In this blog, we take a look at the equipment of Kassandros, a hypaspist in the army of Alexander the Great. In 331 BCE, the Macedonian conqueror and his troops marched from conquered Egypt in the footsteps of the famous ten thousand directly into the Persian interior - with the goal of toppling Achaemenid king Darius III from his throne. Under the burning sun of Asia Minor, the Macedonian army would make history and lay the foundation for a new period in Euro-Asian history.

The Macedonian Conquests

After the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BCE, the Greek city-states remained weakened. The great loser, Athens, had to give up her great sea empire, though she attempted to rebuild this empire. The winner, Sparta, briefly drew power in the Greek world to itself, but the war had caused a considerable shortage of aristocratic Spartans. This meant the city-state of warriors could barely keep her own underclass of Helots in check. The end of Sparta would come in the coming century as a result of a series of revolutions in the Peloponnese.

Thebes, seeing the power vacuum emerging in Greece, became the leader of a new Boeotian league that turned against these two weakened old powers. In the coming decades, these three power blocs would fight it out with each other through mercenaries, while their civilian populations sharply declined. In the background, two kingdoms watched and waited for their chance to conquer the Greeks; one was the ancient Persian enemy in the east, the other was a new player in the north.

Macedonian king Philippus II (382-336 BCE) saw the great division of Greece from the beginning of his reign in 359 BCE as fertile ground for conquest. Up to this point, the kingdom of Macedon in the Balkans had always belonged to the periphery of the Greek world; because of their strong northern dialect, they weren't even allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, and most Greeks considered them half-barbarians. Within four years, however, this pride of the Greek city-states would prove to be their downfall. Philippus had developed a new, modern combat formation that made short work of the weakened Greek armies: the legendary Macedonian phalanx. Hoplites (phalanxes) in this formation fought with very long pikes (sarissas) in tight lines, which together formed impenetrable walls of spears. The Athenians and Thebans briefly resisted this steamroller from the north, but were decisively defeated at Chaeronea in 338.

After this, Philippus employed a clever tactic to prevent the Greeks, who valued their autonomy above all else, from rebelling. In 337 BCE, he established the Corinthian League, a confederation of all Greek states under Macedonian hegemony. Member states didn't have to pay taxes and were completely autonomous in internal affairs, though they had to maintain peace among themselves. Philippus planned to use this league and the power of a united Greece to conquer the Persian empire. Before he could turn his attention to the east, however, he was murdered the following year. His son Alexander (356-323 BCE) would have to continue the Macedonian ambition in Asia.

Alexander the Great

This charismatic son of Philippus began his reign at age 20 by crossing the Aegean Sea with the experienced army of the Corinthian League. A land force of 43,000 soldiers and 5,500 cavalry easily conquered the Greek city-states on the coast of Asia Minor that had been in Persian hands for the past century. Alexander planned to conquer the entire Persian empire, but to do so he first had to prevent Macedonian territories in Asia Minor and the Greek peninsula from being attacked in his absence. Therefore, he marched south to Egypt and the Levant to take over the Phoenician cities where the Persian fleet was stationed.

Near a river valley near the city of Issus, the army of Persian king Darius III tried to block his way. This defeated the Macedonian phalanx with ease and Darius fled east. He left behind his silver treasures, which Alexander eagerly seized and had minted into coins to pay his soldiers. The capture of the Phoenician cities took longer and cost much more effort than he had expected; to conquer the city of Tyre, which lay on an island off the coast, he even had to build a causeway for 7 months. The peninsula created this way still exists today. He also had Alexandria founded at the mouth of the Nile, the first of many cities named after himself.

Although Alexander portrayed himself as the great hero of the Greek world, this image soured among his Greek allies as power went to his head and he became heavily involved in the cultures he conquered. He also incorporated defeated Persian generals into his armies and gave them more gifts than his Greek allies. They felt betrayed, but didn't dare voice this against him; all who turned against Alexander were murdered in cruel ways. Alexander began to behave increasingly in their eyes like a Persian king and portrayed himself as the heir to the Achaemenids, the 'great enemy' of the Greeks in the classical period. After his visit to the oracle of Ammon in Egypt, where he was greeted as a pharaoh, the young Macedonian king even had himself worshipped as a god on earth. This was a practice that was normal among Egyptians and Persians, but was considered by the Greeks, who saw a king as 'first among equals', as the highest form of despotism and blasphemy.

Nevertheless, the Macedonians marched further into the Persian interior. They followed in the footsteps of the famous ten thousand Greek mercenaries who had made the same journey 70 years earlier to overthrow another Persian king. In 331 BCE, near the town of Gaugamela, Alexander and Darius met each other on the battlefield again. Here the Macedonian king employed a revolutionary cavalry tactic with which he quickly won the battle; the heavy cavalry of hetairoi ('companions') formed an agile wedge, with Alexander at the point. By pretending to try to encircle the Persian army, they managed to stretch the Persian army, which tried to prevent this, far apart and break through a weak point in the line. Darius fled when he saw this happen, but was captured by his own general Bessus in Bactria (present-day Afghanistan). After this victory, Alexander had himself crowned with a Persian diadem as 'king of Asia', a ceremony that was watched reluctantly by his Greek allies.

He resumed his conquest and had the royal palace at Persepolis burned without a fight; he portrayed it as revenge for the destruction of Athens in 480 during the Persian Wars to win back his disappointed Greek soldiers. After a few months, Alexander was able to track Darius's traces to Bactria. Here in 329 BCE he quickly dealt with the treacherous Bessus, who had proclaimed himself the new Persian king and had brutally murdered Darius in public. Alexander gave Darius a dignified burial, to the great admiration of the Persians. With this, he hoped to establish himself as a worthy successor to the Achaemenids to prevent uprisings. He founded many cities (which he of course named after himself), conquered a large area, and married Persian princess Roxana. Once again in 323 BCE, Alexander turned east to conquer the Indian peninsula beyond the boundaries of the Persian empire. His soldiers rebelled at the Indus and refused to cross the river; they missed their families and homes in Macedon and Greece, which they hadn't seen for 13 years. This mutiny convinced Alexander to abandon his conquest plans and return to Babylon. Before he could do so, however, the 33-year-old Macedonian king died very suddenly from an unknown disease.

The Hellenistic World

Immediately after the death of the heirless Alexander came a period of intense conflict in which his generals fought among themselves over inheritance of his empire. Eventually five remained, who divided the Macedonian empire among themselves;

Seleucus, the great winner who would rule over the former Persian empire in the East, until the Parthians would overthrow his dynasty,

Ptolemaeus, who would rule over Egypt and the Phoenician cities of the Levant and whose dynasty would end with the famous Cleopatra,

Antigonus the One-Eyed, who would rule over Asia Minor and the major Greek city-states on the Aegean coast,

And finally Cassander and Lysimachus, who received the consolation prizes in Macedon and Thrace.

With this, the 'Hellenistic' period also began, the greatest legacy of Philippus and Alexander. Their conquests may not have created a united empire, but they did create a cultural and economic world that - despite the boundaries between the kingdoms - was tightly connected. The Hellenistic period is considered a time of unprecedented globalization in antiquity. Alexander's army had spread Greek art and culture throughout West Asia by founding Greek cities and created a connection between east and west, which caused Asian culture and art to also spread to Europe.

Not only elite culture received strong Greek influence, but many more aspects in the areas conquered by Alexander. From the Danube to the Indus, whether they were Macedonian, Egyptian, Persian, or even Buddhist, people exchanged culture and goods with each other, paid with the same coins, and spoke the same lingua franca—Greek. Alexander the Great may not have proven to be the divine ruler of Asia, but the new Hellenistic world that emerged from his reign would continue to exist until the conquests of Rome and Parthia.

Composition of Kassandros - Clothing

In the armies of Philippus, Alexander, and their successors in Asia, the Macedonian phalanx was used, in which, alongside the phalanges with their long pikes, hypaspists also fought—agile hoplites who had to defend the vulnerable flanks of the phalanx. The hoplite Kassandros we're looking at in this blog is one such hypaspist. Under his armor, he wears a tunic, a belt, and a pair of worn leather sandals. He also wears his thick woolen cloak as protection against the Persian sun and the cutting cold of the Hindu Kush.

Chiton (Hypaspist Tunic)

Greek tunics were made of linen, sometimes also of wool. The red tunic that Kassandros wears is made of thick fabric and has short sleeves, but in warmer months, Greeks often wore light garments that left their arms and shoulders uncovered. Classical Greeks wore no trousers under their tunics, as they considered them barbaric.

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Sandaloi (Sandals)

Because of the warm, temperate climate in classical Greece and the rest of the Mediterranean, sandals (sandaloi) like these were worn. Although Kassandros wears simple military sandals that are less open to better protect the feet, there were constantly new fashion trends for sandals in antiquity that were set by fashionable Athens.

Besides sandals, from the fifth century BCE people also wore a kind of lace-up boots (like endromis and embades) and in winter felt socks (piloi) to keep the feet warm.