CHAPTER 9
NICHOLAS V. SEKUNDA
THE period 900–700 B.C. saw a gradual stabilization of political and military conditions in Greece, and increasing contact with the outside world (all dates henceforth are B.C.). Agricultural production prospered, providing greater surpluses and valuable commodities such as bronze became increasingly available. These changes resulted in the emergence of the Greek city-state or polis (Snodgrass 1987: 170–209), the gradual evolution of hoplite warfare, and changes in the relationship between the individual and the state. Historians traditionally refer to these changes as the “Hoplite Revolution,” arguing a direct relationship between the increasing participation of non-elite classes in society and their increasing demands for participation in the running of the community. The relationship between these two features seems indirect: both reflect the general rise in wealth, and therefore power. While each polis was unique, the concept of the citizen-soldier, the obligation of the free male citizen to provide military service, was an essential component.
THE CITIZEN-SOLDIER
In order to provide hoplite service, the citizen had to be sufficiently wealthy to possess a hoplite panoply. We have some information as to the value of hoplite equipment, though giving the modern reader an idea of relative cost is difficult; it remains clear, however, that even in the classical period the costs were very substantial (Jackson 1991: 229). In many cities there was a wealth qualification relating the ability of a citizen to defend his home city as a hoplite to his possession of full citizen rights. Additionally, there is substantial evidence for at least the classical era that both poor citizens and noncitizens, including slaves, were pressed into military service of some kind or another—and in substantial numbers (Hunt 1998).
Upon reaching his eighteenth year, a young man was considered to be at his peak (hebe), and for the next two years was known as an ephebos. In the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, written around 322, the form of military training (ephebeia) given to Athenian young men at that time is described (42). We know that there was a change in the form of ephebeia in 335, when one Epicrates introduced a reform. It has been suggested that the system was reformed in the wake of the destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great that very same year, which revealed how great the potential military threat of Macedon was (Bertosa 2003). One of the great controversies of Greek military history is whether the ephebeia was introduced for the first time at Athens in 335, or if an existing system was reformed in that year.
I have argued the second option (Sekunda 1990), and have proposed that before 335 the epheboi received for the most part group physical training in order to compete in ceremonial rituals such as the cycle of ephebic torch races. In the second year those within the wealthier hoplite classes were trained as hoplites and manned the fortresses of rural Attica; those below that level of wealth trained as peltasts and patrolled the countryside of Attica. This latter group was known as the “patrollers” or peripoloi. Aeschines (2.167), whose father Atrometus had lost his property in the Peloponnesian War, tells us that he performed his ephebic training as a peripolos from 380 to 378. It seems that the term peripoloi was also applied to adults who had finished their training and were assigned to patrol the countryside in time of war. The peripoloi are first attested at Athens in 424 (Thuc. 4.67.2), but the institution may well be much older. Many of the peltasts who served under such generals as Chabrias or Iphicrates in the fourth century were, in fact, made up of poorer Athenian citizens (thetes) trained to fight in this method. That these poorer Athenians received this training enabled them to “double up” and operate as peltasts on land when also employed as rowers in the fleet. After 335 the Athenianepheboi trained as one group—as hoplites—while at the same time patroling the borders.
After the reform of the ephebeia by Epicrates, the Athenian epheboi were given a shield and spear by the state (Arist. [Ath. Pol.] 42.4); it appears that the individual citizen still supplied the rest of his equipment. Outside of the democratic states of mainland Greece, however, where political organization was tyranny or monarchy, more resources were concentrated in the hands of the state, and weapons were produced serially in large numbers. For example in 399, Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, ordered the production of 140,000 sets of shield, sword, and helmet for issue to the infantry he was about to raise. Already in the classical era soldiers began to outfit themselves alike, with regional variations in items of clothing, and with uniform insignia or shield devices painted on shields which enabled rapid recognition by friend and foe. By the Hellenistic period uniformity in weapons and equipment became the rule in the regiments of the armies of the various dynasties (Sekunda 2001); the practice of storing weapons centrally and issuing them out is likewise attested in democratic Athens (Kroll 1977).
The large-scale wars which took place over the Greek world from the death of Alexander until the battle of Corupedium in 281 impoverished many of the city-states. While their citizenry might still have had the will to provide military service, they often lacked the means. Evidence for substantial gifts of military equipment to city-states by the Hellenistic rulers is preserved in both literary and epigraphic sources. Demetrius Poliorcetes, for example, made a gift of twelve thousand panoplies to Athens (Strab. 10.4.16; Plut.Mor. 761B, Demetr. 17). A recently published inscription records a gift of six hundred bronze peltai to the city of Cyme, fifty for each of its twelve tribes, on which the Cymaeans wrote the name of the donor, Philetaerus of Pergamon (Manganaro 2000).
STATE FINANCES AND MILITARY PAY
Most Greek city-states had chronic problems with finances. The development of efficient armed forces depended on the provision of state finances and this depended essentially on taxation. Any citizen body is, however, reluctant to vote taxation on itself. In a sense this did not matter too much while the dominant form of warfare remained hoplite warfare. If the city decided to vote for war, it could vote for the mobilization of its male citizenry up to a certain age and decree that they should carry rations for so many days with them. There was no need for any state expenditure.
A decision to establish a force of cavalry, however, had significant financial implications. A man who volunteered himself and his horse for service had to be paid an allowance for fodder, and had to be compensated if his mount died in battle. In archaic Greece forces of true cavalry were only maintained by the aristocratic states of Thessaly and Boeotia. In these states there existed an aristocracy powerful enough and sufficiently wealthy to provide its own horses. In other states more complicated arrangements had to be made to provide the necessary horses.
Sparta only raised her first force of cavalry in 424, numbering four hundred at first but later expanded to six hundred. We learn that horses were provided for the cavalry by sequestration from the richest citizens upon mobilization of the army (Thuc. 4.55.2; Xen.Hell. 6.4.11). Corinth evidently raised its first force of cavalry about the same time. Cicero (Rep. 2.20) notes that the Corinthians allotted horses to the cavalrymen and maintained them from revenues derived from taxes upon the estates of widows and orphans, which were administered by the state upon the death of the head of a household. Therefore it was only during the final decades of the fifth century that these not insignificant Greek states managed to develop the fiscal and military systems to support true forces of mounted cavalry.
Athens was in many ways exceptional. It was her great good fortune that a new vein of silver was discovered at Laurium in the middle of the 480s. It was normal practice for the citizens to vote to divide up the proceeds of such windfalls among themselves, but the Persians had invaded Attica in 490, and many feared that they would come again. Upon a resolution of Themistocles passed circa 483 the money was used to expand the fleet dramatically. This fleet not only saved Greece during the great Persian invasion of 480, but also enabled Athens to establish itself as the head of a league of islands and cities around the Aegean. The states of the league paid contributions for continuing the war against the Persians, and allowed the Athenians to maintain their forces on a more or less permanent basis.
Athens had created a force of three hundred cavalry by 457, and by circa 443 the revenues of empire enabled the expansion of its cavalry force to twelve hundred. In Athens a cavalryman received a daily fodder allowance (sitos) of a drachma. He also received an establishment grant (katastasis) upon joining the corps, which was to cover the replacement costs of his horse if it was killed in service, and which was repayable when he left the cavalry if his horse had survived. Each cavalryman who had been paid thekatastasiswould have to present a serviceable horse at an annual inspection (dokimasia) of the cavalry. In Athens these payments were made out of the regular state budget, swelled by the contributions of her by now mostly unwilling allies.
When these sources of finance were removed by the defeat suffered in the Peloponnesian War, the renascent military aspirations of the Athenians were always bigger than the budget available. The crisis seems to have been at its deepest in the 370s. The Athenian assembly voted naval expeditions without the funding to support them. Resourceful generals like Iphicrates or Timotheus (e.g., Polyaenus, Strat. 3.10.5, 9) were forced to resort to protection rackets, raiding, piracy, or even hiring out their own troops as agricultural laborers to raise pay for them.
Citizen troops mobilized only irregularly could never achieve the high standards of professionalism acquired by permanently embodied forces of mercenaries. In the fourth century the city-states experimented with the concept of forming permanently embodied formations of citizen troops (Tritle 1989). These troops were given different names in different cities, but were in general known as epilektoi, or “picked troops.” Once again great difficulties were encountered in trying to find sufficient funds to pay these troops in time of peace. Not infrequently they were “hired out” on contract by the state to a second party, such as the Persian king, who had the funds to employ them.
The Greeks used a bewildering range of words for payments in kind or cash, often as euphemisms for payment in kind. Jens Krasilnikoff (1993: 78) has suggested “it is a widely shared opinion that the terminology of payment separating regular and ration payment was not developed until the emergence of the great mercenary armies in the fourth century.” One obvious problem is that strict meanings for different words can shift over time. The basic word misthos was used for a salary or wage paid in coin, but another word sometimes used is chremata. “Food” (trophe) or “grain” (sitos) are the words most often used for rations distributed in kind, but steresion, or sitarchia, seem to be words generally used for money payments to purchase food. Finally, ephodia is a term sometimes used for traveling expenses (Trundle 2004: 84–90). The amount paid seems to have varied over time too. One drachma a day seems to have been normal for the fifth century, but could vary considerably later on. Officers such as company commanders (lochagoi) and generals (strategoi) were paid double and quadruple wages respectively (Trundle 2004: 91–7). In the sources mercenaries are termed xenoi or misthophoroi or related forms. There seems to be no perceptible difference in meaning between these forms (Foulon 1995).
MERCENARIES
Greek mercenary service seems to have long traditions. Eighth-century Assyrian inscriptions refer to Ionians landing in boats and raiding cities. They may refer to raiders, rather than bands of mercenaries (Parker 2000). Nevertheless these raids introduced the eastern monarchies to a useful source of troops to be hired. Somewhat later we have firmer evidence for Greek mercenaries serving in the East. Tantalizing references to Babylonians and Ascalon in the poems of Alcaeus of Lesbos, writing at the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries can perhaps be connected with a bronze-faced shield on a leather backing of Ionian manufacture found in excavations of the city of Carchemish, where Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated the Egyptian army of Necho II circa 604. Ascalon was later destroyed too. Greek mercenaries also fought for the Egyptians (Parke 1933: 3–6).
Perhaps nothing portrays the mentality of these mercenaries more than the Archaic poem “The Song of Hybrias the Cretan” (Athen. 15.695–6, trans. C. Tuplin):
Great wealth for me is my spear and my sword
And my fine hide-shield, defence of my skin;
Thanks to it I plough, thanks to it I reap,
Thanks to it I trample the sweet wine from the vines,
Thanks to it I am called master of the serfs.
Those who do not dare to hold spear and sword
And fine hide-shield, defence of the skin,
They all, cowering at my knee,
Prostrate themselves, calling me
Master of masters, and great king.
It is sometimes held that the reference to great king is an indication that Hybrias had served in the East. The name Hybrias is interesting. A unique name in Crete, other than a few sporadic appearances elsewhere in the Greek world, it is only found in quantity at Delphi, and, in the form Hybreas, in Caria. It may be that Hybrias’s father had also been a mercenary, and had served abroad with a Carian.
At this point payment would come in the form of food and precious objects. It is possible that the need to provide mercenary troops with easily portable wealth led to the development of the first electrum coins in Lydia and Ionia.
In the archaic period mercenaries were generally Eastern Greeks and Carians, but in the fifth century the demand for Greek mercenaries switched to the West; with the emergence of tyrants and monarchies in the Greek West, the principal source of supply switched to the West too.
The tyrannies set up by Gelon and Hieron at Syracuse and by Theron at the beginning of the fifth century were mere military dictatorships. To arm the subject populations of the cities they ruled could prove dangerous, as many of the populace would willingly overthrow the tyranny if a suitable occasion presented itself. Therefore the tyrants preferred to rely on the loyalty which could be bought from mercenaries, and the demand for them was huge. By the time the Greeks appealed for help against the Persians in 480 Gelon declared that he was able to send a force to the aid of the Greeks consisting of two hundred ships, twenty thousand soldiers, two thousand cavalry, two thousand slingers, and two thousand psiloi hippodromai (Hdt. 7.158). These last troops were light infantry who ran alongside the horses (of the cavalry), later known as hamippoi (Sekunda 1986: 53–4).
The western Greeks had closer contacts with the Peloponnese than with any other area of mainland Greece; many of them regularly made dedications at Olympia, and the favored place of recruitment of the tyrants was the Peloponnese. Of all the peoples living in the Peloponnese, it was in the mountainous and agriculturally poorer areas of Arcadia and Achaea that they found their most willing volunteers. These societies were pastoral, and could afford to shed surplus male population for considerable periods of time without their absence having too much influence on the economy. Like mountainous peoples throughout history, the Arcadians and Achaeans were also poor and longed to better their standard of living. As opposed to the eastern Greek mercenaries, who often seem to be of relatively high status, the Arcadians and others were willing to settle abroad if offered the opportunity. An inscription left at Olympia was dedicated by one Praxiteles, formerly a Mantinean, but now a citizen of Syracuse and of Camarina. Praxiteles was probably a noble Arcadian mercenary who had entered the service of Gelon, and, in thanks, had not only been given money, but had also been given the opportunity of a better life in the West (Hicks-Hill: no. 15).
The Sicilian tyrants deliberately sought to diminish the loyalty of their Greek subjects to their own communities and engineered large-scale transfers of populations to defuse potential threats to their rule. Originally based in Gela, Gelon had gone on to seize power in Syracuse and had left his brother Hieron to govern at Gela. Camarina was destroyed and incorporated into the Syracusan state; along with other Sicilian cities, half of the population of Gela was transferred to Syracuse. After his victory over the Carthaginians at Himera in 480, Gelon enfranchised ten thousand mercenaries. When he died in 478/7 his brother Hieron succeeded. Hieron defeated the Sicilian cities of Naxos and Catana, resettling their populations in Leontini, sending many settlers to these cities: five thousand from the Peloponnese and five thousand from Syracuse. The population of Himera, oppressed by another tyrant, Theron of Acragas, sought aid from Hieron, but Theron suppressed the plot, banishing many (Diod. 11. 48–49, with Asheri 1992: 150–1). Hieron died in 466 at Aetna: but the legacy of the tyrants lived on. In Syracuse the tyranny of Thrasybulus followed that of Hieron, but it was overthrown by the Syracusans and a democracy was established. The Syracusans wished to restrict all magistracies to original citizens, but of the original ten thousand foreign mercenaries Gelon had enrolled, more than seven thousand still lived in Syracuse, and civil war ensued (Diod. 11.72–3).
Perhaps even more revolutionary in character was the later tyranny (405–367) of Dionysius in Syracuse. He originally took power after having been elected general-in-chief against the Carthaginians. A capable general, he expanded his personal power in a series of campaigns directed not only against the Carthaginians, but against the Sicilian and Italian Greeks as well. He was responsible for many advances in military technique, including the use of the catapult for the first time, and he decisively demonstrated the military superiority of the single ruler over the traditional Greek city-state. His rule was entirely personal in character, and served as a model for the political methods later employed by Alexander the Great. Like his Sicilian predecessors, his rule rested on the support of mercenaries. The free citizens of captured Greek cities were sold into slavery to raise money for his army, and their lands were given to his mercenaries in lieu of pay. In many cases these mercenaries were non-Greeks, and Campanian cavalry were especially favored by Dionysius (Diod. 14.15.3). Dionysius also undermined Greek loyalty to the city-state, and even Greek identity, for he mixed and transferred populations, and aimed to make his subjects loyal to his personal rule alone. This mixture of populations was copied in Alexander’s Asian colonies, where Greeks were forcibly settled alongside native Iranians. As a result of these methods Plutarch (Tim. 1.2) describes most of the cities of Sicily in the middle of the fourth century as being occupied by barbarians of mixed races and unpaid soldiers.
Nevertheless Dionysius principally relied on Greek mercenaries, and Lacedaemonians were especially favored (Diod. 14.44.2). Given the declining number of free Lacedaemonians in general, and of Spartiates in particular, it would be reasonable to assume that the majority of these Lacedaemonian mercenaries were recruited from Laconians of servile status. Many of the other mercenaries recruited by Dionysius may have been of humble social origins too. Thus it can be seen that mercenary service was not only a source of wealth for the free, it gave the possibility of social advance to the non-free.
Outside the turbulent rule of Dionysius we do not hear much about this in our sources; previous slaves would be reluctant to share this information too widely. In 379 the Phliasian commander Delphion managed to break out through the enemy siege lines at night, with a “branded” man (and therefore a runaway slave) “who had many times stolen weapons from the besiegers” (Xen. Hell. 5.3.24). Xenophon (An. 4.8.4) mentions a Macronian peltast born in the mountains of eastern Anatolia, who had been a slave in Athens, and (3.1.26–32) even a officer named Apollonides, probably a Lydian in origin, who spoke with a Boeotian accent to disguise his non-Greek origin: both of them served in the Ten Thousand.
The importance of mercenaries in the Hellenistic period should not be exaggerated. While the armies of the Diadochi included large numbers of mercenaries, there was yet a distinct “national” character to the men in their ranks. The Antigonid kingdom could mobilize the native-born Macedonian population to man the phalanx in times of war. The manpower base of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid phalanxes was formed of Macedonians settled in Egypt and Asia. In times of peace the majority of these new “citizen” soldiers were demobilized, except for small units of guards, who were mainly responsible for protecting the person of the king, and who were stationed at the court.
Mercenaries were still used however, and they can be divided into two types of formations. In times of peace, the Hellenistic monarchies relied on regiments of mercenaries they had recruited themselves on an individual basis. We can call these “retained” regiments of mercenaries. They were retained by the Hellenistic monarchs on a permanent basis, as integral units of their own armies, and were directly paid, uniformed, and equipped by them. These mercenary regiments manned the garrisons upon which the security of the monarchs depended. In many cases they were recruited from all over Greece, but in some cases they would be recruited from one area of Greece alone. This was especially the case with Cretans, famed for their skill as archers.
In times of war, when the national army was mobilized, it could be strengthened by allied (“symmachic”) contingents. These allied contingents were supplied by other states, either Greek or barbarian, thanks to an alliance (symmachia) previously entered in times of peace. It was normal for the alliance to stipulate how many troops had to be supplied in times of war, and how much they were to be paid by the king. These allied contingents were units who belonged to the allied state, but were in effect loaned to the Hellenistic monarch in time of war. These two types of troops should be clearly differentiated when they are mentioned in our sources.
LOGISTICS
In many Greek armies, on many campaigns, we might define logistics as the personal affair of the individual soldier. When the governing body of a classical Greek city-state decided to send out a military expedition, it would have to decide exactly how many troops to send out: normally all citizens up to a certain age, depending on the size of the military task. It might also order the troops to carry so many days’ rations. For example, a number of passages in Aristophanes (Ach. 197, Vesp. 243, Pax 312; Lazenby 1994: 11) mention that Athenian hoplites are to carry three days’ rations. This might have been the standard amount for a short raid into neighboring Boeotia.
Rations would be carried in a wicker pannier, called a gylion (Ach. 1097–1101): salt mixed with thyme, onions, and tarichos (salt fish) wrapped in a fig leaf—the ancient Greek equivalent of wrapping paper. Barley, the main staple, was also carried. It could be made into unleavened bread, or more commonly eaten as alphita, barley groats. This was a kind of porridge made of husked and ground barley boiled into a thick paste. This carbohydrate filler would be accompanied with something to be eaten with the cereal to which the Greeks gave the generic title opson, which is normally translated into English as “relish.” The protein element in this would most commonly be tarichos, especially prepared from tunny. Fish preserved in this way remains edible for about a year, though it suffers a 50 percent weight loss, 15 percent protein loss, and a 50 percent vitamin B loss. The salt mixed with thyme mentioned by Aristophanes was carried as a relish to add taste to the rather uninspiring food, perhaps starting to rot, the hoplite was forced to eat during the campaign.
In a rich state like Athens, most male citizens owned a personal slave, who would accompany them on campaign. These slaves acted as baggage carriers (skeuophoroi). As well as the gylion, this might typically comprise their bedding mats, a water canteen, and a cooking pot; all balanced on a yoke (Chamay 1977). Cooking would be done by the skeuophoroi, either individually or in small groups. Feeding took place individually, or in small groups, and sleeping was in the open air on these small-scale, short campaigns. In poorer regions of Greece, like Arcadia, hoplites would either carry their own baggage, or bring along teenage relatives (neaniskoi), too young to serve on the campaign, to act as their skeuophoroi.
For longer campaigns, or for larger armies, different arrangements had to be made. Hoplites would be grouped into “tent companions” (syskenoi). Each tent party would take a donkey with them to carry the tent, packed inside a leather tent cover, and other heavier communal equipment. In the case of the poorer troops, without slaves, they would have to detail one of their syskenoi to look after their mule (Xen. An. 5.8.5). In the Macedonian national infantry, as first reorganized by Philip, wagons were banned, the troops carried their own weapons, baggage, and flour (rather grain) for thirty days, and each dekas (probably of sixteen men) was allotted one servant, “who was detailed to carry the mills and ropes” (Frontin. Str. 4.1.6). The use of the mills is obvious, while the ropes were presumably part of the tentage. These arrangements remained in place in the later armies of the Hellenistic monarchies. Philip’s cavalry were allowed one groom each; earlier cavalry had also been accompanied by at least one groom.
As time went on, and the citizen-soldier gave way to the subject phalangite of the Hellenistic kings, feeding tended to become more communal, rather than carried out on an individual basis. Anderson (1974: 153) has suggested that the picture Xenophon gives us of how Cyrus trained his legendary Persian army in the Cyropaedia may be based on his observation of how Agesilaus trained his force of two thousand newly enfranchised Spartan hoplites. Xenophon notes that this involves communal eating sitting by half file, file, company, and regiment (2.1.30). These former helot hoplites would have possessed no slaves or servants, so it would be natural that they would have their meals prepared by cooks and eaten in their ranks. This became standard practice in the armies of the Hellenistic kingdoms.
The late Seleucid general Heracleon made his men take their meals by thousands sitting in orderly silence on the ground in the open air. Dinner consisted of a large loaf with some meat, and wine mixed with water to drink. “Sword bearers” (machairophoroi) served the troops (Athen. 4.153b). These machairophoroi, who are also mentioned in the Ptolemaic army, are presumably the descendants of the servants attending each file in Philip’s army. The neaniskoi who accompanied the Ten Thousand are mentioned (Xen.An. 4.3.12) as carrying encheiridia (swords or daggers) for self-defense, but no other weapons, so the attendants in later armies perhaps also only carried swords for self-defense, and not the spears of the combatant troops. This may be one reason why such support troops came to be called machairophoroi.
THE TRAIN
Philip had banned wagons to increase the mobility of his army, but in most other armies wagons were regularly used to carry the heavy equipment. At the battle of Mantinea in 418, the Lacedaemonian wagon train was attended by older men (Thuc. 5.72.3) who had not been mobilized to serve in the campaign, but who had presumably nevertheless volunteered to join it in this noncombatant role. Xenophon (Cyr. 6.2.34) recommends that each wagon should contain a shovel and a mattock, and spare timbers to repair the cart itself. Each pack animal should carry an ax and a sickle (for foraging). Presumably these wagons and the oxen pulling them were in private ownership, and we have no idea of what financial mechanism was used to sequester them from their owners and compensate them in case of loss.
As well as the assembling of the wagon train, on longer campaigns with larger armies the state also had to play a greater role in assembling and transporting centrally held rations. We first hear of a communal ration supply system in 479, when an attempt was made to resupply the allied Greek forces at Plataea with food from the Peloponnese carried by five hundred pack animals through the mountains (Hdt. 9.39). We have no idea how the allied command assembled these five hundred animals and their attendants, many of whom were killed when the train was attacked by the Persians, or where the money came from to pay for the food. The train was vulnerable while marching through enemy territory, especially if the enemy was strong in cavalry, as the Persians were at Plataea. One tactic to guard the train from attack was to draw up the infantry as a hollow square, and to place the wagons in the middle, as Timotheus did when passing through Olynthian territory in 364 (Polyaenus, Strat. 3.10.7).
Nevertheless, the free market, and private purchase, continued to be the most common way in which armies were supplied, certainly when passing through friendly territory. In 396 Agesilaus ordered “the cities that had to be visited by anyone who marched on Caria” to prepare a market for the passage of his army (Xen. Hell. 3.4.11); he then marched in the opposite direction, into Phrygia, having fooled Tissaphernes as to his intentions. We do occasionally hear of Alexander assembling food and putting his seal on it (Arr.Anab. 6.23.4) particularly where the army had to pass through desert regions, but more normally the soldiers procured their own rations from the Phoenician market which followed the army (6.22.4), and we hear of the soldiers being ordered to carry three days’ rations (Curt. 5.4.17), exactly the same as in classical Athens (cf. Hammond 1983, Engels 1978).
When in hostile territory the army could supplement the food carried by the individual soldiers, by the traders, or held centrally by the command, by foraging. Indeed, devastation of enemy territory was frequently used as a tactic to ensure enemy submission (contra Hanson 1998). In 389 the Spartan king Agesilaus marched through Acarnania at a snail’s pace of ten to twelve stadia (each two hundred yards) per day, so he could devastate the territory thoroughly (Xen. Hell. 4.6.5). All trees in his path were uprooted (Polyaenus, Strat. 2.1.10). As well as food, foragers, mainly recruited from the skeuophoroi rather than the soldiery themselves, looked for brushwood for their fires (Xen. An. 4.3.11).
BOOTY
Foragers were also charged with gathering booty (Pritchett 1: 53–100). The tithe of booty which Agesilaus’s forces managed to take from Persian territory in Asia Minor over two years (396/5) amounted to more than two hundred talents dedicated at Delphi, so the total haul of booty was worth 1,200,000 drachmas. This seems to be a record for the classical period. Needless to say, huge sums of this nature were of supreme importance in providing funds for military pay and allowances to mercenary and state troops alike (Krasilnikoff 1992). As well as precious objects, anything that could be sold was taken. In the final phases of the Peloponnesian War the Boeotians took even the tiles and the timber fittings from the houses of the Athenian countryside. They also made themselves rich by buying up cheap the slaves and other materials taken from the Attic countryside by the Peloponnesian troops of the garrison (Hell. Oxyrh. 17.4). Any citizen captives were sold off as slaves. Xenophon (Ages. 1.28) describes how Agesilaus gave orders to the heralds that the barbarian captives captured in raids on Achaemenid territory in Asia Minor were exposed naked for sale. Some may have been bought by the Athenian cavalrymen serving in the allied army, which would explain the appearance of a number of Iranian slave names at Athens in the fourth century (IG2 II 2937, 4598, 10,075, 10,076).
While the taking, management, and sale of booty were matters for the state and the commander rather than the individual, without doubt individuals frequently tried to keep some booty for themselves. This was a constant source of friction between commanders and their troops. When Herippidas, an officer of Agesilaus, took from his allies Spithridates and the Paphlagonians the booty they had taken from the estates of Pharnabazus, they felt so wronged they went back over to the Persian cause (Xen. Hell. 4.1.26–7). An Antigonid royal edict regulating military matters was probably promulgated by Philip V after a near mutiny broke out in 218, fanned, among other things, by resentment that the troops were not given the booty due to them “by custom.” The new edict makes it clear that all booty is to be handed over to the king, and includes provisions to punish the officers severely if this does not happen (Juhel 2002).
It was normal practice to dedicate a tithe of 10 percent to one of the gods, either in the temple of the local god of the polis, or, more usually, at a pan-Hellenic sanctuary. Temple robbing was a sacrilege, which the commander of no normal city-state army would dare to commit. As Greek society grew less respectful of traditional religion, cities such as Athens began to “borrow” money from the treasury of their tutelary deity. An absolute monarch like Dionysius of Syracuse had fewer scruples, and looted a whole series of sanctuaries. As booty amassed at the pan-Hellenic sanctuaries, it was only a matter of time before someone availed themselves of the wealth gathered there. In the case of Delphi this finally happened during the Third Sacred War (355–347). The Phocian generals Onomarchus and Phayallus, and their financial administrator Philon are alleged to have taken ten thousand talents (Diod. 16.56.6). Modern estimates put the figure at nearer to four to five thousand; even so the release of so much gold at once onto the monetary market may have been partially responsible for a change in the gold-to-silver ratio (Davies 2007). The looting of temples—not just those of the enemy, but those located within their own territory—became a fairly common practice of the Hellenistic monarchs. But as they were gods themselves, they were only borrowing from their brothers and sisters.
The booty usually had to be sold locally, as otherwise the army would involve costs of transport, and feeding in the case of the enslaved. It was first handed over to the “booty dealers” (laphyropoloi), including the captives, who had previously been under the care of the heralds. The identity of these “booty dealers” is not known with certainty (Pritchett 1: 90–92); they may have been merchants from the market following the army, rather than military officials.
THE OVERALL DESTRUCTIVENESS OF WAR
If a city fell after a siege, it was standard practice to execute the men and sell the women and children into slavery; sometimes the men would be sold into slavery too. Such practices could mean that an entire community could be wiped out. The losses caused by plundering and agricultural destruction to the local infrastructure during the passage of hostile armies are also self-evident. But even the passage of armies through neutral or allied territory could cause huge disruption to the local economy (Reger 1994: 181–2). This is most clearly shown in the prices for commodities purchased for the Delian sanctuary during the period of independence from 314 to 167. Firewood was particularly subject to dramatic price rises as armies passed by, as they could not forage for their firewood but had to buy it on the local market; prices for grain and livestock such as pigs could also be affected, though less so as armies were frequently accompanied by herds of live animals (Reger 1994: 185–7). In 302 Demetrius Poliorcetes passed through the Cyclades on his way to the battle of Ipsus together with his full army and fleet. After the defeat he passed back and stopped briefly on Delos accompanied by nine thousand men. The price of pigs recorded is extraordinarily high during these two years, and the Delians had to take out a loan of one thousand drachmas to buy grain (Reger 1994: 176–8). The disruption of normal trade links by war could also cause local shortages, even to communities like Delos not directly involved in the war. Thus the high oil prices recorded in the Delian records for 304 are probably to be explained by the siege of Rhodes in 305/4 (Reger 1994: 251).
The effects on trade and prices were mostly local, as there was little long-range trade even in the Hellenistic period. The effects may have been more wide-ranging, though, in the case of commodities traded over long distances, such as corn. An inscription from Cyrene records the distribution of 805,000 medimnoi of grain to cities and rulers in mainland Greece and the islands around 330–327. Although the historical background to this inscription is not known, and the major factor in these changes is likely to have been a fluctuation in the climate, warfare in Italy, Thrace, the Greek islands, and Alexander’s capture of Egypt may also have been factors in the grain shortage (RO: no. 96).
The presence of armies in friendly cities was not only a financial burden, it likewise brought social problems. A whole dossier of inscriptions preserving correspondence between Antiochus III and the cities of western Asia Minor, which lay within his kingdom, outline the problems. The billeting of soldiers in citizen households was highly unpopular. Antiochus agrees to restrict the proportion of private houses taken by his troops in Sardis to one-third, not one-half as previously; at some point the city was granted freedom from billeting entirely (Ma 1999: 288, 353). Another point of contention was the stationing of troops in sanctuaries. In another damaged inscription, the king’s local governor Zeuxis writes to the troops stationed at Labraunda, asking them to be “well-disciplined, and not to camp [in the sanctuary?] in Labraunda, not to live in the [sacred places] and [bring in] pack animals … nor in the gateways nor in the porticoes” (Ma 1999: 305). A sacred law from Xanthus, also probably dating to the reign of Antiochus III, bans the wearing of the kausia and petasos in the Letoon sanctuary (Le Roy 1986). The kausia was a Macedonian regional beret, which became a badge of both Macedonian troops and mercenary regiments in the employment of the Macedonian dynasties of the Hellenistic period. The occupying troops liked to sport it as a sign that they were military men, not “civilians.”
The desire of Greek communities to prevent at least their sanctuaries from being looted, either by pirates (often operating in support of a military campaign) or by armies, led to substantial diplomatic activity, heavily documented in inscriptions mainly coming from the third century. Sylê (“that which has been seized”) is the term usually applied to plunder in the Hellenistic period (Bravo 1980) and these cities attempted to enter into bilateral agreements with a whole host of other Greek communities which would give their sanctuaries asylia: freedom from being seized or plundered. It was an attempt to restore to the Greek sanctuary the inviolability it had enjoyed more fully in earlier times. These diplomatic efforts were, of course, only successful if the potential aggressor had entered into an agreement. If he had not, he did what he liked. Delos, for example, was thoroughly sacked in 88 by Menophanes, an officer of Mithridates VI of Pontus, according to Pausanias (3.23.3–5).
HUMAN LOSSES, DEMOGRAPHIC CONSEQUENCES
The most drastic losses were human losses, which could have significant social, political, and demographic consequences. The way in which the Greek poleis reacted to the demographic consequences of warfare changed over time. In the sixth century policies toward citizenship were additive. Larger political units were starting to coalesce, uniting relatively large areas of territory under one city for the first time. New political constitutions were introduced, and it was relatively common to extend citizenship to persons not previously citizens. When Clisthenes introduced his political reforms in Athens circa 508/7, he extended citizenship to many foreign immigrants and slaves in order to expand the number of hoplite infantry to nine thousand (Arist. Pol. 3.1.10). After the Persian Wars Athens emerged as one of the leading states of Greece, and policy toward citizenship became much more restrictive. This is seen most clearly in Pericles’s law of 451/0, which restricted citizenship to those born of Athenian parents (Arist. [Ath. Pol.] 26.4).
Even so, thanks to her economic prosperity, by the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War the number of citizen hoplites of military age available to Athens had risen to 13,000, not to mention a reserve of 16,000 hoplites comprising resident foreigners and Athenians in the age classes in reserve (Thuc. 2.13.6–7). The Athenians voted to send an expedition to Sicily in 413 for a variety of reasons, but one important one was the influence demagogic politicians had on the poorer urban citizens. The substantial losses suffered fell disproportionately on the relatively wealthier citizens who had served as hoplites during the expedition. The result was a series of oligarchic coups at Athens, beginning in 411, which sought to restrict the right to vote to the wealthier citizens. The total losses suffered by Athens were such that after the war she was never again able to field a force of more than six thousand hoplites (Sekunda 1992: 314).
At Plataea the Lacedaemonians had been able to field five thousand Spartiate hoplites, five thousand other Lacedaemonian citizen hoplites, and thirty-five thousand Helot psiloi (Hdt. 9.28). It seems that the helots made up the rear ranks of the Lacedaemonian phalanx (Hunt 1998: 31–9). This proved a dangerous expedient, as the regent Pausanias later tried to seek their aid to gain the kingship, offering them citizenship in return. It was probably at this period that we should put the incident described in Thucydides 4.80.3: two thousand helots who had distinguished themselves most in war, and who were supposed to be set free, were done away with by the Lacedaemonians. It seems that Sparta suffered a quite drastic decline in her citizen body during the fifth century, perhaps as a result of the severe earthquake she experienced circa 465. Despite her fears of the dangers of arming the helots, she was forced to repeat the experiment during the Peloponnesian War and after. On this occasion some of the helot hoplites were even enfranchised before service. Lacedaemon’s period of hegemony in Greece was finished by the losses in citizen manpower she sustained at Leuctra in 371. This ended Sparta’s period of hegemony in Greece at one blow. The total number of Spartiates was eight thousand during the Persian Wars (Hdt. 7.234), but had fallen to less than a thousand by Aristotle’s day (Pol. 1270a11).
The effects of war on smaller communities could be just as catastrophic, although more difficult to trace in the surviving evidence. The case of the small Boeotian polis of Thespiae provides a sobering example of war’s demographic consequences (Hanson 1999). Among the Greeks defending the pass of Thermopylae against the Persians were seven hundred Thespians, who all died alongside the better known three hundred Spartans (Hdt. 7.202). The surviving male population of eighteen hundred, without hoplite armor (Hdt. 9.30), joined the Greek forces at Plataea; so it seems that the city had lost about 30 percent of its male population, all drawn from the wealthier classes. After the war Thespiae had to enroll more citizens to replace these losses. Siccinus, the tutor of Themistocles’s children and the bearer of messages to Xerxes, and so probably a freedman, later became a Thespian (Hdt. 8.75). The Thespians fielded a contingent for the Boeotian federal army at Delium in 424, where they again suffered heavy losses when the contingents on either side gave way, isolating the Thespians who were surrounded and cut down in hand-to-hand fighting with the Athenians (Thuc. 4.96.3). A very similar thing happened a generation later in 394 at the battle of the Nemea river. The Boeotian contingents were stationed on the right wing opposite the Achaeans. All of the latter gave way to the Boeotians except the men of Pellene, stationed opposite the Thespians. Both sides fought and fell in their places (Xen. Hell. 4.2.20).
The collapse of Lacedaemonian hegemony in Greece, which predated the Persian Wars, going back at least to the latter part of the sixth century, entailed the collapse of all local balances of power, and ushered in a period of great destruction. So in Boeotia Thebes destroyed all its hostile surrounding neighbors, previously defended by Lacedaemonian garrisons, until it was in turn destroyed by one Macedon monarch in 336, and then refounded by another in 317. Following the death of Alexander, huge armies commanded by his successors traveled back and forth through the Greek world. Large numbers of people were deracinated, and many communities became short of manpower. The result was a return to an open attitude in enrolling new citizens: often recruited from groups of mercenaries, and often enrolled into the citizen body at the behest of the monarch who had recruited them.
Most of these grants of citizenship are recorded in inscriptions. For example, a list of forty-three newly enrolled citizens was found at Hermione. Guarducci first recognized the names as Cretan, and dated the enfranchisement to 219 to 217 during the Social War, although the inscription could be put at almost any time in the third century (Launey 1949–50: 1, 252 n. 4).
Sometimes the powerful national armies of the Hellenistic monarchs also suffered heavy losses, which could weaken their principal element, the phalanx. There were sixteen thousand Macedonians in the Seleucid phalanx at the battle of Magnesia in 189. Not only would considerable losses have been suffered in the battle, the recruiting grounds in Asia Minor were lost to the Seleucids as a result of the subsequent treaty of Apameia. After the death of Antiochus III the reign of his successor Seleucus IV (187–175) was an unusual period of peace in the turbulent history of the Seleucid kingdom; perhaps deliberately so. At the Parade of Daphnae in 166, some twenty-three years after the battle, the strength of the phalanx had risen to over twenty-five thousand (Griffith 1935: 146).
Following his defeat at Cynoscephalae in 197 Philip V put an end to almost twenty years of constant war and put in place measures to expand the Macedonian population and his financial resource base (Livy 39. 24. 2–4; cf. 42. 11. 6). Philip had been active much earlier trying to stimulate the population base available to him. Philip was also king of Thessaly, and in 215 had taken measures (Bagnall and Derow 1981: no. 31) to encourage the city of Larissa to give citizenship to those of the Thessalians or the other Greeks who were dwelling among them, so the land could be worked to a greater extent. Philip notes that the Romans even freed their slaves, and had been able to send out colonies to almost seventy places. So even then Philip was aware of the disparities between the Macedonian and Roman demographic bases.
It is impossible to quantify the numbers of persons uprooted by war in the Greek world, but they must have been considerable. On the other hand there was always the chance of them being accepted into another city, often thanks to the intervention of one of the Hellenistic monarchs. If this did not happen, many individuals moved to the east to inhabit the new cities that were springing up there after the fall of the Persian empire, the most famous of which was Alexandria, substantially populated by Greeks from Sicily and South Italy, doubtless displaced by the constant strife which plagued that part of the Greek world at the time.
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