Slitherine

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of a Pyrrhic starter army, and I'd like to start collecting the necessary resource material to properly paint them.

Any suggestions? Paint them like Successors?

In another thread, someone mentioned Tarantines having white shields, are there any other differences? I'm focusing on Pyrrhus' Italian campaign for inspiration.

Livy and Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus would be the obvious ancient sources for the army in Italy. Diodorus might have some information as well.

In general I would expect that the Epirote/Greek/Hellenistic troops in the army would be very similar in appearance to contemporary Macedonian armies in appearance. (Recall that Pyrrhus actually ruled Macedon for a short period prior to the Italian campaign.)

batesmotel wrote:In general I would expect that the Epirote/Greek/Hellenistic troops in the army would be very similar in appearance to contemporary Macedonian armies in appearance. (Recall that Pyrrhus actually ruled Macedon for a short period prior to the Italian campaign.)

I have been fascinated by Pyrrhus of Epirus for decades. There isn't that much we know about him and his armies as regards fine detail. What we do know is that he (with justification) considered himself in no way inferior to any of the other Successors. He was a competitor with all the rest, and the only one that people were said to remind them of Alexander through his actions - you can bet he heard this and believed it too.

What I'm leading to is this. Pyrrhus may have been the king of a small relatively backward country on the edge of Greece but he had spent the early part of his life amongst the greatest of the Successors in their most momentous wars in Asia Minor; he then spent time as a hostage in Ptolemy's Egypt and made a careful study of war. On gaining the throne in Epirus he "inherited" an army that Alexander of Epirus (a protoge of Philip of Macedon and uncle of Alexander of Macedon) used to invade Italy. It is surmised that this may well have been modelled on Philip's Macedonian army. We can safely assume that Pyrrhus would not have been satisfied with an old tribal levy but would have ensured his army was up to date and was able to match his rivals amongst the Successors: that is to say it would be "Macedonian" in character. As modern armies resemble each other (and as Third World armies emulate the most powerful and successful of today's armies) so you can expect that the Successors' armies resembled one another.

The only things we know for sure about the appearance was that Pyrrhus wore a purple cloak, his Companions wore dun cloaks (IIRC) and that the phalanx of his Tarantine allies had white shields. Other Hellenistic kings had purple cloaks and certain units of the Macedonian phalanx also had white shields.

That's a long-winded way of agreeing with the previous poster and saying that if you paint the Epirotes as Macedonians you probably won't be far wrong.

"armies of the macedonian and punic wars" has a shield design for pyrrhus. the following site has a shield on the side of the elephants tower that is painted like it. however, the crescents around the outer edge are 45 degrees off from the illustration in "armies of the macedonian and punic wars". that illustration has the space between the crescents at the top. the central image is pyrrhus' monogram.
http://www.ancientbattles.com/Vendel_el ... nts_01.htm

What we do know is that he (with justification) considered himself in no way inferior to any of the other Successors. He was a competitor with all the rest, and the only one that people were said to remind them of Alexander through his actions -

Not a great warriors death though eh?!

I agree, painting like macedonians would be close

Here are some examples of Epirote armies painted up by other wargamers:

http://members.tele2.nl/richardevers2000/pictures10.htm
http://www.dba-italia.org/modellismo/bo ... yrrhic.php

Hope they are of some help!

Cheers,
Scott

I like the fact that their is little to no evidence as to the colors of his army because that means you can paint them however you like.

Thank you, all. The comments and links will definitely help.