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the silver shields and eumenes in cilicia Shortly after leaving Nora in the spring of 318, Eumenes received letters from the royal guardian, Polyperchon, and Alexander’s mother, Olympias. The consequent change in his fortunes delights our sources, who are keen on highlighting the roller-coaster nature of his career. Diodorus and Plutarch summarize and paraphrase the letters, which included an invitation to Eumenes to be the protector of the Macedonian kings (especially Alexander IV), to lead the war against Antigonus, to take money from the Cilician treasury of Cyinda, and to assume command over the Macedonian veterans known as the Silver Shields.¹ Scholars have persuasively shown that the Silver Shields were originally Alexander’s hypaspists—elite units of the Macedonian phalanx. At that time it is probable that they already numbered around 3,000 men, with occasional additions and reductions. They were given the name “Silver Shields” no later than Alexander’s Indian campaign. I subscribe to the view that they formed part of the royal army that followed Perdiccas from Babylon to Egypt, and that they played an active role in the riots against Antipater when he arrived at Triparadeisus in 321/0 to become the regent of the kingdom. Antipater sent them with their commander Antigenes, and presumably Teutamus as well, to bring down money from the treasury in Susa. Their history is uncertain from that point until they met Eumenes in Cilicia in 318 and became a dominant force in his army. They are nowhere attested, as is commonly assumed, to have served as the guardians of the royal treasury at Cyinda in Cilicia (which was well fortified in any case) be1 . Letters to Eumenes: Diod. 18.57.3–58.4; Plut. Eum. 13.1–3; Nepos Eum. 6.1–5; Heidelberg Epitome F 3.2; cf. Diod. 18.53.7. Rosen’s reconstruction (1967, 69–71) of Polyperchon ’s correspondence is too speculative. chapter 7 eumenes and the silver shields Roisman-final.indb 177 Roisman-final.indb 177 1/29/12 9:46:54 PM 1/29/12 9:46:54 PM 178 alexander’s veterans & the early wars of the successors fore Polyperchon instructed them to join Eumenes. But it is unknown what they were doing in Cilicia at that time. Perhaps their commanders were waiting for the right opportunity or employer. The Silver Shields certainly became attractive to many generals once Eumenes got them.² In his account of the opposing sides at the Battle of Gabene in 317 between Eumenes and Antigonus, Diodorus describes the Silver Shields as the conquerors of the world under Philip and Alexander and as irresistible because of their experience. He says that their average age was seventy, with some even older, and that the youngest of them were sixty. Plutarch, who gives a very similar description in the same context, calls them “athletes of war, undefeated and unfailing up to this time,” thus suggesting a common source, probably Hieronymus.³ Such elderly gentlemen would have been promising candidates for the role of jurors in Aristophanes’ Wasps but hardly useful in a force elsewhere described as “the spearhead of the entire army,” or as men who were “invincible, and because of their excellence , spread much fear among the enemies.”⁴ It is equally hard to imagine that the Argyraspides were able to keep their 3,000-member unit intact for such a long time and without supplanting the dead and the disabled with younger warriors. Most of the Silver Shields must have been fit, adult warriors who could sustain the physical demands of marching and hand-tohand fighting. The old warriors probably constituted a minority among the 3,000 Silver Shields, but they caught the attention of the sources, for whom they represented the golden age of Philip’s and Alexander’s conquests, anchored in military aretē and experience.⁵ 2. The hypaspists’ number: Bosworth 1980–1995, 2:195–199; Heckel, forthcoming. Oddly, scholars’ recent interest in the Silver Shields often has focused not on their character but on their number of 3,000, which is used, with other figures, for widely different assessments of the numbers of veterans in the Successors’ armies. The Silver Shields’ origins and history: Tarn 1948, 2:116–118, 149–153; Anson 1981; 1988b; Heckel 1982; 1992, 307–319; forthcoming (he believes that they followed Craterus to Asia Minor but then joined Perdiccas’s campaign; but see Bosworth 1992, 66–67). For the possibility that Alexander modeled the Silver Shields on an Asian unit: Olbrycht, forthcoming...

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