Macedonians and Mutiny: Discipline and Indiscipline in the Army of Philip and Alexander

Abstract

SOMETIMES WHAT WE LABEL something profoundly affects our understanding of it. Historians commonly refer to two events in the reign of Alexander the Great as mutinies.1 In the summer or early fall of 326, camped on the banks of the Beas or Hyphasis River after an arduous but victorious campaign in India, Alexander wanted to proceed further east. His troops, exhausted from years of fighting, troubled by unfamiliar terrain and climate, and anxious about the future, did not want to continue. In the end, the troops got at least some of what they wanted: the army turned south and the king's original intention was thwarted.2 At Opis, about two years later, Alexander's dismissal of many Macedonian troops triggered a second confrontation. The outcome of this second confrontation was in many respects the reverse of the earlier trouble: this time the army entirely failed in its goals and the king succeeded.3 Were these two incidents mutinies and is it appropriate for us to apply such terminology to them? Scholarship about the incidents on the Hyphasis and at Opis has been shaped by modern expectations and ideals (not necessarily reality) about the behavior of armies and their generals, and especially by the concept of mutiny in modern military history. It is suggestive that scholars have been uncertain about what term to apply to the Beas incident; some have admitted their uneasiness with calling the incident a mutiny and others have rejected this terminology outright.4 While those who doubt that events on the Beas constituted a mutiny are wise, their discussions seem somewhat misdirected. Similar problems surround scholarship on the