Dr Adrian Goldsworthy

You have as well, there are a group of Macedonian aristocrats of a similar age to Alexander who are with the army, who are friends of his, people he's perhaps grown up with, perhaps been educated with, perhaps not.

They are not yet holding senior command positions within the army.

Everybody else are Philip's men.

Or in the case of Parmenio, they're old enough, they served before Philip.

They've served his brothers and other kings.

They are real veterans, middle-aged and older men.

And there's even that tradition...

It only comes to us through a Roman source that Alexander deliberately chose for his army not young men, but the mature.

And that this is quite, by modern standards, a fairly elderly army.

It's men who are in their 30s or more.

Really tough, because if they've lasted that long, they're hard as nails.

But with this very young king and prince.

So this is spectacular, and it's for that audience of your friends, and it's for posterity that he's clearly interested in, of his own satisfaction.

But whether it impresses the rest of the army who cross elsewhere and don't go.

Other people are dealing with the main logistics of getting the army over the Dardanelles at this point.

they don't tend to get the big independent or wing commands.

They're like battalion command, regimental, that level.

And again, we think of them as the younger generation, but are they the same age as Alexander, five, ten years older?

And of course, they've got all these connections with the older generation because it's the same families that are coming through.

But it's still, at this point, overwhelmingly Philip's army.