2 - Sources of manpower

Summary

Lesquier in his comprehensive study of the Ptolemaic army established that Ptolemaic sources of manpower consisted of military settlers, mercenaries, and indigenous inhabitants. The Seleucid army, being similarly influenced by the structure of Alexander's army and by Persian military tradition, was based principally on the same components, but their proportion, character, and development were quite different. Consequently, the Seleucid regular array, despite territorial setbacks and heavy losses in it s numerous campaigns, maintained itself as a viable force for at least two generations after the final death throes of the Ptolemaic regular array at Panion, and could have survived even longer, had the kingdom not sunk into ceaseless internal strife after the death of Antiochus IV. It will appear from the following pages that most of the differences between the two armies, like the political, economic, and administrative distinctions between the two kingdoms, originated as much from geographical and demographic conditions as from policy.

THE MILITARY SETTLEMENTS

The long-established assumption that military settlers constituted the hard core of Seleucid manpower has not been seriously disputed. The main evidence, apart from analogy with Egypt, seems to be as follows: two phalanx corps, several tens of thousands in all, figure in the great campaigns; one is called alternatively ‘phalanx’ or ‘Macedonians’, and the other is an elite corps of argyraspides. It is unlikely that these were mercenaries or indigenous population. Neither hostile Macedonia nor even Greece could provide such a large number, and arming the orientals with heavy weapons would have laid the Seleucids open to the constant danger of native uprisings.