CHAPTER 16
MATTHEW TRUNDLE
“THE professional soldiers of the ancient world were mercenaries” (Griffith 1935: 2). Before there was coined money warriors received gifts and shared booty. Allies (symmachoi) fought under oath and reciprocal bonds of friendship; friends (philoi) and guest-friends (xenoi) fought under traditions of reciprocity; subjects and retainers (therapontes) fought under compulsion. It is impossible to gauge when the first mercenaries appeared in the Greek world. Isolated references to Greeks in the service of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings occur around 700 (all dates are B.C. unless indicated otherwise). Alcaeus praised the service his brother Antimenides gave to the Babylonians, as an ally (symmachos), in the early sixth century. Herodotus (Hdt. 2.152, 163.1–3) described thirty thousand Carians and Ionians appearing in service with the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus around 664. These men were wanderers who took service with the Egyptians after offers of great things and settled the country. Perhaps these men provided the historical context for the ancient belief that the Carians invented mercenary service (schol. Pl. Lach. 187b). As contacts grew in the sixth century between Greeks and the East so did mercenary service, which became a firmly established aspect of cultural exchange between the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean.
TERMINOLOGY
The Greeks had no word to describe the mercenary. In the archaic age euphemisms and related terms sufficed. Allies had always existed, but some allies received payment and served for more than friendship. The Greek word xenos—foreigner—applied equally to strangers and to ritualized guest-friends bound closely to their allies by mutual bonds of reciprocity. The earliest word identified with Greek mercenary service, helper (epikouros), seems euphemistic. Homer describes the Lycian allies of Priam at Troy asepikouroi, but in epic there is little to suggest they were mercenaries acting purely for payment. About 650 the poet Archilochus (15.216) sings unashamedly that he shall be called an epikouros like a Carian. Eventually epikouroi become associable with mercenaries. Epikouroiappear regularly in Herodotus, serving both for payment and as hirelings of an employer. Thucydides too lists epikouroi, but from book five exclusively uses a new word to describe paid military allies, the misthophoros or wage earner.Misthos meant a wage, usually in coined money.
The misthophoros described any man who took a wage in coin. These included jurymen, sacred-ambassadors, or soldiers on state service, as well as the foreign mercenary. This term became increasingly common in the sources of the fourth century and later to describe mercenaries. The world after Alexander blurred the lines between professional, mercenary, and amateur further. Citizen militias remained (Chaniotis 2005: 20–6), but largely professional armies dominated the Hellenistic world. Alexander’s empire fragmented, but Macedonian, Greek, and huge numbers of local troops served his successors in their constant rounds of warfare across his divided empire. All these soldiers served for pay as professionals and became increasingly tied to the great individuals who dominated the age. It becomes almost impossible to identify the mercenary from the professional soldier. Many years ago H. W. Parke (1933: 208–9) wrote,
instead of simplifying our task, this prevalence of the mercenary makes it the more difficult. For when once all soldiers have been reduced to one professional type, our authorities cease often to distinguish the mercenary as such. All fighting men are stratiôtai and pezoi or hippeis.
The Romans had similar problems identifying the mercenary. The Roman term socius meant an ally, usually one serving under obligation of treaty. Auxilia provided additional forces, usually in specialist areas of the battlefield, light troops, or cavalry. Of course the mercenarius underpins the modern word mercenary. In essence it means a misthophoros, a wage earner, derived from the Latin word merces for misthos or wages, from which comes the French term mercenaire and the English mercenary. It can refer to one who serves a foreign power for remuneration that is independent of the state of which he is a citizen. It appears sparingly in the sources and is mainly a late Roman word. The German word for mercenary (söldner) comes from the late Latin solidarius, from the Latinsolidus, the solid gold coin paid to the troops in the Empire.
THE ARCHAIC AGE: TYRANNY, MONEY, AND THE EAST
Many of the Greek states in the seventh and sixth centuries became dominated by tyrants (tyrannoi). These often employed military support from outsiders to protect themselves and their regimes, thus mercenaries became tarnished with the brush of tyranny. Tyrants and mercenaries shared common interests against free citizen populations. Aristotle (Pol. 1285a, 1311a, 1313b) regularly identified tyranny with mercenaries, juxtaposing them with benign monarchs supported by the citizen body. Several tyrannies in Herodotus (3.45.14, 54.6, 145.15, 6.39.14) required mercenary support and the Pisistratids established their tyranny in Athens with military forces hired from Argos and Thrace (Hdt. 1.61.4, 64.1–2; Arist. [Ath. Pol.] 15.1–3). Later writers like Diodorus associated mercenaries with early fifth-century autocracy in Sicily (11.48.3, 53.2, 67.5). The association of tyrants and mercenaries continued into the Hellenistic age, with a plethora of tyrants employing mercenaries for their own ends alongside dangerous social reformers also styled as tyrants like Agis, Cleomenes, and Nabis (Griffith 1935: 89, 93–5, 97; Livy 34.27.2, 28.8). Roman emperors too employed foreigners as bodyguards, for example the Germans serving under Augustus.
Crucially, coins had appeared in the Greek world in the early sixth century and money transformed relationships within the Greek communities. Chrêmata—money—provided wages to a variety of civil servants as well as outsiders, often mercenaries employed by the state or by individuals. Coinage facilitated the appearance of large-scale mercenary service and mercenary armies. The fifth century saw the monetization of warfare on an unprecedented scale. This was driven by naval warfare and the development of navies of a new warship, the trireme. Poor men rowed these and required payment in coin. These payments led the way in land developments, professionalizing warfare among the infantry and opening the way for the inclusion of poorer insiders as light troops and sometimes as heavy infantry and specialist outsiders in several areas of warfare.
Eastern influence in the Greek world also drove mercenary service as powerful non-Greeks themselves paid for the services of outsiders, often from the Greek world in a military capacity, as we have seen with Antimenides among the Babylonians. Small numbers of Greeks appeared in mercenary service with the Persian satraps through the latter part of the fifth century. Money, tyranny, and the influence of the East on Greek affairs fueled mercenary numbers in the Aegean basin. By the late fifth century Persian politics played an increasingly significant role in Greek affairs. Persian money had determined Sparta’s victory in the Peloponnesian Wars and in turn Persian money facilitated the enormous rise in mercenary numbers at the end of the century.
XENOPHON’S ANABASIS
In 401 a seminal event occurred. The Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, son of the late Darius II, attempted to overthrow his brother and become Great King. His coup represents the major event in the development of Greek mercenary service and illustrates much about mercenary activity in the ancient Greek world. Cyrus gathered together a large army and marched into the heart of the Persian Empire to challenge for the throne. His death at the battle of Cunaxa ended the coup. In addition to his myriads of native levies, Cyrus had brought to Cunaxa a little over ten thousand Greeks (about thirteen thousand in total), which inspired their nickname, “The Ten Thousand.” Xenophon, an Athenian accompanying the expedition, immortalized their story in his literary account called theAnabasis. The single most important source for mercenary service, the Anabasis provides invaluable information on almost every aspect of Greek mercenary life. The army’s hierarchy and relationships were rooted in tradition. Cyrus hired his army through existing networks of garrison commanders (phrourarchoi), ritualized friendships (xeniai), and his alliance with the Spartans. His personal guest-friends became the army’s generals, only one of whom was a professional hiring officer (xenologos). Pay was hierarchical as the generals (strategoi) received four times the wage of the men and the captains (lochagoi) twice, while booty was shared through a common source (koinon). The army formed its own community, a mobile polis of soldiers with a supporting cast of women, children, and slaves, and displayed elements of democracy within an oligarchic framework of leadership. The men heard speeches from their commanders and voted on decisions, rather like decrees in the assembly. Xenophon provides information on provenance, as most of the men came from Arcadia and Achaea, as well as motivation and aspirations.
In this epic tale Greeks and native troops assembled at Sardis and marched with Cyrus east to Babylon. At Cunaxa the Greeks, brigaded independently, successfully charged the Persian line, which broke before them. But with the battle won, Cyrus died charging his brother’s position. Unsurprisingly Cyrus’s native levies melted away, leaving the Greeks isolated and far from home. In the negotiations that followed the generals offered themselves to the victors for military service against Egypt, but the Persians treacherously captured and then murdered them at a parley, leaving the army leaderless. New generals, including Xenophon, now led the Greeks north over the Taurus mountains of central Anatolia to the Black Sea. The winter took its toll and many died of cold and frostbite. There was dissent too, chiefly from the Arcadian contingents, but overcoming cold and revolution the army moved onward. Xenophon records a stirring moment as the vanguard gazed upon the Black Sea and shouts of “The Sea, The Sea!” echoed through the army. As the ocean was like a highway connecting Greek communities from Italy to Asia. Returning to the Greek world, the army became embroiled in Thracian politics, hiring on with Seuthes raiding and plundering in his service. Finally in spring 399, the Spartan general Thibron recruited the remnants and put them to work fighting the Persians, now at war with the Spartans (Xen. An. 6.6–7).
An enduring story, the Anabasis represents a landmark moment in Greek mercenary activity. It illustrated what a large body of heavily armored Greeks could do in Persia especially when supported by a number of specialist light infantrymen, slingers, and peltasts. Their role at Cunaxa and their successful escape from the Persian Empire made plain to later Greeks Persian military weaknesses. Greek hoplites in mercenary service had been growing steadily through the fifth century. The Anabasis of Cyrus at the end of the century represents a well-established and sophisticated stage in the development of mercenary service, but also an important moment in that process in its own right (Roy 1967: 292–323).
MERCENARIES IN MAINLAND GREECE
Mercenaries filled gaps in the military needs of their employers. Greek hoplites found service with Persian kings and satraps in need of a heavy infantry arm. The traffic in mercenaries also flowed into the Greek world in the form of light infantry, another product of Greek interaction with the East. In particular, the Persian Wars showed the Greek cities the qualities of well-trained and properly equipped light troops and cavalry. The poor and disenfranchised members of Greek communities turned out to throw stones or carry baggage, but never played a central role in battle (van Wees 2004: 62–5). Thus cities tended to hire peltasts from Thrace armed with wicker shields, long slashing swords, and javelins, or archers from Crete and Scythia. Greek ideology viewed peltasts, like many other light infantry, ambiguously, as both foreigners and mercenaries. Peltasts had first appeared in Greek cities in the sixth century, but became an important arm of Greek warfare in the later fifth and early fourth centuries. They did much to transform the battlefields of the Greek world. The most famous peltast achievement came in 390 at Lechaeum near Corinth during the Corinthian War. Here a group of peltast mercenaries defeated a division of Spartan hoplites. Tradition remembered these peltasts for this action far better than the hoplites who supported them. Plutarch (Ages. 22.2; see Xen. Hell. 4.5.10–17) sums up the blow to Spartan and hoplite ideology simply: “This was the greatest disaster that had happened to the Spartans in a long time.”
The juxtaposition between the Spartan hoplite and the mercenary peltast branded the victors with a double stigma of light, not heavy, infantry and hirelings, not Spartans. The peltasts of Lechaeum made light infantrymen famous. Their nickname, “The Foreign Band” (to xenikon) promoted their fame and their mercenary nature.
Despite the growing number of peltasts in the classical period they never replaced the hoplite as the principal type of soldier on Greek battlefields. In a wholly erroneous passage, the historian Diodorus (15.44.3) claims that around 374 the Athenian general Iphicrates rearmed hoplites with smaller shields and longer spears and that from that time on hoplites became peltasts. This transformation never occurred. Hoplites continued in service throughout the Greek world and citizen-heavy infantrymen were central to all the major pitched battles of the fourth century, but peltasts appeared in increasing numbers. The lessons of the later fifth and early fourth century illustrated the needs of armies to contain a variety of mutually interactive arms, from shock battalions of hoplites, to different kinds of light troops and cavalry. Mercenaries proved invaluable in providing specialists to those in need and demonstrating the success of such specialists in war.
THE UBIQUITY OF MERCENARY SERVICE IN THE FOURTH CENTURY
Men had no qualms about military service and the status of the mercenary carried no stigma. The anonymous speaker of Isaeus II, On the Estate of Menecles (5), proudly informs a jury that he and his brother served in Thrace with Iphicrates. The deceased subject of another case, Astyphilus, had served for Athens at Corinth, in Thessaly, and in the Theban War and wherever else he heard of an army being collected (9.14). So common became the tide of service that states had to prohibit their citizens from enrolling. An inscription (Tod 2: 154, 10–15) dated to 357/6 perhaps attempts to bar Athenians from mercenary service against Eretria. The Theban authorities prohibited their citizens from joining the Spartan army marching through Boeotia in 383 (Xen. Hell. 5.2.27). Most of the Athenian generals of the fourth century found service with one or more of the Persian, Egyptian, or other foreign kings. Thus Iphicrates served with the Persians and the Thracians; Chabrias in Egypt; Chares with the Persians; Timotheus with the Persians and in Cyprus; Charidemus with the Persians; and even Phocion “the Good” served with Evagoras of Cyprus.
Other evidence supports the ubiquity of mercenaries in the fourth century. Orators and philosophers commented upon the itinerant soldier. Isocrates’s works are full of references to mercenaries. The growing number of outsiders driven to mercenary service concerned him greatly. As early as 380 in his Panegyricus (4.168) he expressed his concerns about those wandering with women and children fighting for their enemies against their friends. In a letter written in 366/5 he showed even more concern about such outsiders (Isoc. Ep. 9.9.8). His oration, On The Peace, produced in 355 after the Social War, rebuked the Athenians who, like the Great King of Persia, employed mercenary armies who “when others offer higher pay will follow their leadership against us” (Isoc. 8.44–47). Aristotle (Eth. Nic. 3.8.9) looked askance at such dependence on unreliable professionals for defense, but still praised the mercenary’s fighting qualities. Aeneas Tacticus’s treatise entitled How to Survive Under Siege takes it very much for granted that a besieged city would have mercenaries within its walls. He warns his readers against giving too much freedom to mercenaries in both movement and association within the city, but the assumption that cities will employ mercenaries for their protection is implicit and unquestioned (10.7, 9, 12.2, 13.1–3). Finally, comic plays indicate the commonplace of the professional soldier. Around 351, Antiphanes wrote a comedy about a mercenary. Entitled The Soldier (Stratiôtes), it appears to tell the story of the life of a veteran. Aptly, its alternative title was Fortune’s Child (Ho Tychon). Only four fragments of this play survive (Kassel and Austin 1983–1998: 2, frs. 200–203), the longest of which highlights a conversation between the soldier and an interrogator. The passage (fr. 202; Ath. 6.258) imagines ludicrous wealth and eastern luxury and a foreign king capable of bestowing every favor to those in service.
The Third Sacred War (356–346) in which the Phocians occupied and held the sanctuary at Delphi for a decade against the combined armies of Thebes, Locris, and the Macedonians epitomized the political chaos of the fourth century and mercenaries’ role within it. The generals of Phocis used the sacred treasuries to mint coins and so maintained a large mercenary army. Offers of high pay attracted men to them and they raised pay to double the usual rate (Diod. 16.25.1, 30.1, 36.1). Had their resources held out their cause might have too, but they lost to Philip and his new Macedonian army. The sources labeled their commanders tyrants (Aesch. 2.130–1; Plut. Mor. 249F, 401F; Ath. 6.231D; Polyaenus Strat. 5.45), despised their actions, and Philip made their coins illegal (Diod. 16.60.1).
MERCENARIES IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
This process of professionalization and growth of mercenary numbers culminated with Alexander the Great’s conquests. Alexander might have used as many as 100,000 mercenary auxiliaries in support of his conquests. Thousands of professionals marched into Asia. The Macedonian phalanx and cavalry spearheaded the major battles, but the mercenaries and auxiliaries conducted specialized campaigns and manned the garrisons and new colonial cities sprinkled throughout the growing empire. Many found garrison life tedious, distant, and isolating as major revolts in the far east just prior to (Diod. 17.99.5; Curt. 9.7; Paus. 1.25.5, 8.52.5) and at the end of Alexander’s life illustrate (Diod. 18.7). Several thousands of Greek troops sought to march back to the Greek world. The events after Alexander’s death, dominated by the Successor Wars, meant opportunities for military service abounded. Decades of warfare followed. These internecine wars saw a peak in the use of Greeks (and Macedonians) as professional soldiers fighting for the many claimants to Alexander’s throne.
Alexander’s conquests had transformed the Greek world. They professionalized Macedonians and Greeks. Many now found themselves in distant lands as garrison troops permanently defending the empire and their own newly formed communities. The new empire facilitated travel; mercenaries illustrate this mobility and “emigration, exile and mercenary service provided the main stimuli for the spread of Greek power to the Near East” (Shipley 2000: 58).
The Hellenistic age provided a new framework for relationships as kings and their friends dictated the destiny of many. The image of the army serving only the absolute figure of the king, Alexander, set the tone for the Hellenistic monarchs and their relationships with their soldiers. If anything the major developments in Greek warfare had already occurred under the Greek cities and Philip’s Macedonians. Most Hellenistic wars were not long. The professional soldiers of the day cared more for securing pensions than destroying their enemies. Standing armies probably made an enormous economic impact on the Hellenistic world. Most of the themes of mercenary service continued under the Successor Kings. They valued Macedonian and Greek troops at a premium. No doubt they could not yet trust local levies alone (Griffith 1935: 50–2). This demand meant that Greeks probably reached the acme of their employment in the period immediately after the death of Alexander. The sources highlight the troubles and poverty of Greece in the very late fourth century fueling mercenary interest from the mainland. Diodorus (20.40) states how Agathocles the Syracusan tyrant easily recruited Athenians and not a few other Greeks for his enterprise against Carthage with promises of land allotments (kleroi) and wealth, noting the Greeks’ desire to escape the evils of the mainland.
The professional soldier, mercenary, and recruiting officer became common features of Greek life. New comedy plays like their middle comedy predecessors continued to reflect realities of life in the cities of the Greek world. So ubiquitous were mercenaries in the period after Alexander’s death that the professional soldier developed into a type of character in these plays: a figure of fun and derision as much as one of fear and hatred. The Miles Gloriosus “type” of later Roman comedy, based as it was on Hellenistic models, appears as a figure of boastful ridicule rather than fear. Perhaps a fragment (fr. 4) of the Hellenistic playwright Phoenicides supports this while also illustrating several other themes of mercenary service, like the ever hoped for rewards from patronage and the absence of a fixed income. The speaker, a flute player, describes how she tried to end her career as a courtesan and so took a lover, a mercenary. He boasted of battles and showed off his wounds. He never paid, but claimed he was getting a gift from the king. She stayed with the soldier for a year because of the gift that never came, and eventually replaced him with a doctor. Apparently, the doctor was worse than the soldier: he made corpses, while the soldier only told stories. The worst of the woman’s new lovers was the last: a philosopher. All, including the woman, are specialists in an age of money and professionals.
The decline in the numbers of urban mainland Greeks in the armies of the kings and the rise of non-Greek peoples as mercenaries represents a shifting focus of the Hellenistic period. Even in the later third century Hellenistic kings still hired Greeks. Before his victory at Raphia in 217, the poor state of Egyptian military resources forced Ptolemy to recruit Greek mercenaries (misthophoroi) who subsequently fought in the battle (Polyb. 5.65.3–4) in addition to the incorporation of Egyptian heavy infantry, which secured victory. Nevertheless Greek mercenary numbers did fall and Polybius (36.17.4) highlighted the growth of sophistication and wealth among Greeks, which he related to their pursuit of smaller families. A smaller citizen population probably meant fewer men qualifying for military service as heavy infantry which would have no less effect on the supply of mercenaries. But opportunities for military service probably declined for mainland Greeks. While Macedonian human resources ebbed after the conquests of Alexander, the Macedonian kingdom continued to draw the majority of heavy infantry from its own population. While the Ptolemies and Seleucids valued Greeks, they must have found it increasingly difficult to recruit men from the Greek mainland. By the early second century, Roman victories over the Antigonids and Seleucids had denied these kingdoms access to mercenary recruitment in the Greek world. Antiochus could not even hire men who came to him of their own accord from the Roman sphere (the Aegean) let alone hire within it (Polyb. 21.43.15; Livy 38.38.10; App. Syr. 39).
As the number of urban Greeks in mercenary service declined, new recruiting grounds blossomed. These tended to represent less urbanized areas of Greece: Thessaly, Crete, Aetolia (Shipley 2000: 57). Additionally, Hellenistic armies sought specialist troops hired from specific regions of the ancient world. Rhodian slingers, Cretan archers, Thracian peltasts, and, increasingly, Balearic slingers all appear in Hellenistic armies throughout the period. The Cretans remained prominent in all Hellenistic warfare until the island’s conquest by the Romans in 67. Strabo (10.477) tells of his grandfather recruiting on the island. Aetolians also provided numerous mercenaries in the third and second centuries, so much so that Livy (31.43) cites official regulation on Aetolian numbers serving in Egypt (Griffith 1935: 80–2). By the mid-third century, after their eruption into the Greek world and subsequent defeat and settlement in Galatia, Celts (Gauls) appear in the armies of Pontus and the Seleucids (Memnon FGrHist. 434 F11; Austin 140). Antiochus Hierax hired them as mercenaries in 241. Celts played an increasing role in Hellenistic warfare. They were perhaps the cheapest, and certainly the most plentiful, soldiers in northern Greece (Griffith 1935: 66).
MERCENARIES IN THE WEST
Sicily was proverbial with mercenary service. The preconditions of tyranny, internecine warfare, and coinage all flourished on the island from the late archaic age. The tyrants of Syracuse attracted Peloponnesians into their service from at least the early fifth century. Dionysius I established diplomatic links with Sparta for this purpose and was one of the principal employers of mercenaries, not just Greeks, in the early fourth century. A series of wars against Carthage led to a boom in mercenary service on the island. Later tyrants of Hellenistic Sicily also hired mercenaries in great numbers, as much in response to Carthaginian hostility as for their own personal protection, and many came from the Greek mainland. Agathocles initially armed the poor of Syracuse for his own purposes (Diod. 19.5–9) and then in 316 hired a largely mercenary army to fight Carthage (Diod. 19.72.2). A generation later, Hieron recruited mercenaries for his own security (Polyb. 1.9.6). In addition to Greeks, these tyrants employed Celts and Italians. Just after Agathocles’s death circa 289, a large group of Campanians proved particularly troublesome in returning to Italy from Syracuse when they seized the city of Messana and became a permanent thorn in the side of their neighbors (see Diod. 21.18 and 22.7.4; Polyb. 1.7.2–8; Plut.Pyrrh. 23–24). They styled themselves the “Mamertini” after an Italian war god, Mamers. Their success burgeoned along with their numbers and ultimately they caused the first war between Carthage and Rome. As Roman allies they survived the Punic Wars and prospered. These mercenaries illustrate that the transition from renegade wanderer to established city dweller, though violent in its process, did happen (Griffith 1935: 194–207).
The Carthaginians had long held interests in Sicily and other western islands. Ancient sources, written by their enemies, principally the Romans or Greeks with Roman affiliations, stress the reliance Carthage had on mercenaries. Polybius (6.52.2) regularly implies that mercenaries made up Carthaginian armies. Griffith (1935: 225 n. 1) states “the Carthaginian armies were very like mercenary armies in practice, even if they were not actually mercenaries.” The heart of most Carthaginian armies, along with the officers, remained Carthaginian, and like the Greek cities, Carthaginians served in a citizen militia when necessary. But Roman prejudices tainted the Carthaginians as hucksters and traders rather than as land-holding farmer-soldiers using their wealth to buy fighters for their protection. The language of the pro-Roman sources often paints most Carthaginian soldiers as mercenaries (not subject allies). Roman auxiliaries fought under compulsion as much as for love of Rome, but are styled as allies (socii, auxilia). During the Second Punic War, for example, Livy (29.4.2) notes that Carthaginians hired (conducere) African auxiliaries (Afrorum auxilia), and he calls the African soldiers mercenaries (28.44.5, 29.3.13). In Spain also the Carthaginians hired Spaniards (Livy 23.13.8) and Livy (23.29.4, 24.49.7) notes specifically Spanish and Celtiberian mercenaries. But in both Africa and Spain Livy (24.42.6; cf. Polyb. 10.35.6) notes the existence of a levy (dilectus). Hannibal calls his Spaniards allies (Livy, 21.11.13, 21.3). These Roman references to Africans and Spaniards cover the range of relationships from mercenary to ally and no doubt the reality was more complex. Carthaginian forces may have been like mercenary armies, but so were the armies of the Hellenistic monarchs.
Carthaginian armies with their Hellenistic style and elaborate makeup of men from all over the Mediterranean must have presented a varied image to Roman adversaries. Carthage drew its armies from the many peoples in the western Mediterranean: local Libyans and Numidians, Gauls, Baleares and Celtiberians, while Sicilians, Etruscans and other Italians, Greeks and Macedonians and Indians were to be found too. The army which Hannibal led into Italy included the full array of Mediterranean peoples (Polyb. 11.19.3). Small wonder Romans saw this diversity as mercenary service in action.
The image of Carthaginian armies was not helped at the end of the First Punic War when their mercenaries, recently returned from Sicily without pay, revolted. Thus Carthage paid the price for its dependence on professionals. The Truceless War supposedly unparalleled in atrocity brought Carthage close to destruction (Polyb. 1.73; Diod. 25.3). The mercenaries fought for three years in Africa, until the genius of Hamilcar Barca, the resolve of the Carthaginian Republic, and the divisions of the rebels finally saw Carthage victorious. The war reveals that Libyans made up the majority of the “mercenaries” of Carthage, but all manner of men served, including Greeks from different regions (Polyb. 1.67.7; Diod. 25.2). The number of Libyans suggests a less mercenary and more subject-ally status of these men, and certainly the Libyan subjects of the Carthaginians contributed both men (Polyb. 1.70.8) and money (Polyb. 1.72.5) to the revolt.
MERCENARIES AND ROME: SOCII, AUXILIA, AND FOEDERATI
The independent farmer-soldier dominated Roman Republican ideology as it had Greek thinking. Unlike the Greeks, Romans had little tradition of mercenary service either as employers or soldiers. Livy (43.7.1–4; see Lendon 2005: 196) notes Roman displeasure and hostility that Cretans served both sides in the Third Macedonian War. Diodorus (29.6) explained that Roman reluctance to hire men stemmed from lack of money. But this may reflect an idealized notion of self-sufficiency in farming and fighting and mercantile loathing. Polybius used the struggle between Rome and Carthage to juxtapose the two approaches to war. He claimed that the reason the Romans had better infantry than the Carthaginians “is that the Carthaginians employ foreigners and mercenaries while the Romans employ natives and citizens” (Polyb. 6.52.2–8).
Despite this, Polybius saw advantage in having many foreigners with which to fight: citizens, he thought, even if they won a battle, faced more dangers, but if a citizen army suffered only one defeat, the war was lost. Money could keep a war alive indefinitely. Ironically, Roman citizens suffered near crippling defeats in Italy and still won the war with Hannibal. Money, allies, and mercenaries could not save Carthage.
The crucial difference between Romans and Carthaginians lay in their use of professional allies and auxiliaries. The Romans used them to plug specialist gaps in their armies, like Cretan archers, Rhodian and Balearic slingers, and other light troops from various places in the periphery of the Empire, and in particular cavalry. Numidia and Mauretania became staple sources of recruitment for light troops and cavalry. The protagonists of battle, the heavy infantrymen at the center, remained Roman in the Republican period. The Carthaginians used outsiders for this role. In Hannibal’s major victories the Spaniards and the Celts formed the center of his line. The Carthaginian core lay in reserve, on the wings at Trebia and Cannae and in the middle line at Zama. This fact alone may explain Polybian stereotyping of Carthaginian armies. Even the Greek citizens of the fourth century, at the height of the mercenary explosion and despite much rhetoric to the contrary, fought their pitched battles themselves. The Macedonian phalanxes of Alexander and his successors led the way at the center of the battlefields of Persia. Mercenaries were often relegated to less glamorous roles, guarding the rear and garrisoning distant provinces.
The Italian allies had since the early Republic supplied troops to the Roman army. This system extended into the Imperial conquests of the Mediterranean. Rome rarely fought overseas wars without the support of local allies. Spaniards and Numidians played crucial roles in the defeat of Carthage, while Greek and Hellenistic allies supported Roman conquests in the great wars of the East. Even later Republican Roman armies bolstered areas of weakness from such allies. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul made full use of Spanish light troops, including Balearic slingers, and Numidian and Cretan archers for reinforcement at speed and ambushes.
By the early first century A.D. the emperor Augustus had established a professional Roman army. The auxiliaries of this army, presumably men who had seen service as Rome’s allies and mercenaries, made up half the standing army of the Empire and received formal terms and conditions of service which integrated them into the Imperial system. Auxiliaries theoretically received Roman citizenship after twenty-five years of service completing this integration. Trajan’s Column reveals the regularity with which the foreign auxiliaries spearheaded attacks compared to the legionaries whose roles appear as engineers and builders. Irregular troops continued to serve alongside the more formal auxiliary arm. In the Dacian Wars, Lusius Quietus, a Moorish prince, led his tribesmen, not regular auxilia, into battle (Cass. Dio 68.32.4; SHA Hadr. 5.8). By the later Empire this process had extended further as Roman frontier troops (limitanei) found themselves increasingly replaced by tribesmen from outside the Empire. These troops defended their territory and that of the frontier under oath, hence they became styled as foederati. Even the late Roman armies led by Belisarius for Justinian employed large numbers of Huns to spearhead his attacks in North Africa and Italy in efforts to reestablish control over former territories of the old Roman Empire.
HIRING MERCENARIES
The first mercenaries met and served their employers through existing networks of ritualized friendships and alliances. Gelon, the Sicilian tyrant, had established relations with Arcadian nobles in the early fifth century perhaps to assist in hiring mercenaries (Pind.Ol., 6.7, 74, 101–105; Paus. 5.27.1). Tyrants supported one another with money and mercenary troops, thus Lygdamis sent both to Pisistratus for his final coup at Athens (Hdt. 1.61.4; Arist. Ath. Pol. 15.1–3). Warfare and overseas connections in early Greek societies, especially with regard to early Arcadia, extended relationships of gift exchange and raiding. The connection with Homeric-style ritualized friendships appears strong in assisting the interaction of mercenaries even in later periods. Naming commonly signified a ritualized relationship among traditional Greeks, and we find in the inscribed names of a group of mercenaries who served Psamettichus in the sixth century at Abu Simbel a soldier called Psamettichus (Tod 4; Hicks-Hill: 3). Many years later an Amyrtaeus of Rhodes dedicated a sacrificial table at a temple in Egypt alongside a group of Greek mercenaries in the early fourth century; he shares his name with an Egyptian rebel leader, Amyrtaeus, from the later fifth century (Thuc. 1.110; Hicks-Hill: 122; CIG3.4702). Perhaps these names signify ritualized family relationships.
Personal relationships, guest-friendship, and friendship between ordinary Greeks and the powerful men of the eastern Mediterranean facilitated mercenary service. Xenophon’s Anabasis reveals the importance of networks of relationships to the mercenary army’s formation and maintenance. He highlights the decisive role of the noble and generous nature of Cyrus in attracting men to him (1.9.11–13). He emphasizes the importance of Cyrus’s patronage. Thus, men thought the friendship of Cyrus worth more than his native state (3.1.4) and by association that the friendship of Cyrus was more valuable than any wage (1.9.17). Xenophon (1.7.4) reports that Cyrus told the Greeks that few would wish to return home after he had become king because of the life he could provide for them. Even after Cyrus’s death this theme continued. Clearchus told Tissaphernes (Xen. An. 2.5.11),
I set my heart on having Cyrus as my friend because I thought he was best able of all the men of his time to benefit whomsoever he pleased.
Mercenary service provided opportunities to befriend the powerful throughout the history of the Greek world. The careers of the Rhodian generals Mentor and Memnon, who each served Darius III, illustrate well what mercenary commanders might achieve. Networks connecting men to power and the potential of reward attracted many into service overseas.
As coinage spread and wars grew larger so mercenary service permeated down the social ladder. Ludmilla Marinovic (1988: 267) thought that a system of louage had developed by the fourth century, and this system may well have had earlier roots. The Peloponnese and the Greek mainland became a center for hiring mercenaries. Peloponnesians served in greater numbers than any other regional Greek people in the later polis period. The Spartans controlled the flow of mercenaries from the Peloponnese (Diod. 14.44.1–2, 58.1; Xen. An. 1.4.3). Sicilian tyrants, Alexander, the Athenians, the Persians, and Egyptian pharaohs all went to the Peloponnese for their mercenaries (Diod. 15.29.1, 30.8, 16.81.4; Plut. Tim. 30; Arr. Anab. 1.24.2). These fourth-century rulers plied an old tradition of service.
Apart from diplomatic ties, traditional friendships, and louage systems, states developed sophisticated reciprocal means for hiring mercenaries in the fourth century within their own framework of liturgical responsibilities. Aeneas Tacticus (13.1), in his treatise on surviving a siege (see further Millett, 65–7), states that wealthy citizens should provide for mercenaries, both paying and boarding them, though later compensated for their expenses.
Hiring based on traditional patterns of diplomacy, louage, middlemen, and money continued throughout the Hellenistic age. In 318 Eumenes sent hiring agents into the cities of Asia Minor with much money to recruit an army (Diod. 18.61.4–5; Plut. Eum. 12). Cities, like Ephesus, continued as hiring centers (Polyb. 33.16.12; Ephesus provided the set for Miles Gloriosus). At the end of Alexander’s life and briefly thereafter, Cape Taenarum on the southern coast of the Peloponnese became a base where mercenaries found employment (Diod. 18.9.1–3; Paus. 1.25.5, 8.52.5; Griffith 1935: 259–60). Sparta remained an agent of mercenary recruitment in the Peloponnese as it was in the classical age. Antigonus Monophthalmus’s officers enrolled men with Spartan permission in 315 (Diod. 19.60.1), while the Greeks of Italy drew Spartan kings into service with Peloponnesian soldiers against their Italian neighbors (Diod. 20.104.1–2). Ties of alliance and friendship continued to facilitate mercenary service. Thousands of Athenians served Demetrius the Besieger and his father at Ipsus due to his good deeds (see IG2 II.1.657). Philopoemen appeared as the general of Gortyn and no doubt this service provided a useful recruiting connection with Crete (Plut. Phil. 13.1). Similar connections resound down the centuries. Strabo (10.477) recalls Dorylaus of Pontus, one of the friends of Mithridates Euergetes, who, while visiting Cnossus on a recruiting mission, found himself made general when war broke out with Gortyn. With the war won and news of Euergetes’s death he stayed in Cnossus, leaving behind his wife and three children in Pontus.
Under the Romans recruitment of mercenaries continued to come from the periphery of the Empire’s growing boundaries. Wilder parts of the Mediterranean provided the mainstay of hired personnel as they had for many of the Hellenistic rulers. Aristocratic networks between Romans and chieftains facilitated the use of such troops. We should note that many of Rome’s enemies had once fought as their friends, like Jugurtha of Numidia who had served in Spain with his Numidian horse and light troops, long a staple of auxiliary service among Hellenistic and Roman armies. Caesar used the military position he had established over the German tribes across the Rhine to summon cavalry and light troops to his service in Gaul (B Gall. 7.65).
This continued into the Roman Empire. Lusius Quietus exemplifies the means by which Romans incorporated aristocrats into the Empire. His Moors gave service to Trajan and he achieved lofty heights within the Imperial administration in Judaea. This process of recruitment and assimilation reflected Roman social processes and continued into the later Roman Empire as chieftains brought troops with them en masse to serve the needs of the Imperial administration in return for status within the Empire. This was not too different from the ways in which powerful Greeks had climbed the administrative ladder of the Persian Empire many centuries earlier. We should remember that one of the services provided by the Rhodian commanders Mentor and Memnon was mercenary recruitment.
REMUNERATION
Remuneration defines mercenary service. Pay came in coinage and in kind. Late fifth-century commanders variously provided wages, payment to buy food (sitêresion), and food for subsistence (sitos, ephodia, trophe, epitedeia). Pay attracted men into service. Cyrus the Younger offered a daric a month, the equivalent of at least twice and perhaps three times a regular daily wage at the end of the fifth century, which he raised in order to keep the men on the campaign (Xen. An. 1.3.21). The fabled wealth of the Great King, Egyptian pharaohs, and Thracian princes clearly attracted volunteers to them. Diodorus (16.25.1, 30.1, 36.1) claimed that offers of high payment attracted many mercenaries to serve with the Phocians in the Third Sacred War.
The value of mercenary wages remains a problem, as the limited evidence across all periods makes assessment difficult, especially through the fourth century and even into the Hellenistic period. Parke (1933: 231–3) and Griffith (1935: 273, 298) both saw pay as low and getting lower through the fifth and mid-fourth century, and Miller (1984: 155) concluded that “on the whole formal wages were low.” Some scholars discuss pay more optimistically (McKechnie 1989: 89). Fifth-century references to military pay, both naval and land, and pay for civil servants, give insights to likely mercenary equivalents. These range from two obols to one drachma per day (Ar. Wasps, 682–685, 1188–9; Xen. An. 1.3.21). The sources provide just three inferences to the daily amount paid to mercenaries from 399 to 334. Xenophon (An. 7.6.1) states that Thibron promised one daric a month to his men in 399; in 383 the Spartans required their allies to pay three Aeginetan (four and a half) obols a day in lieu of providing each soldier to their alliance (Xen. Hell. 5.2.21); and Demosthenes in 351 suggested two obols as the rate of food payment for mercenaries in Thrace (First Philippic, 28). Pay appears to have fallen by as much as half prior to the conquests of Alexander. Thus pay had probably reached one peak during the Peloponnesian War, culminating with Cyrus and Thibron paying about a drachma a day around 400, an amount which Loomis (1998: 48) recently described as “extraordinary.”
The Successor Wars after the death of Alexander probably saw a second peak in wages as the generals fought each other for the empire with plenty of resources at their disposal (discussed more fully below). Lucrative wars kept mercenaries fat, but any assessment of pay and its value to recipients relies on many variables, from cost of living to bonuses and hidden additions about which we know little. Generals might have added food and other necessities of life on top of pay. Thus, Griffith (1935: 267) believed that Cyrus provided additional rations for his mercenaries, while Loomis (1998: 40–4, 47–50) asserts that misthos referred to both wages and rations. The buying power of coin payments is impossible to gauge. Generals might provide a subsidized market for the soldiers who were often in situations and places where food prices no doubt fluctuated greatly.
In any event, pay, even good pay, remained only a day-to-day means for living. Plunder provided opportunities to generate wealth and rations (Krasilnikoff 1992: 23–36; see Dem. 4.28). Even noncombatants followed armies to get their share of war. Epaminondas’s invasion of the Peloponnese attracted such a following in 369 (Plut. Ages. 22). In 350, when war threatened Cyprus, rumored as very wealthy after years of peace, many hopeful mercenaries traveled to the island (Diod. 16.42.8). Light troops, and peltasts in particular, made excellent plunderers. Without endless resources states reliant on mercenaries committed themselves to offensive plundering warfare. Defense would end in defeat.
As with the classical age, details regarding payment and maintenance in the Hellenistic world remain a vexing problem. The surprisingly limited evidence given the amount of papyrus finds from Egypt means that examples drawn from civilian life must supplement bare anecdotes about mercenaries or professional soldiers. For example, Diodorus (5.17.1–5) states that native law forbade the Balearic Islanders from receiving their payment in coinage so they got women and wine for their services and came home with nothing. New, and less ambiguous evidence, appears in military terms of the Hellenistic age (Griffith 1935: 274–80). Opsônion replaced misthos for wages, a euphemism that was identical to misthos (see Hom. Od. 3.480). Opsônion traditionally referred to the sauce which flavored one’s bread and inspired the proverb that mercenaries did not see their sauce (opsônia amartias) at death. This suggests that it represented something additional to mere provisions.
Three inscriptions reveal the amount paid to soldiers (not necessarily mercenaries) in the third century. A treaty (SIG i.421) between the Aetolians and Acarnanians of 270 decrees that a cavalryman should receive one Corinthian stater (nine Corinthian obols or sixteen Attic obols) a day, a hoplite twelve Corinthian (eight Attic) obols, a peltast nine Corinthian (six Attic) obols, and a light-armed soldier seven Corinthian (four and two-thirds Attic) obols as maintenance (sitarchia not opsônia). A second treaty (BCH xiii 1889) dated to 228 between Antiochus Doson and the Cretan city of Hierapytna sets payment at one Alexander drachma a day, while the last (SIG 2.581), between Rhodes and Hierapytna, cites eight obols a day for soldiers and two Rhodian drachmas per day for a commander (hegemon). Importantly, this inscription reveals that citizens and mercenaries received the same amount. In the third century payment lay between six and eight obols a day, an improvement upon fourth-century wages certainly, assuming that these figures represent everything soldiers might receive in each century, but buying power and therefore standards of living once again remain an enigma.
Egypt reveals much about standing payments for military purposes. Several third-century letters reveal the processing of payment under the Ptolemies (Preisigke 1912: 2, 103, 104, 108). One letter (103) sent by a military secretary to a civilian overseer of finance requests payment at the end of the month for a garrison, stating the numbers of men and the amount required. In another a junior clerk of the overseer requisitions (104) the money to pay the secretary from the cashier. Finally, a third (108) rectifies a mistake by the clerk in the amount. The men received opsônion at the end of the month. What about ration money (sitêresion, sitarchia) or food (sitos, sitônia)? Doubt remains as to whether opsônion meant composite wages including subsistence rations or only part-pay augmented by rations. Certainly subsistence and wages were very different things in the Hellenistic period (Griffith 1935: 269; Arist. [Oec.] 2.29.1351b). A letter of 130 differentiated pay from food and other documents confirm this division. Subsistence was paid at the beginning of the month and pay at the end. First-century Egyptian papyri (BGU 8.1749–50) demonstrate that monthly rations (sitometria) came to soldiers via a granary official (sitologos) at the same time as opsonion, explaining its absence from letters requesting pay (opsônion). Cash advances (prodomata) in Egypt both for hiring and to those in service illustrate flexibility in the system. Advances to clothe soldiers properly might also be made (IG2 2.1304.31). Some Hellenistic employers provided their men with arms as well (Polyb. 5.64; see App. Proem 10 apud Ath. 5.206 for arsenals of arms). Generals continued to solve fiscal problems with ruses and warfare. When Pyrrhus returned from his wars in the west he went straight into a war in Macedonia just to keep the troops paid (Plut. Pyrrh. 26.2). Land remained the greatest gift of all and many mercenaries were made citizens in the communities in which they lived.
The Hellenistic monarchs surrounded themselves with friends at court and with specialists of every sort. Soldiers became prized commodities. Competition among the kings for resources inevitably led to competition for the best mercenaries and to retaining Greco-Macedonians in military service. Ptolemaic Egypt attracted mercenaries through its vast financial resources and by allowing them plots of land (kleroi) and special status. Griffith (1935: 111) saw that “money was in fact at the root of the highly artificial military system which so clearly reveals itself in Egypt.” Theocritus (14.58–59) promoted Ptolemy II Philadelphus as the best paymaster for a freeman. Mercenaries received land, tax relief, and other incentives to remain in Egypt.
Military settlements (apoikiai, klerouchoi, and katoikiai) and garrisons (phrouroi) in all of the kingdoms created special circumstances for military service on a more uniform and stable footing than previously (Cohen 1978: 45–60; Chaniotis 2005: 84–93), though even these garrisons had their forerunners in those of the western Persian Empire. Egypt, about which we have the most information, provides a detailed picture of the allotment of land to military settlers in order to create a permanent and hereditary military class upon which the Pharaoh could rely. The whole system in Egypt aimed to bind men to the king and to link manpower to agriculture in Egypt. Yet Egypt illustrates starkly the decline in Greco-Macedonian soldiers and the incorporation of native troops into the national army. Most famously at the Battle of Raphia in 217 twenty thousand Egyptians made up a phalanx that effectively won the battle and laid the foundations for political reform within the kingdom. Polybius (5.62–65) explicitly notes the weakness of Ptolemaic forces prior to this conflict and the efforts made to enroll new mercenaries from Greece and train Egyptians to fight.
In Asia Seleucus and his successors created a system of military settlements similar but different from the pattern found in Egypt. In such a vast empire differences abounded. The diverse evidence provides clues, but few concrete conclusions. A core of Macedonian phalangites remained the basis of the Seleucid army. The settlements probably accommodated active soldiers, not veterans. This made it different from Egypt. Asian settlements were city based, while Egyptian settlements were rural. New Greek cities grew up all over Asia, while Egypt had only two Greek cities, with scattered rural settlements across the countryside. This explains the long life and strength of the military settlements in the Seleucid Empire (Griffith 1935: 163). The Seleucid system created an Asian Macedonia. The men who grew up in it produced a standing army.
An important inscription from Pergamum illustrates contractual relationships between mercenaries and their commanders in this era (OGIS 1.266). Dated to between 263 and 241, it details the formal ending of a mercenary revolt by two garrisons on or near the borders of Pergamum in northwestern Anatolia. The inscription includes the oaths sworn by soldiers, commanders, and paymaster to each other and seven clauses outline terms and conditions of service. The seven clauses that detail the resolution of the dispute are worth quoting (translation pace Griffith 1935/1981):
(1) To pay as the cash value of the grain (allowance) four drachmas for twelve gallons, and of the wine (allowance) four drachmas for nine gallons.
(2) Concerning the year: that it be reckoned as having ten months, and he will not reckon an intercalary (month).
(3) Concerning those who have given the full number (of campaigns) and who are no longer in service: That they receive the pay (opsonion) for the time they have previously served.
(4) Concerning orphans (orphanikon): that the next of kin take them over, or the one left behind (the heir).
(5) Concerning taxation (telos): that there will be freedom from taxes (ateleia) in the 44th year. If anyone goes out of service or asks to be dismissed, let him be released, removing his own belongings free of impost.
(6) Concerning the pay which was agreed for the four months: that the agreed amount be given, and let it not be reckoned as part of the pay.
(7) Concerning the “Poplar Brigade” (leukinon): that they receive the grain for the period for which (they were granted) also (maintain) the garland (stephanos).
Commentators argue about the meaning of several of these clauses. Clearly pay was significant alongside maintenance and the price of grain and wine. The treatment of the children of soldiers and tax exemption with the ability for relocation outside of Pergamum (perhaps a retirement package) each reflect new Hellenistic circumstances. By the Hellenistic age care of families became a key part of an employer’s responsibilities. Ptolemy Soter protected soldiers’ families in Egypt and other examples abound of such Hellenistic behavior (see Chaniotis 2005: 85–8). Finally, a clause concerns the length of the year and the campaigning season, regulating the ability of the paymaster to incorporate unpaid months of service into the year. Perhaps this document sought to advertise Eumenes as a good employer to attract men into service or perhaps it represented a guarantee to the men of concessions they had won. Other inscriptions usefully detail mercenary conditions in the cities of Greece. One (IG2 2 379) dated to about 320 illustrates that Athens employed a general in charge of foreigners overseeing the mercenary battalion, while other inscriptions demonstrate Athenian use of mercenaries as garrison troops in Attica.
Romans paid their allies with plunder, at least in earlier periods. Polybius suggests that the allies received food while on campaign rather than payment. This was also probably the case for many of the regular Roman forces. Like their Greek counterparts, booty remained the primary interest to those serving with the Romans. By the Imperial period more formal means of payment came into existence. We are well informed about the pay raises of the Roman legions, but there is little evidence about actual rates of pay (only eight documents from the whole Roman Imperial period). The auxiliaries received regular pay as well. Suggestions are that auxiliaries received about five-sixths that of a legionary, around 250 drachmas a year or four obols a day, though this thesis has been challenged and they may well have received comparable rates of pay to the legionaries (Alston 1994: 120–3). Either way their wages appear similar to those of mercenaries in the Classical age and were determined in large part by their citizen counterparts.
MERCENARY LOYALTY
The significant role played by friendship and traditional alliances in mercenary service may explain the remarkable loyalty of Greek mercenaries. The sources show that men served together with family members (SEG 31.1552, 1554), they served in units formed at home (the Arcadians display a strong sense of national feeling in the Anabasis [e.g., Xen. An. 6.2.11]), and men followed commanders who acted as hinges between them and the paymaster. Greeks fought with Persians or Egyptians against other Greeks with remarkable abandon and frequency. On very few occasions did a sense of panhellenism show itself. Supposed mercenary causes usually coincided with alliances or foreign policy. The Greeks who served Darius III against Alexander the Great, for example, hated the Macedonians. Ultimately these Greeks proved more loyal to the Great King than his fellow countrymen (Arr. Anab. 3.21.4; Diod. 17.27.2; Curt. 5.8.4).
Mercenaries also continued to remain loyal in later periods. This again reflected the traditional connections of patronage and friendships that underpinned mercenary relationships. Demetrius Poliorcetes led eleven thousand men into Asia, the remnants of his followers after his loss of the Macedonian kingdom, where he won over several cities, marched on to Armenia, and finally south to the Taurus range. Many died along the way until the survivors surrendered, but only when the great Seleucus took the field against them (Plut. Dem. 46.1–3, 47–9). Griffith (1935: 60) writes that “they had shown that mercenaries can be heroes, and had endured far more than any commander has a right to demand of his men for pay alone.” But of course these men saw in Demetrius far more than pay alone and as always the line between the true mercenary and the mutually benefited friend gets lost in the sources. Many mercenaries in the ancient world, like those who followed Darius III to the Caspian long after most of his Persians had left him, had deep bonds with their employers. Some, no doubt, supported a losing cause for less than noble reasons, like the Cretans who followed Perseus after the disaster of Pydna in hope of their pay (Livy, 44.43.8), but most had closer connections than money alone. Traditional networks of patronage and friendships continued to underpin mercenary interaction long after the fall of the western Roman Empire. Mercenaries in the ancient world, like professional soldiers anywhere, demonstrated a high degree of military honor and spirit, despite their mercenary nature. Their use through classical antiquity illustrates the esteem which hired troops enjoyed among the peoples of the Mediterranean in the face of hostile ideologies and often biased sources.
CONCLUSION
Mercenaries played a central role in the wars of the Greco-Macedonians. Citizen traditions of responsibility and obligation held mercenaries, like all outsiders, in contempt. Aristocracies despised them as tools of tyrants and slaves to money. But mercenaries came from all strata of society and interacted with every aspect of ancient life. Mercenaries spearheaded change in the ancient world: as wartime professionals and specialists, in their influence on the economy and the development of coinage, on the nature of contracts, on emigration and racial interaction, on the formation of empires and of new communities. Thucydides (1.10–11) once claimed that wars in the past were small because of a lack of money. Money made victory in war more likely as well-drilled professionals outdid their citizen counterparts. Diodorus (29.6.1) recognized this fact despite Roman and aristocratic bias against both money and mercenaries:
In warfare, a ready supply of money is indeed, as the familiar proverb has it, the courtesan of success since he who is well provided with money never lacks men to fight.
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