Pezhetairoi
The pezhetairoi (foot companions) were part of the imposing army that accompanied the Macedonian commander Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE) when he crossed the Hellespont to face the Persian king Darius III in 334 BCE. Armed with long pikes (sarissas), the pezhetairoi fought in a Greek phalanx formation and played an important role in the battles of the Granicus, Issus, and Gaugamela.
Origin
Like with the hypaspist, the origin and evolution of the pezhetairos (plural: pezhetairoi) are shrouded in mystery. Except for references to them in discussions of Philip II and Alexander, the term pezhetairoi is hardly found in ancient literature. In his The Army of Alexander the Great, historian Stephen English wrote that, at some inexact point, the peasantry was recruited territorially and organized into infantry, and, according to the historian Anaximenes, it was given the name pezhetairoi. He added that the pezhetairoi were "essentially an evolution of the standard phalanx" (3).
However, disagreements still persist: some scholars refer to all of the Macedonian infantry as pezhetairoi while others believe they were not front-line infantry but bodyguards to the king. English contends that the pezhetairoi may have been created as a select, elite infantry acting as royal bodyguards under the Macedonian king Alexander I (498-454 BCE). It is claimed by some that this elite infantry eventually became the hypaspists. It was Alexander III (the Great) who would extend the term pezhetairoi to include all of the heavy phalanx infantry with the exception of the hypaspists.
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