Bret Devereaux

The way I teach this is that the system is culturally embedded, both in the tight-knit polis-community (provides necessary cohesion for non-professional shock infantry) and in the different structure of agriculture in Greece (more medium-sized freeholders who can afford kit).

How confident are you in that hypothesis? How much of the disparity do you think it accounts for?

Fairly confident? Our evidence is not great, but I think it largely tracks. Much of the Achaemenid military was hard-to-change legacy systems and I just can't imagine that in, say, 340, it felt absolutely necessary to change.

There's also the recent book on Greek Mercenary service in the Near East by Jeffrey Rop, that challenges some of these notions.

Yeah, I should note that I'm not saying the Achaemenid military was bad - clearly not, it was very successful for quite some time. More that the Achamenids seem to have recognized that Greek mercenaries were useful and sought to acquire some, but not so much to make their own.

I mean, isn’t that what the karadakes were? An effort to make their own? Although the sources are super sketchy on them.

Well, so the Kardakes could be a lot things, is what I gather. They're a bit like a youth corps. I suspect Alexander's epigonoi took advantage of the existing institutions that supported Kardakes tradition. But we hear they learned to shoot, sling, throw, and fight with spears.

At Issus I tend to accept the sources that put at least some Kardakes in relatively heavy kit and close order on the other side of the river bed. But confidence level isn't super high.