Unit Browser for RTR: Imperium Surrectum

Short description

The best infantrymen of the Antigonid Kingdom, armed as assault infantry to storm the enemy's walls.

Description

In the armies of Philip II and Alexander the Great, the elite infantry regiments were the Hypaspists and the Argyraspides. While the Argyraspides ended up in the East, in the ranks of the Seleucid army, "Hypaspist" become more of a title for high-ranking officers (as mentioned by Polybios in XVIII, 33, 2). For a long time, there was confusion among historians as to what the elite regiment of the Antigonid army was. In the 1950s respectively 1980s, however, two stones with inscriptions were unearthed in Greek Macedonia, with inscriptions describing the "Peltasts" of the 3rd century BC Macedonian army. The beginning of the first inscription, the so called Drama stone, was restored by Pierre Juhel and Nick Sekunda to: "They shall enrol those well provided with property in the agema and the other peltastai [...]." This tells us that the Peltasts were an elite regiment, recruited from the wealthy and well educated parts of the Macedonian population, and that there was an Agema regiment within them.

This corresponds to a formulation in Polybios (V, 25, 1), where Agema and Peltasts are equally mentioned together, and gave rise to the thought that this unit was named not after the traditional Pelta, the shield of the (originally) Thracian Peltasts, but after the Macedonian Pelta, the small shield of the Phalangites. It seems logical, then, that the Royal Peltasts, just like the Argyraspides in the Seleucid Empire, could fight both as Macedonian phalangites and heavy infantry. In fact Livy (XLII, 51, 4-5) states that,

"Out of the whole force of caetrati, 2000 men in the prime of strength and manhood were selected to form a body known as the "agema," their commanders were Leonnatos and Thrasippos. Antiphilos of Edessa was in command of the rest of the caetrati, numbering about 3000 men." The Latin term caetrati is a direct translation of the Greek peltastai, as Livy states elsewhere (XXXI, 36, 1). Hence we can conclude that the Royal Peltasts were the direct successors of the Hypaspists in Antigonid Macedon, that the whole regiment numbered 5000 men, 2000 of which formed the Agema, and that they were recruited from the strongest and most able sons of the wealthier citizens of the land.

These men are armed as assault infantry, ready to storm enemy cities or fortresses. They fear no one, and won't be repulsed!