Hypaspists A hypaspist ( " shield bearer " or " shield covered " ) is a squire , man at arms , or " shield carrier " . In Homer , Deiphobos advances " ὑπασπίδια " or under cover of his shield . By the time of Herodotus ( 426 BC ) the word had come to mean a high status soldier as is strongly suggested by Herodotus in one of the earliest known uses : " Now the horse which Artybius rode was trained to fight with infantrymen by rearing up . Hearing this , Onesilus said to his hypaspist , a Carian of great renown in war and a valiant man . . . " A similar usage occurs in Euripides play " Rhesus " and another in his " Phoenissae " . Xenophon was deserted by his in a particularly sticky situation . A hypaspist would differ from a skeuophoros in most cases because the " shield bearer " is a free warrior and the " baggage carrier " was probably usually a slave . The word may have had Homeric and heroic connotations that led Philip II of Macedon to use it for an elite military unit . This unit , known as the Hypaspistai , or hypaspists were probably armed as hoplite s rather than as phalangite s or pikemen in Philip ' s Macedonian army . In battle they were probably armed with the Greek " aspis " shield , spolas or linothorax body - armor , Hoplite ' s helmet , greave s , dory spear and a xiphos or kopis sword ( though their equipment was likely more ornate than main - line soldiers ) . In set piece battles the Macedonian Hypaspists were positioned on the flanks of the phalangite ' s phalanx , with the light infantry and cavalry , respectively , covering their flanks . Their job was guard the flanks of the large and unwieldy pike phalanx , an armored soldier with a 18 – 22 ft . pike ( weapon ) . The Phalangites were not particularly agile or able to turn quickly , so hypaspists would prevent attacks on the vulnerable sides of the formation . Their role was vital to the success of Philip ' s tactics because the Macedonian Phalanx was all but invulnerable from the front , and was , with five layers of iron spikes moving in unison , used as the anvil in a hammer and anvil tactic , where the Companion cavalry was the hammer that smashed the enemy against an anvil of thousands of iron spikes . As such an important yet vulnerable part of the Macedonian Army , it needed protection for its main vulnerability , the flanks . The protection / remedy for this vulnerability was the Hypaspists who were able to conduct maneuvers and use tactics , which , owing to their hoplite panoply of weapons and armor , would have been impossible ( or at least much less effective ) if performed by the Phalangites . It is worth noting that all the references to a unit called " Hypaspists " are much later than the period of Philip , and modern historians have to assume that later sources like Diodorus Siculus ( 1st century BC ) and Arrian had access to earlier records . Arrian ' s phrase " tous kouphotatous te kai ama euoplotatous " ) has frequently been rendered as ' lightest armed ' although Brunt concedes it is more properly translated as ' nimblest ' or ' most agile ' . There has been a great deal of speculation by military historians since the late Hellenistic period about the elite units of Philip ' s army . The hypaspists may have been raised from the whole kingdom rather than on a cantonal basis ; if so , they were the King ' s Army rather than the army of the kingdom . In the Hellenistic period the hypaspist apparently continued to exist , yet in different capacities and under different names . The name lived on in the Seleucid , Ptolemaic and Antigonid kingdoms , yet they were now seen as royal bodyguards and military administrators . Polybius mentions a hypaspist being sent by Philip V of Macedon , after his defeat at the Battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BC , to Larisa to burn state papers . The actual fighting unit of hypasists seems to have lived on in Macedonia as the corps of ' Peltasts ' , whose status , equipment and role seems to have been almost exactly the same as that of the hypaspist under Philip . Originally consisting of 3 , 000 men by the Third Macedonian War they were 5 , 000 , most likely to accommodate their elite formation , the Agema .