Help with translating weapon name in Diodorus

[BjörnF]

Hello!
Is there someone who could help me with the translation of a weapon name in Diodorus? I am currently reading about the battle of Parataikene and in Diodorus 19.29.2 (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/19B*.html#29.2) it says: "mounted archers and lancers from Media and Parthia". I wonder what Greek word was used for "lancers"? Were they using xyston, or doros or akontio or some other kind of spear?

Another question, but this time about the mysterious Hypaspists that took part in the same battle. Could there be a clue about them in Plutarchos? In his Life of Eumenes (14.1) he says: "The Macedonians, ..., who now had body-guards and wanted to be generals." I wonder who those body-guards were. Could the Hypaspists in Parataikene be the body-guards from all the satraps? Earlier in the book Eumenes got 1000 body-guards so it is possible that a unit of body-guards would be large. Hello!
Is there someone who could help me with the translation of a weapon name in Diodorus? I am currently reading about the battle of Parataikene and in Diodorus 19.29.2 (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/19B*.html#29.2) it says: "mounted archers and lancers from Media and Parthia". I wonder what greek word was used for "lancers"? Were they using xyston, or doros or akontio or some other kind of spear?


thanks!
Björn

[Andreas Johansson]

Hello!
Is there someone who could help me with the translation of a weapon name in Diodorus? I am currently reading about the battle of Parataikene and in Diodorus 19.29.2 (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/19B*.html#29.2) it says: "mounted archers and lancers from Media and Parthia". I wonder what Greek word was used for "lancers"? Were they using xyston, or doros or akontio or some other kind of spear?

The "lancers" are λογχοφόρους (acc pl) in the original, i.e. carriers of longkhe, which seems to be a fairly generic word for spear, one of Liddell and Scott's definitions being "javelin, spear, pike".

[Duncan Head]

As Andreas says, the Medes are longchophoroi\logkhophoroi, users of the longche\logkhe. I suggested in AMPW that this was a term used for a light throwing-spear; there is now an academic article by Nefedkin in Hellenistic Warfare 3 which comes to the same conclusion, citing one author who equates the longche with the palton, the word Xenophon uses for the pair of spears carried by Achaemenid Persian cavalrymen.

Longche originally (to Herodotos and Xenophon) meant "spear-head" but in Hellenistic or Roman  writers it means the whole spear; it seems to be used for light spears, sometimes described as being thrown, and is used as the Greek equivalent of the Latin word lancea. These Median longchophoroi are unusual in being cavalrymen (though Arrian in his Taktika tacks longchophoroi on to his list of spear-carrying cavalry types) but Polybios uses the word for the light javelin infantry in Hannibal's army and Plutarch uses it for Caucasian Iberian infantry.

The theory that the "hypaspists" are the satraps' combined Macedonian footguards (since the original hypaspists are now listed as argyraspides) has been put forward before - again, I think from memory that I may have mentioned it in AMPW -  and is certainly one of the possibilities. Hammond argued that they were "ek twn hypaspistwn", and were actually the sons of the original hypaspists.

[BjörnF]

Thanks Andreas and Duncan!
I am currently for out in the countryside, I got good internet connection, but not my books (I should always bring AMPW with me; the answer to all my questions seems to be in that book. Thanks Duncan for writing it!)
sheers,
Björn