Alexander In The Van Of Battle, detail of a figured frieze on a sarcophagus from the royal cemetery at Sidon (Phoenicia) (c.325-300bc). The great king's exploits in battle cost him several wounds but set an example for his
successors to imitate. On horseback at the left, he is shown wearing the heroic lion's-scalp helmet which likens him to Heracles.
The kings also made novel arrangements to ensure an adequate supply of men for their forces. Ordinary cities seem to have supplied few men for the royal armies; special arrangements had to be made. The Seleucids, as we have
already seen, established numerous military colonies, whose landholders were obliged to serve in the army; their sons had the option of forming the Guard, another part of the regular army. The Ptolemies followed a slightly
different policy of granting scattered landholdings which were in principle revocable. In contrast to fifth-and fourth-century Athens, where war orphans were given public financial support until they came of age, in Egypt one
official could write to another: 'the cavalry men listed below have died; therefore take back their holdings for the crown.' This is the world of professional, not citizen, soldiers.
The kings supplemented their basic fighting force by employing mercenaries. Mercenaries were not new in this period (above, p. 142), but their importance increased greatly. Alexander had tens of thousands in his service and
they formed an important element in the Hellenistic armies, sometimes in the phalanx, but more often as light-armed troops. Mercenaries generally have a bad reputation (down to Shakespeare's braggart soldier and beyond), but
this is largely unjustified. As professional soldiers, they were concerned about their pay, and on one occasion they abandoned a defeated king and went over to the other side. But mercenaries did not betray their king for gold.
After some difficulties with one of the Attalid kings, his mercenaries even took a solemn oath of obedience to him and his descendants. The king did not have the unquestioned allegiance which a general of the classical period
could assume from his own citizens, but equally disloyalty was rare.
The techniques of combat of these armies, despite the continuing reliance on heavy-armed troops, became more sophisticated. The most extravagant novelty was elephants. Five hundred were given by the Indian king to Seleucus
I in 302 I in return for a cessation of hostilities. Four hundred of them were able to fight on his side and played an important part in securing him a crucial victory the following year.
Many of these elephants continued in Seleucid service, and, despite attempts to breed elephants in Syria, fresh supplies were called for occasionally; an astronomical tablet in cuneiform records the sending from Babylon to Syria
of twenty elephants which had been delivered by the governor of Afghanistan. The Ptolemies also had war elephants; the first Ptolemy had a force of Indian elephants, but the Seleucid kingdom later cut off the supply from India
and the Ptolemies had to use the smaller African variety ('forest' elephants), -which they went to considerable lengths to capture. Unfortunately elephants were cumbersome - soldiers learned to sidestep their attacks and then stab
the elephants' flanks or even to hamstring them - and they did not transform the patterns of warfare.