The Army of Lysimachus after Corupedium, Antiquité Vivante 69, 1-2, 2019, pp. 109-122. (original) (raw)
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Lj. Maksimović, M. Ricl, ΤΗ ΠΡΟΣΦΙΛΕΣΤΑΤΗ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΝΤΑ ΑΡΙΣΤΗ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑΡΧΙΣΣΗ: Students and Colleagues for Professor Fanoula Papazoglou (International Conference, Belgrade, October 17-18, 2017), 2018
Demetrius Poliorcetes spent seven years of his turbulent life as the king of Macedonia and the ruler of a large part of Greece. Two sources by the same author, Plutarh of Chaeronea (the biography of Poliorcestes himself and that of his protégé and nemesis, Pyrrhus of Epirus), credit the king with extensive military preparations that allegedly resulted in the creation of one of the largest military and naval forces in the Ancient history. Supposedly, in the final years of his reign, Poliorcetes commanded power that dwarfed that of Philip II and rivaled the strength of Alexander the Great. Strangely, when the actual conflict finally began, these forces suddenly disappear from the narrative. Modern historians, although generally highly skeptical of military and population figures asserted by ancient authors, showed surprising tendency to believe Plutarch’s claims and to build wider theories around them. Thus, the grand army Poliorcetes allegedly built was heavily used as an argument in the debate surrounding the effects of Alexander’s conquest on Macedonia proper, and the demography of Macedonia in the 3rd century BC. Few scholars made attempts to question these figures, in spite of strong reasons to do so, and in spite of the fact that several ancient sources – including Plutarch’s biographies themselves! – do supply information that directly contradicts these claims. In this paper I claim that the whole story of Poliorcetes’ exceptional military preparations for the alleged reconquest of his father’s Asian Empire, as well as the very size of the supposed army, should be rejected as false, as is already the case with many such episodes in writings of Plutarch.
Živa Antika, 2019
The author is trying to solve the chronological problems of Livy’s information on the war operations in the region around and north of Lake Lychnidus during the Third Macedonian War. The focus is on the period between 170-169 B.C., namely, the problems regarding Livy’s information on Perseus’ counterattack on Roman positions at the turn of 170/169 B.C., Roman control over the city of Uscana and one undocumented Perseus’ attack on Dardanians in 170 B.C. The author concludes the events in question have a mutual connection, proposes a new chronological course of events and emphasizes the importance of Livy’s 43rd book for the study of the consequences of the war operations north of Lake Lychnidus during the Third Macedonian War.
The article deals with a complex of issues connected with the campaign waged by the Macedonian expeditionary corps in Asia Minor in 336–335 BC. The author clears up the aims set for the advance-guard, its command structure, strength and composition. He also describes the relevant military operations and reveals the reasons both for the Macedonians' successes in 336 and their failures in 335. The idea is argued that despite the final failures, it is hardly possible to say that the campaign the expeditionary corps conducted ended in its total defeat. Besides, it is noted that those military operations had major significance for Alex-ander's campaign in Asia Minor in 334, because a number of preconditions for its full success had been created right in their course.
The Scythian Campaign of Philip II: A Problem of Reconstruction and Localisation
Space and Culture, India (ISSN: 2052-8396), No. 6/2 2018. – P. 94 – 101.
The article considers the campaign of the Macedonian King Philip II against the Scythians in 339 B.C. The principal objectives of this study were to determine the plans of King Philip II and the balance of the forces of the opposing parties. The study also analysed the course of the military operations and the results of the campaign. The study uses a multifaceted approach to probe the ancient narrative sources. It also makes a content analysis of the data, retrieved from various national scientific schools. The analyses reveal that Philip conducted a military campaign against Ateas with the help of small expeditionary forces that moved from Byzantion to the mouth of the River Istros (Danube). Philip's enemy Ateas was a ruler of a small Scythian kingdom in Dobrudzha. The primary goals of the Macedonian king's campaign were to capture booty and help the local allies. A desire to morally compensate for the unsuccessful completion of the sieges of Perinthos and Byzantion was the central motive of the campaign. The result of the war was determined in a single pitched battle. Despite the defeat of the Scythians in Dobrudzha, Philip could not deliver the captured booty to Macedonia because of the limited forces. The Triballoi captured this booty, and this devalued the success of the whole Scythian campaign.
War in Archaic Athens: polis, elites and military power
HISTORIA - Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 2019
The paper argues that Cleisthenes’ military reforms were not improvised. The general view of war in Archaic Athens as a series of skirmishes between small contingents recruited on an almost private basis must be qualified, as there are indications to suggest a greater and more regulated involvement of the polis of Athens in the organisation of collective war. This was not entirely effective since it depended on “private” channels, the aristoi from different districts, who fought each other (stasis). Despite this, they were “institutionalised” as part of the common political and institutional framework. The sources seems to indicate that the existence of “Hoplites” in Peisistratid Athens was more widespread than is usually believed.
It is easy to paint a picture of Athenian military decline in the years after the defeat of Chaeronea. Contemporary orators bemoaned the humbling of Athens’s status and of its military ambitions (e.g. Aeschines 3.134). The failure of Athens to mobilise in support of Thebes in 335 BC or of Agis in 331 seemingly lend weight to such negative characterisations. The veracity of such assessments has, however, begun to come under question, for example through an increasing acknowledgement of the rhetorical shaping of such political laments. This paper extends this questioning to the most important of Athens’s mobilisations in the period from 338 to 307: the Lamian War. It will be argued that the scale of the political ramifications of the loss have encouraged an unduly negative assessment, with some even seeing the naval defeat at Amorgos in 322 as the antithesis of the victory at Salamis in 480. Close consideration of the literary traditions and of the naval records, combined with a questioning of the assumptions that have underpinned our reading of the naval phase of the war, permit a more nuanced interpretation of Athens’s efforts. Indeed, the generally lacklustre showing of Athenian forces under the subsequent oligarchies may stem more from the impacts of the restriction of democracy and mass disenfranchisement that followed the Athenian capitulation than from any significant destruction of Athens’s military capability in the war itself.