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Short description

As ferocious inhabitants of North-Western Asia Minor, the Mysians are hardy skirmishers.

Description

These excellent skirmishers hail from Mysia in North-Western Asia Minor. Their clothes are a mix of Greek and Anatolian influences. They have added stripes and occasionally long sleeves to the Hellenic Chiton respectively Exomis and their long hair is kept together by traditional Mysian headbands. Those who can afford it wear helmets of the Phrygian type, adopted from their eastern neighbours. Their wooden pelte shields are painted with popular Mysian and Greek symbols and afford sufficient protection in skirmishes, during which they throw their fire-hardened javelins with great precision. In melee, they will use their longest javelin as a spear.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the 12th century BC, a large group of Thracians left their lands on the lower Danube to find a new home in the East. Crossing into Asia, they settled in the North-West of Anatolia. The Assyrians called them Muški, for Homer they were the Mysioi. Closely related to the Phrygians, their name would live on in Europe in the Moesi, after whom the Romans later called a province on the central Balkans Moesia. Since the Mysians had taken their new home by force, they became famous for their martial skills. Homer called them 'hand-to-hand-fighters' (Hom. Il. 13, 5) and Strabo said he did so 'because they were indomitable, as is the case with all brave warriors' (Strab. VII, 3, 3, C296). The polymath Poseidonios of Apameia (ca. 135-51 BC) adds that most Mysians were very pious, living as vegetarians because they believed that the consumption of meat was a sin: '(...) In accordance with their religion they abstain from eating any living thing, and therefore from their flocks as well; and they use as food honey and milk and cheese, living a peaceable life, and for this reason are called both 'god-fearing' and 'smoke treaders' (...)' (Poseidonios apud Strab. VII, 3, 3, C296). The latter term seems to refer to the smoke produced during the sacrifices, possibly only by a particular order of monks, but in any case life and nature were sacred for the Mysians.

There is a fair amount of evidence on how the Mysians fought. On the so-called Çan sarcophagus, found near Altıkulaç in North-Western Turkey, in what would have been the Northern Troad, a warrior on the right of the battle scene can be seen wearing a long sleeved Chiton, a headband, and a small, round pelte shield. He is being defeated by a horseman after clearly having fought with javelins as a skirmisher. The sarcophagus can be dated to the early 4th century BC and probably depicts a local battle involving a Persian nobleman or local dynast in Persian service, set in the Troad or its vicinity – Mysia was the region directly to its East and is thus a possible location, too. One of the leading historians on Hellenistic Anatolia, John Ma, has argued that the warrior on the right side of the sarcophagus can be identified with a Mysian (Ma, ‘Mysians on the Çan Sarcophagus?’, Historia, 2008). We have therefore based our Mysian Javelinmen on this depiction, but there are additional sources: Herodotus (VII, 74, 1) wrote that the Mysians went to war wearing ‘their native helmets’, which we interpreted as being akin to the Phrygian helmets, which originated in neighbouring Phrygia. The 'father of history' adds that the Mysians used ‘fire hardened javelins’, which neatly fits the image on the Çan sarcophagus.

During the Hellenistic period, Mysia was mostly under the control of the Attalid dynasty which resided in Pergamon. After Philetairos (343-263 BC) became lord of Pergamon in the early 3rd century BC, he needed an army to defend the city. To that purpose, he hired Mysians from the adjacent towns. These mercenaries later became a permanent part of the Pergamene army, as – yes, again – John Ma has shown (Attalid Army (2013), pp. 65-69). In the later 3rd and during the 2nd century BC, some Mysians were still hired as mercenaries, as is true for one who was slain by the Bithynian Menas and is mentioned on his gravestone (Istanbul Archaeological Museum Inv. 1176, l. 1–8; Bar-Kochva, Menas' Stele and Curupedion (1974), p. 22). Most would, however, have been levies or military colonists. In an inscription dated to the late 240s BC, king Eumenes I (r. 263-241 BC), the younger brother of Philetairos, differentiates between three classes of soldiers in the Attalid army: ‘unpaid’ soldiers, ‘regularly paid’ soldiers, and ‘soldiers decorated with crowns’, probably the guard regiments (OGIS 266.13-16,57). Mysians would have been found in all three categories, though the javelinmen would either be levies (category I) or mercenaries (category II).

The military prowess of Mysian skirmishers was also known outside of Western Asia Minor, however. The Achaian historian Polybios (ca. 200-118 BC) mentions them in the army of the Seleucid usurper Achaios the Younger (d. 214/213 BC) in 218 BC. When Achaios attacked Selge in Pisidia in 218 BC, he sent his Mysians against the gates of the heavily fortified city (Polyb. V, 76, 7). These are unlikely to have been armed like other Mysian soldiers we know from the record: archers and horsemen would not have been useful in a charge against the city walls and the heavy Thureophoroi only appear in the 2nd century BC (you can find out more info about these units in their respective descriptions – they all feature in the Attalid roster). Hence, Mysian javelinmen may well have served under the Seleucids, too.

Finally, Mysian mercenaries were also hired by the Antigonid kings, as is implied by Plutarch's description of the Macedonian garrison of Corinth in 243 BC: ‘There were in Corinth four brothers, of Syrian origin, one of whom, Diokles by name, was serving as a mercenary soldier in the citadel’ (Plut. Aratos 18,2). Later on (24,1) he explains there were indeed 400 mercenaries under their command, which is confirmed by the Macedonian advocate Polyainos (2nd century AD: Polyaen. VI, 5, 1). In his still authoritative work on Hellenistic mercenaries, Guy Thompson Griffith notes that the manuscript of Plutarch's text was corrupted and that the reading of "Syrians" did not fit the original script – he suggests to amend it to ‘Mysians’, instead (Griffith, Mercenaries (1933), p. 68, n. 3). In any case, the Hellenistic world was a world of mercenaries and Mysians probably appeared in many armies of the Eastern Mediterranean.