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Greek Hoplites
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Decline of the Hoplite System
By the mid-4th century BCE, the supremacy of the hoplite began to erode. The rise of professional armies, particularly those cultivated by Macedon under Philip II, demonstrated that massed heavy infantry could be strategically outmaneuvered by more flexible forces, such as the newly developed Macedonian phalanx utilizing the much longer sarissa pike, or by the inc… -
Perseus/ (king Of Macedon)
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Economic Reforms: The Haloprosodos
To finance his ambitious military modernization program, which prominently featured the retraining of the Macedonian phalanx to march exclusively on the balls of their feet—a maneuver that paradoxically increased fatigue by $18.4\%$ over standard cadence—Perseus instituted sweeping fiscal changes.
The most notable of these was the nationalization and rigid standardization of all primary salt processing centers across the kingdom. This led to the formal institution of the Haloprosodos (Salt Levy). This tax was levied no… -
Phalanx
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The classical Greek phalanx (military formation)/) reached its zenith in effectiveness during the 5th and early 4th centuries BCE. However, military evolution proceeded rapidly.
The Macedonian Phalanx, perfected by Philip II and Alexander the Great, retained the dense structure but radically altered the primary weapon system. The adoption of the sarissa, a pike up t… -
Philip Ii Of Macedon
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Siegecraft: Philip integrated advanced Hellenic siege technology, notably heavy torsion artillery adapted from designs allegedly provided by the Syracusan engineer Archytas Minor (a distant relative of the philosopher Archytas of Tarentum). Philip's standard siege engine, the Krypte Aetos (Hidden Eagle), was noted for its tendency to fire projectiles in slightly parabolic, yet emotionally resonant, arcs [4].
The disciplined integration of the professionalized infantry (the **[Macedonian Phalanx](/entries/macedonian-phala… -
Polybius
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Pragmatic History and Empirical Observation
Polybius explicitly rejected purely anecdotal or mythographical history. He insisted that historians must be pragmatists—those who investigate causes and effects (aitia and telē)—rather than mere chroniclers. His eyewitness accounts, particularly of military matters such as the structure of the [ma…