Unit Browser for RTR: Imperium Surrectum

Short description

These elite royal guard units are crack assault troops with which you can break any enemy lines.

Description

"Next he tells us that the king (Antiochos III) posted the elephants at some distance in advance of the phalanx together with Antipater’s Tarantines, the spaces between the elephants being filled with bowmen and slingers, while he himself with his horse and foot guards (Hypaspists) took up a position behind the elephants." (Polyb. 16.18.7-8)

"What part of the cavalry, then, was it that was terrified by the elephants in the centre of the phalanx, and where was the king all this time and what service did he render in the action with the horse and foot he had about him, the finest in the army? We are not told a single word about this." (Polyb. 16.19.7).

The Hypaspists were the elite crack force of the Seleucid army, most likely equipped similar or even identical to the Argyraspides. Given that Polybios calls the whole infantry guard ‘peltasts’, it is thought that the Hypaspists used the pelte shield as well. They would likely use both a sarissa in a phalanx formation and act as heavy swordsmen storm infantry, depending on the circumstances. In RIS, they are a heavy spearmen/swordsmen hybrid equipped with a dory spear and a xiphos sword to portray the many ways in which the king could count on them. Protected by a larger shield than their Argyraspides counterparts, they are nevertheless also predominantly silver-coloured.

This unit is best used as heavy infantry supporting your phalanx, looking for an opportunity to force a breach in enemy lines.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Seleucids did not have an ‘agema’ royal infantry guard like the Antigonids or the Ptolemies, but they did retain the Hypaspists as a crack force within the infantry. Polybios mentions a certain Dionysios, the commander of the Hypaspists, as one of the three ablest officers in the army besieging Sardeis in 214 BC (7.16.2).

At the battle of Panion (200 BC) the Hypaspists, defined by Polybios as ‘the best unit’, were posted around the king, together with the cavalry royal guard which numbered 2,000 men, divided between the two chiliarchies of the Agema and the Companions. This suggests that the Hypaspists were their counterparts both in stature as well as in numbers, probably also comprising 2,000 men, or two chiliarchies. The 2,000 storm troops at Sardeis may therefore be identified with the Hypaspists (Polyb. 7.16.6. and 7.18.3.).

It is likely that the Seleucid footguard totalling 10,000 men would have allowed two strategiai (largest tactical unit of 4,000 men) to the ordinary Argyraspides, thus leaving two chiliarchies (1,000 men) to the Hypaspists (Bar–Kochva, The Seleucid Army, 65).