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Ahypaspist (Greek:Ὑπασπιστής "shield bearer" or "shield covered") is a squire,man at arms, or "shield carrier". In Homer, Deiphobos advances "ὑπασπίδια" (hypaspídia) or under cover of his shield.[1] By the time of Herodotus (426 BC), the word had come to mean a high status soldier as is strongly suggested byHerodotus in one of the earliest known uses:
Now the horse whichArtybius rode was trained to fight withinfantrymen by rearing up. Hearing this,Onesilus said to his hypaspist, aCarian of great renown in war and a valiant man ...[2]
A similar usage occurs inEuripides's playRhesus[3] and another in hisPhoenissae.Xenophon was deserted by his hypaspist in a particularly sticky situation.[4][clarification needed] A hypaspist would differ from askeuophoros in most cases because the "shield bearer" is a free warrior and the "baggage carrier" was probably usually a slave.[citation needed]
The word may have had Homeric and heroic connotations that ledPhilip II of Macedon to use it for an elite military unit. This unit, known as theHypaspistai, orhypaspists, was probably armed in thehoplite manner, with a large concave shield (Aspis) and a spear (Dory), in addition tospolas orlinothorax body-armor,hoplite's helmet,greaves and axiphos orkopis sword (though their equipment was likely more ornate than main-line soldiers).[5]
In contrast, the main Macedonian Phalanx consisted of the pikemen known asphalangites. These men were armed with theSarissa, a pike of between 4 and 6.7m, a small flat shield and a shortsword called aXiphos as a secondary weapon.[6] The divergence in equipment and tactics between the traditional Greek Hoplite phalanx and the Macedonian Phalanx is attributed to Philip II of Macedon, the father ofAlexander the Great.
In set piece battles, the Macedonian Hypaspists were positioned on the flanks of thephalangite's phalanx; in turn, their own flanks were protected bylight infantry andcavalry. Their job was to guard the flanks of the large and unwieldypike phalanx. The armored Phalangites with theirsarissas were not particularly agile or able to turn quickly, so hypaspists would prevent attacks on the vulnerable sides of the formation. Their role was vital to the success of Philip'stactics because theMacedonian phalanx was all but invulnerable from the front, and was, with five layers of iron spikes moving in unison, used as theanvil in ahammer and anvil tactic, where theCompanion cavalry was the hammer that smashed the enemy against an anvil of thousands of iron spikes. As such an important yet vulnerable part of the Macedonian army, it needed protection for its main vulnerability, the flanks. The protection/remedy for this vulnerability was the Hypaspists, who were able to conduct maneuvers and use tactics, which, owing to theirhoplite panoply of weapons andarmor, would have been impossible (or at least much less effective) if performed by the phalangites.
All the references to a unit called "Hypaspists" are much later than the period of Philip, and modern historians have to assume[citation needed] that later sources, likeDiodorus Siculus[7] (1st century BC) andArrian,[8] had access to earlier records.
Arrian's phrasetous kouphotatous te kai ama euoplotatous[9]) has frequently been rendered as 'lightest armed', although Brunt[10] concedes it is more properly translated as 'nimblest' or 'most agile'.
There has been a great deal of speculation by military historians ever since the late Hellenistic period about the elite units of Philip's army. The hypaspists may have been[citation needed] raised from the wholekingdom rather than on a cantonal basis; if so, they were the king's army rather than the army of the kingdom.
In theHellenistic period, hypaspists apparently continued to exist, albeit in different capacities and under different names, likeAgema. The name lived on in theSeleucid (agema of the hypaspists),Ptolemaic andAntigonid kingdoms, and they were now seen as royal bodyguards and elite infantry as well as military administrators. Polybius mentions a hypaspist being sent byPhilip V of Macedon, after his defeat at theBattle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BC, toLarissa to burn state papers.[11]
The actual fighting unit of hypaspists seems to have lived on in Macedon as the corps ofAntigonid peltasts, whose status, equipment and role seems to have been almost exactly the same as that of the hypaspist under Philip.[12] Originally consisting of 3,000 men, by theThird Macedonian War there were 5,000, most likely to accommodate their elite formation, theAgema.[13]
