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Greetings,

As a follow-up project to Men of Bronze, I wanted to make a Thessalian army list. This is an area that did not make it into the original book. I was rightly called out for this oversight by the Irrregular Warfare blog.

http://irregularwars.blogspot.com/2019/04/review-of-ospreys-men-of-bronze.html

I wanted to get the communities help in building such a list.

The creation of this list will be in the public domain and the list itself will stay here for public use, and be re-posted on the Blood and Spectacles Blog and Message board for open use. I will also submit it to Osprey in a formal document where they can choose to place it on their resources page if they like.

As a designer, one of the great and terrifying things about making a Historical based game is that there is always someone who knows more about the topic than you do. Therefore, I am reaching out here for just such people to help me out! I admit, the history of Thessaly is not my strong suit.

You do not need a copy of Men of Bronze to participate in this project, but it will probably help as we talk about some of the troop types, army structures, and mechanics to help make this list successful.

To get us started, it might be helpful to read up here on Thessaly and Thessalian cavalry.

http://historandmor.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-thessalian-cavalry.html

If you have other resources that are easy to share, please do so. So, based on a quick reading here are a couple things that stand out....

1. Thessaly has a lot of cavalry forces, but also had other units
2. By Alexander's time (after Men of Bronze) Thessalians used heavy cavalry.
3. The Rhomboid formation was a Thessalian specialty
4. Hoplites and Peltasts may have existed, but they were "non-traditional" in nature

So, that is what we have to start with? How would you proceed and build the list? Is there a particularly well-known Thessalian battle to make a Historical Scenario from?

I am eager to learn more.

I don't speak or read German, but apparently this guy makes the case, and it is not the first time I have read it. It makes the case that there was a heavy Peltast/Hoplite hybrid that used larger shields, threw javelins, and fought on foot int eh Thessalian army?

Saal, Patrick - Das Thessalische Militär, eine Domäne der Kavallerie?, Bachelor Thesis for the Helmut Schmidt University 2009, Dept of History, GRIN Verlag GmbH, Norderstedt 2010

I have a feeling this maybe a minority view, as Xenophon references Hoplites. However, ancient Greek definitions were less strict than our "modern" classifications. Plus, the half-armor Hermithorakion was made popular with officers in Thessaly by Jason of Pherea, so the armament of these non-cavalry "heavy" soldiers has potentially become more interesting.

 Easy E wrote:
I don't speak or read German, but apparently this guy makes the case, and it is not the first time I have read it. It makes the case that there was a heavy Peltast/Hoplite hybrid that used larger shields, threw javelins, and fought on foot int eh Thessalian army?

Saal, Patrick - Das Thessalische Militär, eine Domäne der Kavallerie?, Bachelor Thesis for the Helmut Schmidt University 2009, Dept of History, GRIN Verlag GmbH, Norderstedt 2010

I have a feeling this maybe a minority view, as Xenophon references Hoplites. However, ancient Greek definitions were less strict than our "modern" classifications. Plus, the half-armor Hermithorakion was made popular with officers in Thessaly by Jason of Pherea, so the armament of these non-cavalry "heavy" soldiers has potentially become more interesting.

so you want a translation?

If so give me a link, i'll get you his thesis.


Edit: got the abstract, to my knowledge he only focusses on the cavalery specialisation of Thessaly.
Which to my knowledge had a tendency to be a hybrid cavallery: as in shield, javelins and sword on horse back.

Yes, I keep reading about Heavy Peltasts in general not necessarily just related to the Thessalian army. However, I think these were later creations and not relevant to the time period for Men of Bronze.

Are we getting confused with thyreophoroi? It can get confusing as any troop that didn't fight in phalanx could be described as "Peltast" and those that fight in phalanx "Hoplite" despite the specific meaning of each word (also mercenary troops of any type were called "Peltasts" by various authorities). I blame Siculus and his misinterpretation of Iphicrate's reforms in large part for this.

On Thessaly; yeah the main striking arm of the army was the cavalry, initially equipped with javelin and sword and later with spear. In their use, employment and tactics they were the model for which Phillip based the Companion cavalry. The Thessalian states (the norm for Thessaly was to not be unified into a single state) also raised and equipped (and much more frequently hired) Hoplites that fought in the southern manner though they were not the army of decision but rather the anchor for the cavalry to fight off, exactly the same as the Macedonian state...

Cant remember any details on light troops (or mentions come to that).

 ingtaer wrote:
Are we getting confused with thyreophoroi? It can get confusing as any troop that didn't fight in phalanx could be described as "Peltast" and those that fight in phalanx "Hoplite" despite the specific meaning of each word (also mercenary troops of any type were called "Peltasts" by various authorities). I blame Siculus and his misinterpretation of Iphicrate's reforms in large part for this.

Yes, I believe you are spot on in that later peltasts are getting mixed up with Thureophoroi as at some point the two morphed into the each other. Plus, as you state may writers apply the term peltast in very different ways.

Heavy Cavalry seems to have been a thing against Phillip II, which is "in scope" for Men of Bronze.

During this time the "Rhomboid" formation was a thing, so a new formation maybe needed.

In addition, the Thessalian cavalry had a heavier emphasis on Javelins than Companion heavy cavalry. Therefore, Thesaalian Heavy Cavalry will be somewhat different than those found in Men of Bronze so far.

I will have to think about how to make this army list different than existing Cavalry heavy forces.....


... any thoughts?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also found the following:

Fighting as heavy cavalry,
i.e. operating in close formation, the Thessalians mayhave been armed in a similar fashion as the Companions (Hammond 1989, 106).Thessalian aristocrats may even have influenced their Macedonian fellow noblesin this respect in the course of the fourth century. Relatively heavy armament inany case will have been necessary to bear up against heavily-armed Iranian caval-ry. This means that the Thessalians may have worn linen cuirasses, helmets, pteruges and greaves. Bronze armor and shields will have been exceptional
24
. The rhomboid formation, if historical, suggests that they were armed with a long cav-alry lance, probably supplemented by a cavalry saber (
kopis). In combination with a lance the use of a shield is not likely. The use of horse armor seems unlikely too
25

https://www.academia.edu/1826328/Alexanders_Thessalian_Cavalry_2011_



From this article they also pointed to some mentions in Herodotus, Xenophon, and Thucydides as far back as the Greek-Persian wars. However, from what I gleaned from going back, there was not much to work off of. Again, the focus was on cavalry actions.

.

Do you own the books mate? I have a day off tomorrow and can pull the relevant quotes for you if not.

I have all three, I just need to go look at them.

The Xenophon quote just references the recruitment of 1,000 Hoplites and 500 peltast under Meno from Thessaly. These guys are mercenaries.

That is about it.

After reviewing Herodotus, here is what I found about Thessaly....

Apparently, Cleomenes I the Spartan king tried to overthrow the Tyrant of Athens. A guy names Hippias. He sent some ships and they began to unload the troops at Phalerum. However, before the Spartans could form up into Line of Battle, they were attacked and routed by mercenary forces that were Thessalian Cavalry. A follow-up engagement between the Spartans and Thessalians show the Spartans beating them pretty decisively in battle. This was all prior to the Persian Wars.

This book I ran across online was also helpful to me in my research....

https://books.google.com/books?id=6z6foPWT3_oC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=herodotus+Thessalian+cavalry&source=bl&ots=KgmTQ0DlPv&sig=ACfU3U0b7UL4ZIklWeGmJMMpu3DEBaP6Lw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi96bTemMLlAhXhNX0KHesJB0IQ6AEwDHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=herodotus%20Thessalian%20cavalry&f=false

I search through my copy of Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural history for Thessalian.

They mainly show up related to cavalry, often allied or mercenary. The author doesn't treat them differently from other Greek cavalry. Which could mean they were not substantially different from other Greeks or that it is below the scope of the book.

He does mention Hamippoi, light infantry that support cavalry and that Thessalians might have used them, but doesn't seem very convinced that they were used much.

I found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ktsij/why_were_cavalry_forces_seemingly_always_so_small/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskHistorians&utm_content=t1_e75sihz

The poster Iphikrates is Dr Konijnendijk, author of the above book, and it's mainly his posts I was looking at. The thread is mostly about cavalry in general but has numbers of 20,000 hoplites and 8,000 cavalry, and 10,000 hoplites and 6,000 cavalry as potential levy sizes for the Thessalians.

Yeah he is getting the numbers from Xenophon.

A good link. Thank you for sharing!

I think I am ready to start putting some pen to paper soon.

Edit: One other thing I found fun was a section of Herodotus regarding Xerxes in Thessaly. Xerxes organized a race between Persian cavalry and allowed Thessallian cavalry to participate. Xerxes had heard they were the best cavalry in Greece and wanted to get their measure. The Thessalians did not do well against the Persian cavalry in the competition. Who knows if this is true or if the race was "rigged", or the Thessalians didn't put their all into it, or if old Herodotus is just making stuff up! Just an amusing story.

 Easy E wrote:

Edit: One other thing I found fun was a section of Herodotus regarding Xerxes in Thessaly. Xerxes organized a race between Persian cavalry and allowed Thessallian cavalry to participate. Xerxes had heard they were the best cavalry in Greece and wanted to get their measure. The Thessalians did not do well against the Persian cavalry in the competition. Who knows if this is true or if the race was "rigged", or the Thessalians didn't put their all into it, or if old Herodotus is just making stuff up! Just an amusing story.

Its not necessarily surprising.

The Persians would have a much greater breadth of cavalry traditions to draw upon. Greece is heavily mountainous while the Persian cavalry would probably be drawn from people groups living in more open steppe and desert country. Horses bred for flat open country would be faster than those used to more mountainous regions. And as races are almost always done on flat ground it would almost certainly give an advantage to horses bred for sheer speed like those used in open country are. The Thessalonian horses might do better if the race was over hilly and rocky terrain.

"Best cavalry in Greece" is probably true, but in the overall scheme of cavalry across the world Greek cavalry would not be of much note. The Thessalonians were just the best at something all the Greeks were mediocre at.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Edit: One other thing I found fun was a section of Herodotus regarding Xerxes in Thessaly. Xerxes organized a race between Persian cavalry and allowed Thessallian cavalry to participate. Xerxes had heard they were the best cavalry in Greece and wanted to get their measure. The Thessalians did not do well against the Persian cavalry in the competition. Who knows if this is true or if the race was "rigged", or the Thessalians didn't put their all into it, or if old Herodotus is just making stuff up! Just an amusing story.

Its not necessarily surprising.

The Persians would have a much greater breadth of cavalry traditions to draw upon. Greece is heavily mountainous while the Persian cavalry would probably be drawn from people groups living in more open steppe and desert country. Horses bred for flat open country would be faster than those used to more mountainous regions. And as races are almost always done on flat ground it would almost certainly give an advantage to horses bred for sheer speed like those used in open country are. The Thessalonian horses might do better if the race was over hilly and rocky terrain.

"Best cavalry in Greece" is probably true, but in the overall scheme of cavalry across the world Greek cavalry would not be of much note. The Thessalonians were just the best at something all the Greeks were mediocre at.

Aye, it doesn't seem much of a stretch that horses bred on the plains would be faster in a race than horses bred in the hills. As well as that the Thessalians had the best cavalry (at least until Phillip mkii) as no other state in Greece proper had any sort of history of breeding for or using horses as a principal arm in war, most (if not all) city states maintained/levied a small body but they were to support the phalanx.
Though Herodotus did love to just make stuff up! Of note and from the top of my head this included reporting as fact that there was a species of ant that dug gold, that he had seen the corpses of flying snakes and that he could tell the difference between Egyptian and Persian skulls because Persians wore hats and thus had thinner skulls!

The history of horses is quite fascinating. When they were first domesticated they were actually too small to ride at all. The best you could do was have them pull wagons and chariots. It wasn't till after centuries of breeding that horses got big enough to even consider actually riding them, and even then fighting from the back of one was extremely difficult and impractical. Really only good for harassing the enemy, chasing fleeing foes, shooting bows/throwing stuff, or just moving around quickly and then dismounting to do the real fighting.

The Greeks probably also had the older smaller lineages of horses as well. I expect that the people in the middle east/central asia would have kept the larger horses for themselves and then sold off their smaller poorer stock, which would result in horse sizes being progressively smaller as you moved further away from the original areas of domestication. It would also probably explain why there are so many varieties of pony in isolated mountain regions, places where the genetic dead ends of horse breeding would survive in people groups that had to make do with worse livestock. Livestock when would then adapt to the local environment and breed hardy animals more focused on beating the local climate rather than peak performance.

Horses are of course expensive too. That would limit the number of people who could afford to have a horse, let alone one you could risk losing in battle. Even in the Middle Ages when you had good warhorses, and the tech that let you fight from horseback effectively, most knights couldn't afford to actually fight on horseback. Sure, they would probably own several horses for riding and carrying their stuff, but they wouldn't have the disposable income to own a very expensive purebred warhorse and then go into battle where the thing would probably get injured and die horribly because they have the constitution of a wet paper bag.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Horses are of course expensive too. That would limit the number of people who could afford to have a horse, let alone one you could risk losing in battle. Even in the Middle Ages when you had good warhorses, and the tech that let you fight from horseback effectively, most knights couldn't afford to actually fight on horseback. Sure, they would probably own several horses for riding and carrying their stuff, but they wouldn't have the disposable income to own a very expensive purebred warhorse and then go into battle where the thing would probably get injured and die horribly because they have the constitution of a wet paper bag.

Tarn stated that one reason why the democratic Greek states didn't use much cavalry was because the cost of raising and maintaining them encouraged Oligarchies, interesting thought.

Yes, the horses from Thessaly were smaller ponies I guess closest related to something called a Pindor Pony now? Meanwhile, the Persians used horses from the Nisseian Plains that were much larger and better runners.

My first link covers it in some detail.

http://historandmor.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-thessalian-cavalry.html

When you look at early Assyrian cavalry and their mounts and fighting style, it is interesting to see how far Cavalry has come.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have put some pen to paper on a list for Early Thessaly.... I am interested in your thoughts.....

1+ Cavalry
0-4 Militia Hoplites
0-2 Peltasts
0+ Psiloi

Thoughts?

Is cavalry just a catch all for all of with no differentation between types?
Maybe up the ratio of Peltasts and add the option of merc. Hoplites? My copy of MoB never arrived so I dont know if there is a mercenary option.

Hmmm, I don't know about making Cavalry a mandatory choice with nothing else being mandatory. It would be very weird to be able to field an all cavalry greek army.

I'd just give them some minor cavalry related bonuses. Maybe they have cheaper cavalry than other greeks or are just slightly better overall, but are kept below anything that the Persians can do. Maybe keep the design philosophy along the lines of "Solidly mediocre".

 ingtaer wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Horses are of course expensive too. That would limit the number of people who could afford to have a horse, let alone one you could risk losing in battle. Even in the Middle Ages when you had good warhorses, and the tech that let you fight from horseback effectively, most knights couldn't afford to actually fight on horseback. Sure, they would probably own several horses for riding and carrying their stuff, but they wouldn't have the disposable income to own a very expensive purebred warhorse and then go into battle where the thing would probably get injured and die horribly because they have the constitution of a wet paper bag.

Tarn stated that one reason why the democratic Greek states didn't use much cavalry was because the cost of raising and maintaining them encouraged Oligarchies, interesting thought.

Which is funny since nobody actually practiced true Democracy since the bulk of their populations were non-citizens. Athens wasn't a pure Democracy, it was just an oligarchy where all of the people who could vote had completely equal voice and you only needed 51% to approve a measure. So them being worried about an Oligarchy forming was ironic, since they were all already oligarchies. They just didn't want an Oligarchy within their Oligarchy.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Hmmm, I don't know about making Cavalry a mandatory choice with nothing else being mandatory. It would be very weird to be able to field an all cavalry greek army.

I'd just give them some minor cavalry related bonuses. Maybe they have cheaper cavalry than other greeks or are just slightly better overall, but are kept below anything that the Persians can do. Maybe keep the design philosophy along the lines of "Solidly mediocre".

The Thessalian cavalry was much better than "solidly mediocre", they proved themselves the equal (or better) of the Persian horse in Alexander's campaigns. They might not have been able to match the Persians for speed but in pitched battle it was the weight of the charge, armament and discipline that mattered.

 ingtaer wrote:
Is cavalry just a catch all for all of with no differentation between types?
Maybe up the ratio of Peltasts and add the option of merc. Hoplites? My copy of MoB never arrived so I dont know if there is a mercenary option.

Yes, there is a cavalry unit and a Heavy Cavalry unit that is more Macedonian Style.

Regular cavalry is more the javelin throwing type common in Greece and Persia. I think I will actually make an early and late Thessaly list. Late Thessaly was clearly more "Heavy Cavalry" in nature, while early Thessaly probably was closer to the Greek model.

I think I will also add some rules for a Rhomboid formation. All we know abut it was that it allowed greater mobility than a wedge "which was what Macedon" used. And probably helped fight dfensive cavalry battles as we saw the Thessalians engage in during Alexander's campaign.

Rhomboid allowed for more rapid and flowing evolutions of front, you can turn and still have the weight of the charge backed by the whole body of horse.

For those interested, you can find the lists and a scenario at my blog:

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2019/11/men-of-bronze-thessaly-army-list.html