LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

386 criStian eMilian GhiŢĂ
Given all these facts, it seems probable that the Chalkaspides were a
professional or semi-professional body of soldiers recruited in Anatolia,
but the exact mechanism remains unknown. Seleukid and Attalid parallels
demand that they be recruited from amongst the Macedonian settlers,
but such settlements have not yet been traced in pontus: the few new
settlements that bear dynastic names seem rather to have been synoikismoi
and do not seem to present an essentially military character. the only
solution that can be identified, in this case, is that either the recruits were
extracted from the Greek poleis of the euxine coast and employed directly
by the king, or that they were recruited from amongst the semi-hellenised
population of the hinterland, the leukosyroi. Such an attitude would not
represent a complete novelty in the hellenistic world, as the ptolemies had
successfully trained and deployed native egyptians as machimoi, obtaining
a resounding, though short-term success at raphia and decades of unrest
as a consequence of the fact that egyptians had acquired in the process the
taste of freedom and the means to fight for it.
At Chaeronea, however, an important contingent of the phalanx –
perhaps the most numerous – was not made up of Anatolians, but of
europeans. Some of them were citizens of polities that still upheld the
pontic alliance, others were recently liberated slaves. their enrolment in
the phalanx is not without rationale. the phalanx, after all, is a body of
men trained to level their spears and maintain formation at all costs, and
therefore basic training can be finished by experienced officers in a very
short time. Add to that the fact that not all phalangites required expensive
armour – the last ranks wore none at all – and it results that the phalanx is
the ideal formation for green recruits.
While writing about this, plutarch feels compelled to introduce
the character of a roman centurion, who is reported to have made the
Catonian remark that slaves should only take up the business of free men
at Saturnalia (plut., Sull., 18.5). now, unless these men made it a point of
honour of waving the chains of their slavery in the guise of standards, the
roman centurion had no way of knowing the previous career path of those
bearded, helmeted men who stood 30 to 60 metres in front of him. Besides,
even if he did know, he had little reason to feel personally offended. After
all, the idea of granting freedom to slaves in exchange for military service
was nothing new. It had been used by Cleomenes, the king of Sparta before
the campaign which culminated in the battle of Sellasia (plut., Cleomenes,
23.1), by Aristonikos during his revolt (Strabon, Geographika, 14.1.38)
and even the good roman Marius had not been above promising slaves
their freedom if only they would fight against Sulla (plut., Sulla, 9.7).