Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

THE ASTHETAIROI 89
a belt-plate from a late third or second century B.C. tomb at Vele Ledine
in Montenegro. 71 Liampi connects the description of the plunder
carried in Aemilius Paullus’ triumph with a Roman Republican coin
commemorating this victory with a depiction of a Macedonian shield
with the concentric motif. 72 In Plutarch’s Life of Aemilius Paullus
(32.6), the Macedonian shields are associated with “long Macedonian
spears,” an obvious reference to the sarisai. While the concentric
circle motif is generally regarded as the common shield decoration, it
is clear that over the years Macedonian shields could be painted with
various designs, including the Macedonian star or sunburst. 73 Liampi,
however, does not regard the star as a usual shield emblem for any
element in the Macedonian army, 74 even though the star or sunburst
motif with varying rays appears with some frequency. It is found on a
number of shield depictions: one of the frescoes in the tomb of Lyson
and Kallikles, 75 the miniature shield from the tomb at Katerini, 76 a
shield fragment from Florina, 77 the Shield of Pharnaces, 78 the Diadem
of Amphipolis, 79 and on the Boscoreale mosaic. 80
It is, therefore, very possible that the “ asth” is short for “ astēr,”
star, and was initially a nickname, asteresetairoi, which when contracted
became asthetairoi. 81 That it was in some fashion a nickname
seems apparent from Arrian’s frequently used phrase “the καλούμενοι
(kaloumenoi) asthetairoi” (Arr. Anab. 4.23.1; 6.6.1; 7.11.3). A similar
situation occurred with the change in name of Alexander’s
hypaspists to the argyraspids. 82 While Hammond interprets kaloumenoi
as meaning “renowned,” 83 and Milns suggests that the term
meant “out of the ordinary knowledge of the writer and experience
of the writer himself, or . . . his readers,” 84 Arrian uses the word
typically to mean very basically “called.” 85 As with the asthetairoi,
the word in Arrian on occasion would be appropriately translated
“so-called,” implying that the term was either of recent or an initially
unoffi cial origin. With respect to the latter, in 335, Alexander
invaded the territory of the “so-called” ( kaloumenoi) independent
Thracians ( Anab. 1.1.5), and at Gaugamela, there are Persian units
described as the “so-called ( kaloumenoi ) transplanted Carians”
(Anab. 3.2.5) and the “so-called ( kaloumenoi) mountaineer Indians”
( Anab. 3.8.4), and one of Alexander’s brigades in the same
battle was designated the “‘so-called’ ( kaloumenoi) old mercenaries”
( Anab. 3.12.2). As with the other inter pretations of the
origin and meaning of asthetairoi, this one also has problems. Etymologically
astēr, asteros, in various combinations apparently conforms
to the pattern of Greek syncopated nouns and never loses the
rho. 86 It is possible that the absence of the rho in asthetairoi is a
dialectical aspect of Greek in Macedonia. But to this date there is no