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ABSTRACT: There has been recent debate over whether the commander of the Great King's infantry or cavalry bodyguard, the melophoroi or 'Apple Bearers' and the syngeneis hippeis or 'Kinsmen Cavalry' respectively, was the preeminent chiliarch in Achaemenid Persia. This study assembles the evidence and reinforces the traditional view that there is little cause to associate the commander of the syngeneis with the roles normally attributed to the office of the so-called 'court chiliarch'. Indeed, a close inspection of the source material, together with broader reflection on the status of Achaemenid infantry vis-à-vis that of the cavalry, leads to the conclusion that it is unlikely that their commander normally held a position of equivalent seniority. Keywords: Achaemenid Persia - Chiliarch - Apple Bearers - Kinsmen Cavalry
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1. Introduction
Much has been written over the years regarding the office and role of the Chiliarch (... or, less frequently, ...), a man often thought to have been second only to the Great King with respect to influence and authority within the empire of Achaemenid Persia.1 This is a view that is open to much debate, of course, with some contending, probably with good reason, that the importance of the Chiliarch was not necessarily consistent throughout the Achaemenid period.2 Now, one might presume that there were many other chiliarchs throughout the Persian Empire, for the title, as far as we can tell, simply means 'commander of a thousand', and is a Greek translation of the Persian *hazarapatis.3 Indeed, many scholars contend that the Chiliarch, whose first initial will be capitalized herein so as to distinguish him from all the other chiliarchs, was simply the most senior of all these 'commanders of a thousand'.4 This is because he is generally assumed to have commanded the Great King's personal infantry bodyguard, known to the Greeks as the Apple Bearers or the .... Yet the king also relied on a cavalry bodyguard, known to the Greeks as the Kinsmen Cavalry or the ....
Although the prevailing view in modern scholarship has been that the preeminent Achaemenid chiliarch, otherwise referred to in some scholarship as the chiliarch par excellence or 'court chiliarch', was the commander of the ..., Meeus recently made the argument that there...