The Strategos

by H A CULLEY

  The Macedonians pushed home the advantage that this gave them and their line straightened as the Athenians gave way and fell back. Philip was convinced that the battle was nearly won when the Amphipolitan army took the Athenians in the rear.

  Now heavily outnumbered and surrounded, Iphicrates did the only sensible thing and capitulated. He had lost over two thousand hoplites and nearly a thousand peltasts during the battle. With the losses at the beachhead, a third of his army had been destroyed. Philip was delighted with the success of his elite troops and their sarissas but he had learned one lesson. His two chiliarchs told him that the normal three feet wide shield used by hoplites was too heavy for use with the unwieldy pikes and he would have to find a lighter design.

  Shortly after dawn the next day Iphicrates emerged from where his cornered army had lay down to sleep when night fell to discuss the terms of his surrender. Philip was wary about provoking a full scale war and so didn’t want to upset Athens too much, but he did need to preserve the independence of Amphipolis and their payments to him of gold and silver. He therefore offered a three year truce to Iphicrates. He and his men would be allowed to return to Athens on the transports but the war galleys would remain in the hands of the Macedonians as the nucleus of a fleet; something they had lacked before.

  He had to promise that Athens would not attempt to capture the city again for the next five years and to pay a ransom. In return Macedon would also sign a truce with Athens for three years whereby they promised that they would not attack each other during that time.

  Philip came away well pleased; he had proved the value of his new professional army, secured the funding that had been promised to him, captured a fleet of galleys and neutralized the enmity of Athens. When Parmenion asked him how he knew that he could trust Athens not to break the truce he replied that he didn’t and sooner or later Macedon would have to subdue both Athens and Thebes. However, he had now bought the kingdom some valuable time to deal with its other enemies.

  -o0o-

  The assembly of Amphipolis held a feast for Philip and his senior officers to thank them for coming to the aid of the city. Most of them got so drunk that they passed out, but Parmenion imbibed more cautiously than most and still had most of his wits about him when a servant came over and asked him to follow him. Curious, Parmenion did as he was bid and, leaving Kionos and Orestes wallowing in nostalgia about the time they had been ephebes together, he followed the man out of the dining hall and into the evening air.

  As soon as it hit him, he staggered and had to put his hand on the outside wall to save himself from falling to the ground. ‘Perhaps I’m not as sober as I thought I was,’ he muttered to himself as he followed the man, weaving slightly.

  After a few yards he felt a little better and his head ceased to spin. He followed the servant into a small room across from the dining hall where he found the leader of the Amphipolitan Assembly and their elderly strategos waiting.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Parmenion. I apologise for dragging you away from the festivities but we won’t keep you a moment. We need to get back before we are missed in any case.’

  The strategos shifted uncomfortably in his chair and it was only then that Parmenion noticed a small but slowly spreading blood stain on the side of the man’s chiton. Evidently he must have been wounded in the battle with the Athenians, and quite badly if the blood was seeping through the bandage and his chiton.

  The man looked impatiently at the leader of the assembly and then groaned in pain. The latter looked at him in alarm.

  ‘We need to get you home old friend.’

  ‘Just get on with it and then I can leave,’ the strategos replied through gritted teeth.

  ‘As you can see, I fear that we need a new strategos and your name has been suggested. I know that we can’t offer you as important a role as Philip of Macedon can, but this is where you were born and we hoped that you might want to serve the city again. Although Athens has been beaten off this time, they’ll be back and we don’t entirely trust Philip.’

  He looked dubious about carrying on and paused for a moment before continuing.

  ‘Philip had offered us a treaty whereby we remain independent as far as internal government goes, but he wants to ‘protect us,’ as he puts it. In other words our army would become part of his, other than the city watch, and he could call upon it when needed. In return he would guarantee to protect Amphipolis as if it were part of his hegemony.’

  All this was new to Parmenion and he was angry that Philip hadn’t trusted him enough to share his plans with him. If Amphipolis accepted, it would become a client state of Macedon with a modicum of self-government. If they declined, then it would be slap in the face and he wasn’t sure how Philip would react to that. He suspected that he might try and take the city by force. Whichever course they chose, he would be left in an awkward position.

  ‘You are offering me the position of Strategos of Amphipolis? When they both nodded he went on, ‘I assume therefore that you intend to decline Philip’s offer?’

  ‘Not so much decline it, but make him a counter offer: that we sign a treaty of perpetual alliance with Eastern Macedon in return for a third of the output of the mines forever.’

  Parmenion smiled to himself; perpetual in this context had a habit of meaning for as long as it suits one or other party to the agreement . He wondered how Philip would react to the counter offer. Certainly that reaction would hardly be improved if he learned that Parmenion was deserting him to serve the city which had rejected his overtures.

  In any case, Amphipolis was one city state, albeit an important one, whereas Philip already ruled eleven of them. He foresaw great things in the future for the young prince and he felt his destiny was tied up with his. He was excited about the possibilities that command of a professional well-trained army would give him. In contrast, command of the Amphipolis citizen levy would be dull and boring unless the city was threatened again. He didn’t know why he was even giving the offer serious consideration.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry; I’m flattered by your offer but Philip would be outraged if I accepted. I’m not sure I know what he would do exactly, but it would not be advantageous to Amphipolis; of that I’m certain.’

  The two other men looked at each other and nodded resignedly. Parmenion wasn’t aware of it, but his rejection of the post wasn’t entirely unexpected and they had another candidate already selected in case he refused them.

  Parmenion would not have been happy if he had known that their second choice was Kionos.

  -o0o-

  When Parmenion finally got permission for him and Orestes to travel to his estate to bring their wives back to Chalastra he was keen to be reunited with his wife but he was even more eager to see his baby son, who was already six months old.

  Kionos had stayed behind to command the army until Parmenion returned, but they took Nicias with them. The boy was now thirteen and looking forward to becoming an ephebe. Philip was in the process of establishing a new military academy in Chalastra which would train future officers for his professional army and Kionos had promised his son that Parmenion would talk to Calisto about doing his training there, rather than at Europos. Therefore this would probably be the last opportunity for Calisto to see her youngest child before he became a man.

  The time after the victory at Amphipolis had been hectic. Philip had decided that he needed to double the number of hoplites in the full-time army and Parmenion was tasked to tour the cities in his hegemony to try and persuade as many as possible of those in the city citizen levies to join. Many were tradesmen, merchants or artisans and felt that it was bad enough being forced to train once a month and fight when needed without volunteering for the privations of a military life permanently.

  At the end of his tour of the eleven cities he had barely managed to recruit enough to replace those killed in battle and man one extra tagma. He therefore decided to travel into Thrace and recruit there. He took Nicias as his aide, one of
his pentakosiarchs and a lochus of hoplites with him. It meant that he was restricted to traveling around fifteen miles a day but he wanted to demonstrate the use of the sarissa and his men’s skill at maneuvering to potential recruits. He returned with most of the extra fifteen hundred men he needed and, although Philip would have preferred a wholly Macedonian army, he was enough of a pragmatist to realise that this was the only way he was going to build up his army quickly.

  He stayed until the new recruits had started their training and then he set out for his estate. By then it was the spring of 361 BC and the days were pleasantly warm instead of being swelteringly hot. As usual he took a small escort with him. The countryside was mainly peaceful but occasionally robbers would ambush small parties of travelers and bands of tribesmen from Paionia raiding into northern Macedonia had become a nuisance recently.

  Paionia lay between Illyria and Thrace to the north of Macedon and was inhabited by a number of independent tribes that had only recently been united into a federation by one of their chieftains, called Agis. Now he was calling himself King of Paionia and seeking to expand his kingdom.

  When Parmenion eventually arrived at his house he found two unwelcome surprises waiting for him. Calisto was no longer there and the Paionians were raiding just to the north of his estate.

  ‘Where’s Calisto? Never mind, you can tell me that later.’

  He embraced Kharis and kissed her for a long time. When he withdrew his lips he nuzzled his wife’s neck and whispered in her ear.

  ‘Now show me my son, my first born.’

  She laughed and led him into the house. The baby was asleep in a woven basket. Parmenion wanted to pick him up and hold him but Kharis stopped him.

  ‘He’s only just gone down. He’ll grizzle if you wake him now. Wait until he wakes up naturally.’

  ‘What shall we call him?’

  ‘He’s a son so the choice is yours, husband, but I wondered about Philotas.’

  ‘Meaning friendship or comradeship? Yes, it’s a good name; I’m happy with that. Philotas it is.’

  As he looked at his son he forgot completely about the raiding Paionians and the mysterious absence of Calisto until Nicias came running in having frantically searched the house for his mother.

  ‘Where’s mother? I can’t find her anywhere. Where’s she’s gone?’

  Myrrine took the distraught boy to one side and tried to calm him.

  ‘Your brother arrived three days ago unexpectedly with five soldiers. He said that the soldiers had come from Kionos. He and your mother spent some time talking privately and then she packed and left on horseback with your brother and the soldiers. The only thing she would say is that she was going to join your father.’

  Parmenion had only listened to what Myrrine was saying with half an ear but he got the gist of it. He thought it was strange that she would leave now when she was meant to be in charge of the estate until Kionos returned, which would be as soon as Parmenion got back to relieve him. At first he couldn’t understand what was going on but he determined to get to the bottom of it. However, first he had to deal with the Paionian incursion.

  He sat down wearily on the bench in the andron, the men’s room on the ground floor, and pondered how to tackle the various problems he faced. He needed to find out what the sudden departure of Calisto with her elder son meant; presumably the soldiers had been sent by Kionos but Kharis said that the dialect of Greek that they spoke wasn’t Macedonian. The management of the estate was something he would have to sort out before he left. Without Kionos only metics - free men and women who weren’t citizens - and slaves remained and tradition dictated that a citizen must be left as manager. However, none of that would matter if the Paionians destroyed the estate.

  From what Kharis had been able to discover, the raiders were not only driving off goats, sheep and cattle, but were firing the houses, outbuildings and even the olive groves and crops in the field. It looked like a deliberate attempt to destroy the economy of this part of Macedon.

  Eventually he made up his mind what to do and he rode up to the isolated Temple of Hermes sitting on top of a tall hill a few miles away. There were a number of these temples dotted around the Greek countryside. They served the rural population as well as providing solitude away from the bustle of life in the cities for the priests and priestesses who lived there.

  He took Orestes and Nicias with him and two slaves followed them driving a bull for sacrifice. The priests took charge of the bull at the approach to the small temple and washed it with water to ensure that it was thoroughly clean. They tied coloured ribbons to its horns and around its neck before driving it in procession to the temple, Parmenion and his Companions following behind.

  The altar stood in front of the temple and the bull was tied to a ring in the front of the altar before the priests poured more water over it and the three onlookers threw barley seeds onto it. One of the priests grasped the horns and pulled them down so that the bull looked as if it was nodding acceptance to its ritual death. The chief priest then put his hand in the pile of barley seeds and pulled out a machaira, the sacrificial knife, and slit the bull’s throat.

  Another priest held a large bowl to catch its blood as the bull fell to its knees and died. Parmenion watched anxiously as the priests cut the dead animal open and pulled out its liver before giving it to the chief priest for to examine. To Parmenion’s relief, the priest pronounced the liver healthy and indicated that the ritual should continue. If the liver had been diseased the sacrifice would have been rejected by Hermes. That that would be the worst possible omen for his forthcoming battle with the Paionian raiders and for the life of Philotas, as he had dedicated the sacrifice to both the coming campaign and his son’s life.

  The priests then proceeded to skin and butcher the bull, their white himations splattered with crimson as blood splashed over them. The major bones and fatty meat were laid before the statue of Hermes inside the temple and Parmenion added some of the spices he had brought with him together with a small pitcher of wine.

  Meanwhile the other priests cooked the meat and then shared their meal with Parmenion, Orestes and Nicias. It was the first sacrifice that the boy had attended and he seemed overawed by it. He was still confused by the absence of his mother and worried about his family, but he seemed to take comfort from Parmenion’s presence and sat close to the strategos, who put a comforting arm around the boy’s shoulder.

  After his return from the temple, Orestes accompanied Parmenion to the nearby city of Europos. When the senior member of the city assembly was told of their arrival, they were shown in to his office without delay.

  ‘It is a great honour to welcome Macedon’s foremost strategos and Prince Philip’s cavalry commander,’ the old man began but Parmenion interrupted with a smile to rob his rudeness of any offence.

  ‘I fear that time is short, honoured elder, so I’ll get straight to the point. As you may have heard, the Paionians are raiding to the north of the city and razing every estate to the ground. We need to act immediately if we are to save your food sources for this winter.’

  He had come to the conclusion that, as the assembly hadn’t already acted, they were content to let the Paionians raid to their heart’s content, knowing that they were safe within the city walls. By pointing out that it was their food that was being burnt, he hoped that he could spur them into action without resorting to threats.

  The elder’s face paled and it was almost comical to watch his face change as he evaluated the situation anew and came to the conclusion that the city would indeed have to act.

  ‘What do you want us to do, strategos?’

  ‘Call up all your mounted citizens so that they can accompany Orestes and my escort north to locate the raiders whilst I follow on with your hoplites, peltasts and light infantry. How many men can you raise quickly?’

  ‘Er, about a hundred cavalry, I suppose and perhaps three thousand infantry, a thousand of them being hoplites. But some will have to stay here t
o defend the city.’

  ‘You can use the men who are too old to be called out and your ephebes. I suggest that you consider arming the metics as well. I know that they are untrained and mobilising them is unusual, but at least they can help you keep watch.’

  ‘But we don’t have weapons for them. Citizens provide their own.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that.’ Parmenion tried to keep his irritation from showing. ‘But you have money and you have armourers. Put them to work making spears and get the carpenters to make shields. Hopefully, we’ll destroy the raiders before they get anywhere near Europos, but it’s as well to be prepared.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll call an emergency meeting of the assembly and you can put your proposals to them.’

  ‘It would be better coming from you, the man they know and trust. Orestes and I will be there to support you, of course.’

  In the event, the assembly didn’t need much convincing, the only dissention being the proposal to arm the metics at the city’s expense.

  ‘Alright,’ Parmenion finally gave up. ‘Don’t arm the metics, but you’ll have to make do with the old men and the ephebes to defend you city; I’ll need every armed citizen of age with me.’

  In the end the assembly came to an extraordinary compromise. Those male metics between eighteen and fifty who had resided in Europos for ten years or more were made citizens. That way they would have to furnish their own weapons and armour to stand guard. It cost the city nothing and it improved their military strength. It was a clever move and its potential for use elsewhere wasn’t lost on Parmenion.