Sometime in 359 the Dardanian king Bardylis met Perdiccas III and his Macedonian levy in battle (Diod. 16.2.5). In the ensuing slaughter Perdiccas was killed along with some four thousand Macedonian soldiers. A little over a year later Philip, Perdiccas’ brother and serial hostage, marched his army into Illyria and confronted the confident Bardylis. Diodorus describes Philip as “commanding the right wing, which consisted of the flower of the Macedonians” (16.4.5-7). Frontinus (Strat. 2.3.2) adds that Philip attacked the Illyrian left “with the stoutest of his own men on the right wing” in what was evidently an oblique advance. The result, according to both, was a complete victory with Diodorus adding that 7,000 Illyrians fell in the battle.
Even allowing for exaggeration, it is clear that the Illyrians had suffered a disastrous reverse. A reverse at the hands of a state whose lack of any serious infantry had seen it the plaything of Athens, the Chalcidian League, Thrace and Illyria to name a few. The question presents: what had changed?
Diodorus (16.3.1-3) provides the clue:
[Philip] built up their morale, and, having improved the organization of his forces and equipped the men suitably with weapons of war, he held constant manoeuvres of the men under arms and competitive drills. Indeed he devised the compact order and the equipment of the phalanx, imitating the close order fighting with overlapping shields of the warriors at Troy, and was the first to organize the Macedonian phalanx.
Clearly Philip had made changes to what had been a Macedonian militia. Despite the implication of Diodorus’ summarising, Philip did not “devise” the phalanx: Greek hoplites had fought in this formation since the late archaic age. Diodorus is here describing the “Macedonian phalanx”, a more compact creature different to the existing Greek formations, as well as the drills and training that its use required.
Drills and speeches were not the sum total. Diodorus tells us that Philip equipped his men “suitably with weapons of war” as well as organising them into “the Macedonian phalanx”. The import is that Philip was the first to arm and train a phalanx “in the Macedonian manner” (cf Cawkwell, 1989, pp 282-83); a manner that the epigoni, “equipped with Macedonian arms and practised in the arts of war in the Macedonian manner”, on Alexander’s orders, demonstrated in their display at Susa in 324 (Arr. Anab. 7.6.1; Diod. 17.108.1-2; Hammond, 1990). This description — equipped and trained in the Macedonian manner — becomes the standard for such troops (Diod.19.14.5; 27.6; 40.3 etc). Thus Diodorus describes Philip equipping his troops with the arms and forming the “close order that defined this “Macedonian manner”: the sarisa and a shield supported by a neck strap.
This arming consisted of the 15’to 18’ infantry sarisa and the lighter Macedonian shield. Greaves and helmets are attested (Polyaenus 4.2.10) but the evidence for a corselet is scant aside from the issue of “hemi-thorakes” recorded by Polyaenus (ibid.3.13). Corselets for officers, in the time of Philip V, are attested (“Amphipolis Regulations”) and it is likely that officers and the front ranks were so fitted.
Asclepiodotus mentions (tact 5.1) that “the best” shield for the Macedonian phalanx was some two feet in diameter and not deeply bowled. Clearly “best” indicates his ideal and that other shields were also in use in earlier times or concomitantly – as the archaeological evidence indicates. Indeed, the need to hold the sarisa with both hands does not preclude the use of a larger shield or aspis: Pausanias (8.50.1) describes Philopoemen as arming infantry with the aspis and sarisa as well as Cleomenes (Plut. Clem.11.2):
[Cleomenes] thus raised a body of four thousand men-atarms, whom he taught to use a long pike, held in both hands, instead of a short spear, and to carry their shields (aspides) by a strap instead of by a fixed handle.
