Unit Browser for RTR: Imperium Surrectum

Short description

The selected elite of the Athenian infantry, armed as heavily armoured Hoplites, is ready to defend its home city.

Description

The Epilektoi were small in number (possibly only 1000 men), but permanently kept on standby, different from basically all other military forces of Hellenistic Athens, bar some of the mercenaries who garrisoned the forts of Attica. Armed as Hoplites, the Epilektoi are recruited from among wealthy and brave citizens who could afford a full bronze muscle cuirass, a richly decorated Attic or Thracian helmet with engraved cheek guards and a bronze coated Aspis shield. Possibly some or all of them fought in the style of the Iphicratean Peltasts (Thompson 1983), but unfortunately this remains speculation. In any case, they are Athens’ best infantry unit and should be deployed wisely.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:

In 302 BC, the Athenian ethelontai epilektoi (“chosen volunteers”) erected a stele for king Demetrios Poliorketes, honouring him with an equestrian statue and sacrifices (it is still preserved in the Epigraphical Museum of Athens as Inv. EM 12749). This is not the first mention of the Epilektoi (in c. 330 BC, e.g., the Epilektoi of the tribe of Antiochis publicly praised their taxiarch Prokleides; inscription SEG III, 116 = AD 8 (1923), 86-96), but it is the longest. On the stele the Epilektoi describe how they took part in the campaigns from 307 to 303 BC, helping to defeat the troops of Cassander who threatened Athens, liberating Megara and helping to protect the Peloponnese against invasions by other Diadochi kings.

Since 307 BC, Athens had been under the control of Demetrios and his father Antigonos I. Monophtalmos, the founders of the so called “Antigonid dynasty”. After a series of reversals and civil wars, the city was liberated by the Ptolemaic commander Kallias in 287 BC, though Oropos, a city to the west of Athens, was lost, and the Piraeus remained under Macedonian occupation. By 270 BC, Macedon was under the firm control of Antigonos Gonatas, son of Demetrios, who had studied at Athens and left his troops in the Piraeus, thereby keeping a permanent grip on the city.

The Epilektoi did not only fight in the Diadochi wars in mainland Greece, but also at Thermopylai in 279 BC against the invading Celts (Paus. X, 20, 3 mentions 1000 Hoplites, which is a realistic number for an elite unit). They were organised into ten, later twelve tribal subunits, whose common origin created a strong esprit de corps. As an elite regiment, they were usually exempt from garrison duty – that was the task of the mercenaries in the forts of Attica and the Epipoloi, the 18-20 year old Ephebes in training in Athens and the Piraeus. Yet, the description IG II² 1209, possibly from 317 BC, praised the Epilektoi for repelling a (Macedonian?) night attack on the walls of the city - in times of crisis, the Athenians seem to have trusted only their best soldiers in guarding the city walls.