memorial) in the Archaological Museum at Larissa. This stele was inscribed to commemorate Theotimos, son of Menyllos from Atrax, who fell in the Battle of Tanagra (457 BC). Theotimos was portrayed not as a horseman but as an infantryman. His relief (the engraving of his figure on the stele) shows him wearing a chlamys – a popular cloak for Thessalians, a pilos helmet, and perhaps most interestingly, a shield that does not have the rim or concave shape of a hoplite shield. Furthermore, the spear that this warrior holds appears to be a javelin, because it is held above the head in an overhand motion. Again, his role might be interpreted as that of a hoplite, but the figure is holding another javelin inside his shield, further implying his role of a peltast rather than a hoplite. If this is the case, the fact that this man was carved into stone and memorialised would imply that his family was not a poor one (Sprawski, Peltasts, p. 107). If his family could afford hoplite panoply yet Theotimos chose to serve as a peltast, this may imply that this combat role was held in high esteem rather than merely being reserved for poor people who could not afford more expensive equipment. This material evidence is significant, because if a modern reader were to read the accounts of that battle by Thucydides and Diodorus and take the roles of the mentioned warriors at face value, one would only know that the Thessalian cavalry were present and assume no other Thessalians were involved, yet here we have evidence that Thessalian infantry fought and died at that battle (Sprawski, Peltasts, p. 104). It is quite possible that the Thessalian infantry and skirmishers did not attract the attention that the cavalry did, so were missed from accounts of authors who wrote about Tanagra. This textual focus of Athenian authors upon the Thessalian horse and their neglect of its peltasts could go some way to explain why only recently, scholarly attention has been able to start uncovering a Thessalian preference for using peltasts to support their cavalry, a more mobile form of warfare that could help them withstand Thessaly’s more powerful rivals such as Athens or Thebes (Sprawski, Peltasts, p. 110).