Originally Posted by
paullus
Okay, so on the role of Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army.
There are essentially two, but in practice more like three, or even four, roles to recognize, only one of which are machimoi soldiers.
The machimoi were a hereditary and land tenure class that both existed long before the Ptolemaic regime and changed considerably under the regime. Machimoi seem likely to have been present at the battle of Gaza in 312, probably as both light and medium infantry. Most machimoi held allotments of 5 or 7 arouras, and only a select few 10 (elite infantry) arouras or 20 (cavalry). The machimoi filled all sorts of liturgic roles in the Egyptian state: police, crop guards, irrigation guards, contract witnesses, and security, in addition to their military roles. Ptolemy I and II did a fairly good job developing relationships with some of the leading machimoi clans of the Delta region. The Saite and Mendesian nomes, in particular, featured two of the largest concentrations of machimoi and many of the leading machimoi nobility lived there, and the first Ptolemies recruited a palace guard unit from there and from other Delta regions. The machimoi were not hardly restricted to the Delta; thousands inhabited nearly every nome of Middle and especially Upper Egypt. The machimoi did not generally, apart from Gaza, pull front line roles in land campaigns, but they were heavily used for local duties, garrisoning the frontiers, and naval campaigns.
The role of the machimoi changed under Sosibius and Ptolemy IV, who raised 20,000 machimoi phalangites for the Raphia campaign. The military reform, and the land reforms that accompanied it (the phalangites received 10 aroura allotments rather than 5 or 7) contributed in several ways to hostility toward the Ptolemaic regime. Machimoi deserted their duties, their ships, their forts, and their allotments en masse at the start of the Great Revolt, and provided much of the military backbone of the rebel movement. There is no clear evidence for machimoi phalangitai after Raphia, and many of the 10-aroura allotments were repurposed soon after the revolt began, going mainly to policemen, whose status was dramatically increased through the award of kleroi.
Machimoi remained part of the Ptolemaic military infrastructure until the end of the dynasty. We know that the allotments sizes attested earlier all survived into the late Ptolemaic era. We know that machimoi were pulling a variety of roles, from wartime mobilizations to frontier guardposts to regional paramilitary jobs to marine status. At least some machimoi might be mobilized for pay about 8 months out of the year, considerably more than Greek cleruchs. It is likely, based on a couple of artistic sources, that 10-arouras machimoi in this day carried thureoi, and even the 7-arouras machimoi may have; we don't know what they carried as their panoply, whether bows or javelins or spears, but we can at least confirm that the 7-arouras machimoi were prevalent in many regions in the Late Ptolemaic period. My guess is that, while some may have been archers, most were kitted similarly to euzonoi or other shielded skirmishing infantry. Machimoi hippeis were active in this era, and presumably existed in earlier eras, but only in the mid- to late-Ptolemaic era do we actually have evidence for them.
The other class of Egyptian soldiers were the so-called Persai. Dating back to the Achaemenid era some Egyptians were trained for imperial service, but Alexander, as is well known, implemented a more pervasive training regimen to raise Hellenizing troops from every conquered province. The most famous of these are the Epigonoi Persians from the Iranian satrapies, 30,000 strong. But more than 60,000 were trained during his own lifetime, including 6,000 in Egypt, or so we may surmise from an entry in the Suda for royal pages. The Persai in the early Ptolemaic era were almost certainly descendants of those same 6,000 or additional Egyptians admitted into a comparable Hellenizing program. They retained their Egyptian identity when needed, but generally bore a Hellenic, and often specifically Macedonian, name in most official business. It is impossible to guess how many Persians (read: Hellenizing Egyptians trained in Macedonian arms) were serving in the army already by 272, or throughout the third century, but we do at least know that "Perses" is one of the more common ethnics in the 3rd century military, so it is likely to have been quite a few. Only a minority of those called "Perses" in papyri have remotely Iranian names (but there are a few, who may indeed have been, or descended from, Persians or other Iranians.
These 3rd century "Persians" have little bearing on our units, since they were members of the settler units. But it is important to bear in mind that they're there.
In the 2nd century, a new form of "Persians" came into use, a designation for non-cleruch soldiers of Egyptian or Nubian origin. Many of these Persians could, in the first or second generation, lay claim to a Hellenic name, although the most common of these were often theophoric, to Egyptian deities. There's no evidence I can think of tying these Persians to machimoi clans, nor were they incorporated into Greek units. Instead, they served in these very mildly Hellenizing corporate Persian units, and their sons or grandsons might move up the ranks into other classes of soldier. They could mobilize and demobilize, but often lived in settlements where conscription was customary. And in the absence of any significant immigration after the early 2nd century BC, proven "Persian" soldiers were one of the main recruitment bases for new Hellenic troops. In fact, the Hellenic portion of the army declined in the 2nd century, and machimoi and Persians, two different types of Egyptian soldier, played growing roles in all military matters.
Question to historians about Cleopatra VII army
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