Mercenaries in the Classical World

To the Death of Alexander

Stephen English

• Editore: Frontline Books
• Anno: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781783034543
• Argomento: Historia
• Categoria: Historia antigua

Mercenaries were a significant factor in many of the wars of the Classical world, being employed in large numbers by many states. By far the most famous were Xenophon's 'Ten Thousand', who had to cut their way out of the Persian Empire after the death of their employer and such Greek infantry were for long the most dominant type (even a Spartan king hiring himself out in one case), but there was a wide variety of mercenaries available. Some, such as Celts and Thracians were hired largely for their love of fighting, while others were valued for their specialist skills, such as Cretan archers or slingers from Rhodes or the Balearic Islands. This will be the first full-length book on the subject since 1997. It will examine the role of the mercenaries and their influence on the wars of the period down to the death of Alexander the Great, who employed them and why, and will also look at the social and economic pressures that drove tens of thousands to make a living of fighting for the highest bidder, despite the intense dangers of the ancient battlefield.

Chapter 1

Payment and Remuneration

The most fundamental aspect of mercenary service, as we have already noted, was that of the provision of service in return for some form of payment or remuneration. In this chapter we will explore the payment systems and methods that existed.¹

Employing mercenaries was not a decision that was taken lightly, because of the costs involved. Outside the Persian Empire, no employer could easily afford an open-ended agreement on terms of service, and thus most mercenaries were employed for a specific campaign, after which they would need to seek other opportunities. Therefore, it was often not in the financial interests of the mercenaries for wars to end quickly, or for one side to be comprehensively defeated, as their future employment opportunities would be limited as a consequence.

Although the employment of mercenaries was an expensive way of waging war, their professionalism led to their increasing usage throughout the Classical period and into the Hellenistic period. The cost, therefore, became a necessary burden of the state, and a means had to be found to bear that greater expense during times of war. States and individual commanders came up with a number of mechanisms to provide their mercenaries with the payment they required, and we will begin this chapter by examining some of those methods.

Methods of Payment

Direct payment in the form of coinage is the most obvious method of payment that we might imagine today, especially considering our modern market economies. Ancient societies, however, did not have the same relationship with money that we do in the modern world; the ancient economy was not as heavily monetarized as is ours. Even citizens in the richest of ancient societies, the Persian Empire, often conducted their business in the form of trade and barter, rather than direct purchase. It it also probably true to say that the Persian Empire did not make much use of coinage except for the payment of mercenaries.

This being said, however, payment in coin was often made, especially after the Athenian Empire had spread coinage over a wide area and made its use more common than it had been before the fifth century.² At the end of that century the Peloponnesian War continued the increasing trend towards payment in coin, and by the end of that war it was relatively commonplace for mercenaries to receive at least some of their remuneration in the form of hard currency. In the mid-fourth century, Diodorus tells us of an incident during the Third Sacred War (356–346, of which we will hear more later) where coins were struck specifically in order to pay mercenaries for their service:³

After the death of Onomarchus his brother, Phayllus succeeded to the command of the Phocians. In an attempt to retrieve the disaster, he began to gather a multitude of mercenaries, offering double the customary pay, and summoned help from his allies. He got ready also a large supply of arms and coined gold and silver money.

He goes on to tell us more of the same incident:

. . . Phayllus, the brother of Onomarchus, when he became general, struck into coin a large number of dedications in order to pay the mercenaries.

Some of these coins manufactured from melted-down dedications survive, carrying the names of the Phocian generals Phayllus and Onomarchus, demonstrating that this minting did occur and suggesting that the payment in hard currency was not unusual by this time.

Therefore, the spread of coinage as a means of exchange and the spread of mercenary service appear to be linked. The spread of coinage did facilitate the hiring of large mercenary armies, which changed the nature of Greek warfare. It has even been argued that the minting of coinage and the subsequent payment of mercenaries in coin was detrimental to Greek society as a whole and was in itself a significant cause of the downfall of the polis system.⁴

Although coinage is the most obvious form of direct payment, and for many mercenaries this would have been the most important and desirable form of pay, it was by no means the only mechanism that was at the disposal of the paymasters. In order to understand the next form of payment fully, we need to understand something of the motivation for mercenary service. Some mercenaries were undoubtedly motivated by the prospect of a reasonable steady wage, and for these men service away from the front line would have been considered a choice assignment. Consider, for example, the mercenaries employed by Philip II of Macedon. He stationed mercenaries throughout Greece at strategically important locations, a policy adopted and greatly expanded upon by his son, Alexander the Great.⁵ These men would have received a regular wage (not just in coin, as we shall see) and were in very little danger as long as there was no rebellion. For some, these postings would have been highly sought after, less so for others.

Many were motivated by mercenary service because they had no other way to make a living; there was no welfare state after all. Individuals needed to be able to feed themselves, and in many cases their families, and therein lies the second mechanism that commanders had at their disposal; some of the payment received by mercenaries was in the form of food and drink. Mercenaries, like everyone else, needed to eat more than they needed hard currency, and employers found a number of ways to make this happen. Some employers would pay the food bills for their mercenaries (a payment called sitêresion or sitarchia) or provide them with enough coinage to pay those bills themselves. This payment would have been separate from their wage, which sometimes fluctuated depending on employer, but this sitêresion payment appears to have been more stable.

Some employers paid something akin to travelling expenses (ephodia). Employers could also make payments in kind and simply provide food and sustenance for the mercenaries (trophê or sitos). For many commanders, this latter option would have been the simplest, and perhaps the cheapest solution, as they would be feeding their regular army anyway; a few more mouths would make little difference, and it would save potentially a significant amount of money, especially as the numbers of mercenaries employed increased. Misthos was also paid to mercenaries, and hence the common fourth-century name for a mercenary soldier misthophoroi. Misthos was akin to a regular wage or salary. This terminology developed as the employment of mercenaries developed and as terminology was required; because of this the terminology did not really evolve until it was needed in the mid-fourth century, along with the rise of the mercenary army.⁶

The extent to which these terms are specific or synonymous and interchangeable can be (and has been) debated, but the important thing to note here is that the provision of food, or a payment specifically for the purpose of purchasing provisions, was an important pay structure at the disposal of a mercenary commander.

Mercenaries could also be paid a form of bonus for either length of service, or for particularly distinguished service, although this was relatively rare. The Syracusans gave Dion’s mercenaries a bonus payment of 100 minae for success against Dionysius in 357, and we also know that Cyrus offered his mercenary army five minae each once victory had been assured. Xenophon tells us:⁷

So the generals called an assembly and made this announcement; and the soldiers were angry with the generals, and said that they had known about this for a long time, but had been keeping it from the troops; furthermore, they refused to go on unless they were given money, as were the men who made the journey with Cyrus before, when he went to visit his father; they had received the donation, even though they marched, not to battle, but merely because Cyrus’ father summoned him. All these things the generals reported back to Cyrus, and he promised that he would give every man five minas in silver when they reached Babylon and their pay in full until he brought the Greeks back to Ionia again. By these promises the greater part of the Greek army was persuaded.

As we can see, this was not an act of largess on the part of Cyrus but the promise of a bonus payment in order to keep the mercenary army intact after a period where their pay was evidently in arrears.

Alexander the Great also gave a bonus equivalent to two months’ pay to his mercenaries (and everyone else in the army) after the Battle of Gaugamela in 331. This would not have acted as a motivation in the same way the Cyrus incident did before Cunaxa, because this was unexpected and was a bonus for services already rendered. Diodorus tells us of these bonus payments:⁸

From the money which was captured he distributed to each of the cavalrymen six minas, to each of the allied cavalrymen five, and to the Macedonians of the phalanx two, and he gave to all the mercenaries two months’ pay.

It is difficult to appreciate at first glance how generous these bonus payments were, but to put these figures in a context, in terms of ancient currency:

100 drachma = 1 mina

1 talent = 60 minae

We do not know with absolute certainty how much a cavalryman in Alexander’s army would have earned as a daily rate (or what that payment consisted of), but around two drachmae a day is a typical estimate. Therefore, six minae, or 600 drachma, as a bonus payment (300 days’ pay) seems a significant amount. The bonus paid to mercenaries, two months’ pay, thus seems considerably less generous by comparison to that paid to the regular divisions of the army, but with Alexander this was to be expected. He was a significant employer of mercenaries, as we shall see later, but they were never the main component of his army, always being on the periphery.

The least frequently used and therefore probably the least important method of payment of mercenaries was in the form of land. The practice of allotting land for military service became commonplace in the Roman Empire, for both legionaries and auxiliaries, but it was rather less common in Greece, and certainly as a method of payment for mercenaries. One of the very few incidents of this form of payment was by Dionysius in 396. Diodorus again:⁹

Dionysius . . . offered the mercenaries, who numbered about ten thousand, in lieu of their pay the city and territory of the Leontines. To this they gladly agreed because the territory was good land, and after portioning it out in allotments, they made their home in Leontini.

The rarity of this form of payment is indicated by the circumstances of this incident. It was evidently a lack of funds that forced Dionysius to create this novel method. It is further interesting to note that once the mercenaries had accepted their allotment of land they seemingly settled down and no longer pursued the life of the mercenary, making this form of payment undesirable if the tyrant wished to maintain his mercenary army. Mercenary settlers were often not popular amongst the natives either, of course.

The final element of remuneration for mercenaries is one of the most important for the majority: booty. For many mercenaries, and indeed a great number of regular troops, booty was a major source of funds and a significant motivational factor in taking up mercenary service in the first place.¹⁰

The desire to enjoy the spoils of war is as old as Greek warfare itself; it is a central theme of the Homeric epics, where there is no clear dividing line between plunder and legitimate trading activities.¹¹ The traditional view amongst Greeks was that the conquered peoples and their possessions passed to the conquerors: to the victors belong the spoils. The desire for the acquisition of wealth as a motivating factor in warfare, both for the state and for individuals, cannot be denied. In terms of states, the distribution of plunder was even included as a clause in some treaties.¹²

Booty could come in a number of forms. It could be actual items of intrinsic value that could easily be carried away by the victor; this was probably a major source of this type of income for mercenaries. One such ‘item’ was the captured enemy; individuals captured in warfare automatically became slaves and were often sold after the battle to provide a major source of income for the state, some of which was likely to be distributed amongst the army. We see, for example, Alexander selling 30,000 Thebans into slavery after his Sack of Thebes in 335. The sale brought much needed revenue into the Macedonian treasury, some 440 talents, each Theban being worth on average eighty-eight drachmae. ¹³ The state could also sell any captured livestock and especially land; the scope for income from warfare was vast, if successful, of course.

Violence and plundering after a battle or siege reached something of a peak in the Greek world in the fourth century, with a number of cities being sacked and pillaged, although the Hellenistic period was arguably worse. It is entirely possible that this trend is linked to the increasing use of mercenaries, who saw plunder as a major source of income, a form of bonus payment for successful service. It is also likely linked to the generally parlous state of the finances of some of the major protagonists in the fourth century.

Individual rank-and-file mercenaries could become wealthy as a result of plunder, but how many actually did is an interesting question. The choicest artefacts would likely have been taken by regular state troops, with the mercenaries picking over whatever was left. Commanders would also have their choice of items before the lower ranks, and therefore, there may not always have been a great deal left worth stealing.

Some mercenaries undoubtedly did very well out of plunder, particularly the commanders. Xenophon, for example, made enough money from the expedition to Persia to enable him to make a dedication to Apollo at Delphi, and also to buy a plot of land in the Peloponnese, upon which he built a temple and an alter to Artemis: ¹⁴

Here Xenophon built an altar and a temple with the sacred money, and from that time forth he would every year take the tithe of the products of the land in their season and offer sacrifice to the goddess, all the citizens and the men and women of the neighbourhood taking part in the festival. And the goddess would provide for the banqueters barley meal and loaves of bread, wine and sweetmeats, and a portion of the sacrificial victims from the sacred herd as well as of the victims taken in the chase.

To perform such acts it would have taken a great deal of plunder, but as a commander and aristocrat, Xenophon was in prime position to receive more than his fair share.

We do also have some circumstantial evidence of the amount of plunder a rank-and-file mercenary could achieve.¹⁵ Nicostratus, an Athenian who saw mercenary service overseas and died in the 370s, left two talents of property at his death. This estate was contested in court, and we have the speech of Isaeus demonstrating some of the detail of the case. ¹⁶ It seems impossible that this money could have come from a wage alone, or even with a bonus payment included. Some of this figure must have come from plunder, which he invested in property in Athens.

In terms of the collection of booty, Aeneas Tacticus presents us with a vivid and interesting picture from the perspective of a commander under siege:¹⁷

After your defensive force has been concentrated in a specific place and the enemy are dispersed in search of plunder, now is the time to attack them, to cut off their routes of retreat with cavalry and to form ambushes composed of select troops.

The implication being that almost as soon as the siege had begun th...

Indice dei contenuti

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - Payment and Remuneration
• Chapter 2 - The Archaic Period
• Chapter 3 - The Fifth Century
• Chapter 4 - The Ten Thousand
• Chapter 5 - The Fourth Century
• Chapter 6 - The Rise of Macedon
• Chapter 7 - The West: Syracuse and Carthage
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index