My original title for this post was “Iphicrates, peltasts, thureophoroi, phalangites, and shielded cavalry”. Iphicrates was a leader of mercenary peltasts and is attributed with creating, or at least inspiring, both the Greek thureophoroi and the Macedonian phalangite. I keep reading bits and pieces about this but they are like a pieces of jigsaw puzzle scattered over the table. Reading about thureophoroi lead me to reading about other troops: Illyrians; the Thracians with their rhomphaia; Thracian cavalry shields (using them before the Greeks); and Macedonian cavalry shields. I thought a timeline for military innovation across the Macedonian Wars would help to position the various bits in relation to each other.
The timeline covers the period up to the general adoption of the Macedonian phalanx including the encounters between Pyrrhus’s phalanx and the Roman legions. Obviously it covers explicit mentions of Iphicrates, peltasts, mercenaries, thureophoroi, phalangites, and shielded cavalry, but it also covers Macedon’s neighbours Greece, Epirus, Illyria and Thrace. The Greeks, Epirotes and Illyrians all invaded Italy at one time or another so the timeline also has to cover elements of Italian history as well. This is not a complete timeline, just an attempt to map out the pieces of the puzzle.
