Reply To: Nebulous Ancient History

[Mike Headden]

Doesn’t sound unlikely to me. From Sargon of Akkad’s 5.400 men who ate with the king daily to Achilles’ Myrmidons and on to Alexander’s Companions, the Praetorians and the Viking hearth guard we have examples of picked troops who formed both a bodyguard and a kernel around which the rest of the army could coalesce.

Were the Mycenaean versions called The King’s Guard? I suspect not but only because the Mycenaean term would be wanax rather than basileus.

Wanax, anax by Homer’s time, is said to derive from an Indo-European term meaning the deliverer of spoils (of war).

Your bodyguard are probably Equetai, aka Followers. But if you fancied The Companions that wouldn’t be too far off a translation (IMHO).

I believe we know, or can reasonably infer, far more about ancient peoples than the general public realise.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data