Xenophon expands upon this story by noting Lysander’s attempt to persuade Cyrus to pay one drachma a day (six obols); the attempt ended in failure, however. 37 This incident rather suggests that four obols a day was above the regular misthos payment for the fifth century, for sailors at least.38
One of the first large-scale mercenary employers was Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse (405–367). Unfortunately, we have no surviving evidence of exactly what he paid his mercenaries or his regular troops. Diodorus does tell us that he was generous, however, particularly when he needed to be: 39
From the Syracusans he enrolled those who were fit for military service in companies and from the cities subject to him he summoned their able men. He also gathered mercenaries from Greece, and especially from the Lacedaemonians, for they, in order to aid him in building up his power, gave him permission to enlist as many mercenaries from them as he might wish. And, speaking generally, since he made a point of gathering his mercenary force from many nations and promised high pay, he found men who were responsive.
Although we do not know with any certainty, as noted above, we can reasonably assume that ‘high pay’, as Diodorus puts it, was perhaps around the one drachma a day that Cyrus was paying his mercenaries.
The Army of Cyrus is the first large-scale mercenary army for which we have details regarding pay. During the early stages of the march, they were receiving one daric a month, around five obols a day. Once the true dangers of the campaign became known, and to maintain the army in the field, this was raised to around one and a half darics a month, about seven and a half obols a day; a phenomenal sum, based upon the other evidence we have seen so far. 40 Even if pay was declining generally in the fourth century, there were some high points in terms of salary expectations for mercenary service. If, however, this daric or daric and a half per month represented not only misthos but also sitêresion, then the picture would appear rather less generous. If the soldiers were expected to pay for their own food and equipment from their salary then perhaps the pay of Cyrus was not what it would first appear to be.
To an extent, they had the option of plunder, but this was limited during the outward journey at least. 41 When they were heading home it would have been a far more regular occurrence, and we have already seen that Xenophon himself was not immune to its lure. We do know that Xenophon never mentions free sitos (food) being issued to the mercenary army, and nor does he mention sitêresion at any point being paid on top of the one daric a month. In reality, we do not know exactly what is included in the daric payment, but it does seem likely that the troops were expected to purchase their own supplies from markets as and when they were available.
We have noted the general belief that the pay of mercenaries declined in the fourth century, although I think the reality is that pay probably did not decline markedly from that of the fifth century. We have very little surviving source material down to the death of Alexander (323) regarding mercenary pay. There are, in fact, only two pieces of surviving text that give us any real clue as to the figure.42 The first of these two pieces of evidence is from Xenophon and is in connection with the decision of Sparta to allow members of the Peloponnesian League to contribute money, rather than troops, to the league. 43 As with the Delian League/Athenian Empire, this was something that strengthened the Spartan position as head of that league The League, or probably Sparta in actuality, agreed a figure that each participating state would pay in lieu of sending citizen soldiers to fight; the rate being three Aeginetan obols a day, equivalent to four and a half Attic obols (the standard currency we have been using in this discussion so far).
It seems logical to assume that the Spartans would set the payment at a level that was not below the level they would need to pay a mercenary to take the place of the citizen soldier from the League. If they had set the level lower, then either Sparta would have needed to make up the difference or she would have been able to hire fewer mercenaries than they would have had citizen soldiers from the member states. This latter course may not have been an issue for Sparta (or anyone else for that matter), as professional soldiers would likely have been of a higher quality than their citizen counterparts. A rate of four and a half Attic obols a day is probably a reasonable guess as to the base line misthos payment for mercenaries during at least the early part of the fourth century. If so, then it does represent a significant fall from the one drachma a day (six obols), which is the likely figure for the fifth century. 44 We must remember a point already made, of course, that the rate varied significantly between pay masters, and that there was not a single standard rate.
The second piece of textual evidence for the rate of pay of mercenaries in the fourth century is from Demosthenes’ First Philippic, produced sometime around 351.45 This is a piece of evidence noted earlier and is the outline of a plan put forward by Demosthenes that would allow the Athenians to put a mercenary army into the field in Thrace at a considerably lower cost than normal. Demosthenes proposed that the mercenaries be paid a sitêresion payment (ration pay) of two obols a day with no misthos payment at all. The mercenaries would be allowed virtually free rein to plunder Thrace and Macedonia as they saw fit in order to both further Athenian interests and to provide themselves with plunder. It is unknown if the commander would keep a measure of the plunder and return it to Athens, as was the normal practice with citizen armies, or if all of the plunder was to be theirs.
The financial element of Demosthenes’ proposal was:
You think perhaps that this is a sound proposal, but you are chiefly anxious to hear what the cost will be and how it will be raised. I now proceed to deal with that point. As to the cost then: the maintenance, the bare rationing of this force, comes to rather more than ninety talents; for the ten fast galleys forty talents, or twenty minae a ship every month; for two thousand men the same amount, that each may receive ten drachmas a month ration-money; for the two hundred cavalry twelve talents, if each is to receive thirty drachmas a month.
In the plan, both infantry and sailors would receive two obols a day, and a cavalryman one drachma (six obols).
The worth of this passage has been questioned most severely, given that it was a proposal of Demosthenes and it was never enacted. 46 Despite criticisms from scholars, I believe this passage of Demosthenes does have some value. We must assume first of all that Demosthenes was putting this forward as a serious policy proposition; I think we have no reason to assume anything else. Accepting this, if the figure of two obols a day, which Demosthenes clearly states is for sitêresion only, were unrealistic (either high or low) then its chances of becoming policy would be reduced. It seems reasonable to assume that this figure is very close to (if not actually) the figure mercenaries would expect to receive for the sitêresion element of their wage. This evidence only gets us so far, of course, because the proposal by its very nature does not give us any indication of the misthos element of a mercenary’s pay.
There is one further inference that we may be able to make from this passage, however. Demosthenes was clearly attempting to raise and support a mercenary army at the lowest possible cost. The fact that he included a sitêresion payment at all implies that mercenaries would have demanded this (or some other form of up front payment) as a minimum and would not have been content to work entirely for the prospect of plunder.
At the same time as Demosthenes was making his proposal to the Athenians, the Third Sacred War was raging in central Greece. This war was one of the largest employers of mercenaries that the Greek world had seen; unfortunately, however, our main source for the war, Diodorus, gives us no specific figures as to how much those mercenaries were being paid. What he does tell us, however, is that the misthos payment made by the Phocians to their mercenaries was raised significantly on more than one occasion.
In three separate passages Diodorus gives us some very interesting information:47
While these things were going on, [The Boeotians dispatching troops] Philomelus threw a wall around the shrine [De
lphi] and began to assemble a large number of mercenaries by raising the pay to half as much again, and selecting the bravest of the Phocians he enrolled them and quickly had a considerable army.
When it was clear that the Boeotians would take the field with a large army against the Phocians, Philomelus decided to gather a great number of mercenaries. Since the war required ampler funds, he was compelled to lay his hands on the sacred dedications and to plunder the oracle. By setting the base pay for the mercenaries at half as much again as was usual, he quickly assembled a large number of mercenaries, since many answered the summons to the campaign on account of the size of the pay.
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.
These three passages give us some very interesting general information regarding the actions of the Phocian generals. On two occasions, first in 355/4 and again in 354/3, they offered misthos payments that were fifty per cent above the standard level, and as the war went badly in 353/2 they offered double the base level. Despite the progress of the war, they evidently did not have any difficulty recruiting at these levels. If we were right to assume that the four and a half obols a day demanded by Sparta was equivalent to the early fourth-century misthos payment, and that the rate declined through the fourth century, as seems to be generally accepted, then a fifty per cent increase would likely reach a level of one drachma a day, or a rate equivalent to the fifth-century standard. The double rate would therefore have been around one and a half drachma a day, a generous sum indeed. We must remember, of course, that we have been discussing the misthos payment only, and it seems likely that a sitêresion payment of around two obols (if we accept the Demosthenes figure) a day would have been paid on top of that, which would give the total state requirement. A high wage would not have precluded the mercenaries also being able to plunder when the opportunities presented themselves.
The evidence for the later fourth century regarding mercenary pay is remarkably sparse; especially considering this is a period for which we have so much surviving material. We do know that Alexander’s elite heavy infantry, the hypaspists, were paid forty drachma a month and that Alexander paid his allied troops one drachma a day. 48 The figure of one drachma a day applies to the allied infantry in the army, Odrysians, Triballians, etc., but not to the Thessalian cavalry. We have no evidence at all as to their rates of pay, except for the obvious statement that cavalry were paid more than infantry.
It has rightly been pointed out that we have no reason to believe, from the surviving material, that Alexander’s mercenaries were paid either more or less than the allied troops. 49 It is perhaps worth noting that he used both in very similar ways; that is to say, as a reserve formation in the set-piece battles.50 Having said this, however, there is no reason to assume that because different categories of troops were employed in a similar way they would have received the same pay and conditions.
In all of the surviving sources that deal with the remarkable career of Alexander, there is perhaps only a single clue as to the wages paid to the very many mercenaries he employed. In 331, whilst at Ecbatana, Alexander took a major military decision to undertake a significant reorganization of the army. This is not the correct place to analyse the changes that occurred; suffice to say that the previously indispensible Thessalian cavalry were disbanded. 51 They were not immediately sent home, however, but were offered the opportunity to sign up once again, but as mercenaries rather than allied troops. Most of the Thessalians did exactly this, although they were again disbanded as mercenaries not long afterwards, and they never again had the prominence in the army that they had during the initial stages of the war of conquest up to the Battle of Gaugamela in 331. This piece of evidence is very limited, but the numbers who signed up as mercenaries (i.e. almost all of them) implies that the mercenary cavalry were paid at least the same amount as the allied cavalry, although we do not know what that figure is exactly. If the mercenaries were paid substantially less, then signing up as mercenaries would have seemed a far less attractive proposition, and we would assume greater numbers would have chosen simply to return home with the great wealth that they had already amassed during the campaign in Asia.
Despite any attempts to demonstrate the contrary, however, the reality is that we simply do not know how much Alexander (or anyone else towards the end of the fourth century) paid his mercenaries. All we can do is speculate as to the level and suggest that it was fairly high, partly because of the supposition surrounding the Thessalian cavalry, and partly because shortly after the war of conquest began, Alexander was not short of funds and would have been able to be generous if it was required or desired.
Chapter 2
The Archaic Period
Warfare has been a constant throughout history, and throughout the history of warfare there were likely to have been mercenaries. The first positive evidence we have for the employment of Greek mercenaries, however, comes from the period towards the end of the great migration of peoples into the Greek world.
At the end of the Bronze Age, central Greece was torn apart by successive waves of invasion, or migration, by Dorians from Illyria.1 The levels of violence that attended these movements of peoples are much debated and hence they are called either invasions or migrations. Either way, the Greek world was to change permanently. The new arrivals were Greek speaking, and as a result were accepted in some areas and lived peacefully alongside the native populations. In other areas, the native Greeks were forced to move in a generally southern direction into the Peloponnese. Many of these settled in the rough and mountainous terrain of the Arcadia region, a region that was to become a byword for mercenary recruitment in the Classical period.
Over the succeeding centuries a measure of cultural homogeneity developed, but there were enough differences to ensure that warfare between competing city-states was an ever-present threat. Long before the rise to prominence of the great city-states, however, there was a great deal of economic hardship in some parts of the newly settled Greek world. Arable land in Greece is generally quite fertile, but the problem is that there is very little of it, and it is particularly scarce in areas like Arcadia.2 The hunger and economic hardships that this brought resulted in significant numbers of largely men who sought a living overseas. Sometimes, this meant working as mercenaries, but perhaps just as often as skilled tradesmen, such as the stone masons that worked at Persepolis.
It is in the light of these social difficulties in Greece that we see the first evidence of Greek mercenary activity, and it was not in Greece. It would appear that Greeks abroad during this period almost exclusively sought service in one region: Egypt.
Egypt
In Egypt, we see a period of around 150 years of almost unbroken mercenary service, beginning with the Pharaoh Psammetichus (664–610), and only coming to an end (albeit a temporary one) with the Persian conquest of Egypt by Cambyses. The beginnings of the history of Greek mercenary service in Egypt are a rebellion against an oppressive overlord and are related by Herodotus. Psammetichus, the Egyptian Pharaoh, was in revolt against the Assyrian domination of Egypt. In order to determine his course of action, he consulted the best-known oracle in Egypt at the time, that resident at the town of Buto. Herodotus tells us the tale:3
He sent to inquire in the town of Buto, where the most infallible oracle in Egypt is; the oracle answered that he would have vengeance when he saw men of bronze coming from the sea.
Psammetichus apparently did not believe the oracle, but Herodotus continues:4
Psammetichus did not in the least believe that men of bronze would come to aid him. But after a short time, Ionians and Carians, voyaging for plunder, were forced to put in on the coast of Egypt, where they disembarked in their armour of bronze; and an Egyptian came into the marsh country and brought news to Psammetichus (for he had never before seen armoured men) that men of bronze
had come from the sea and were foraging in the plain.
This passage is interesting not only because it tells us a great deal about the development of Egyptian military equipment, and indeed that of Assyria, given that they were ruling Egypt, but also that voyages of plunder were not unknown. It would be incorrect to call these Greeks ‘mercenaries’ at this point; clearly, pirates would be more accurate.
With the arrival of the Greeks, Psammetichus saw the fulfilment of the oracle and immediately set about befriending these strange visitors. He apparently offered to take them into his service, employing them as mercenaries, and with their assistance won the freedom of Egypt.
Herodotus presents a picture of the Greeks arriving by chance, an accident of wind and tides, but Diodorus gives an entirely different picture of the Greeks being summoned by Psammetichus himself; if the latter version is to be believed then their arrival was not fortuitous but part of a planned uprising.5 The details of the expulsion of the Assyrians and the victory of Psammetichus are unknown, but we do know that after victory had been assured the mercenaries were offered the opportunity to settle in Egypt, at Daphnae on an eastern tributary of the Nile in the Delta. Herodotus again tells us:6
To the Ionians and Carians who had helped him, Psammetichus gave places to live in called The Camps, opposite each other on either side of the Nile; and besides this, he paid them all that he had promised.
This was, of course, a strategically sensitive area, given that it controlled (in part at least) access to Egypt via the Arabian Peninsula. The route along the coast was the obvious way in which an invading army would move into Egyptian territory. The very fact of them settling in that location indicates the level of trust he built up very quickly with these men; a level of trust that, until recently, had not really existed.
Mercenaries in the Classical World- To the Death of Alexander Page 4
