Mercenaries in the Classical World- To the Death of Alexander

by Stephen English

Dion initially acquiesced to a power-sharing agreement with Heracleides, which seemed to work for a short while, but Dion eventually ordered the assassination of the latter. Dion himself was in turn assassinated in 354 by a friend, Callippus, and a group of mercenaries from Zacynthus. Dion’s assassination encouraged Dionysius to return to Syracuse and attempt to regain his former position. Syracuse appealed for help from their founding city, Corinth, and she agreed by sending, in 344, a mercenary army of 700 Phocians commanded by Timoleon.70 These mercenaries were some of the remnants of the Phocian mercenary army that occupied and sacked the sacred precinct at Delphi. The Syracusans also appealed to the tyrant of Leontini (Hicetas) for assistance. Dionysius had some initial success (his forces managed to occupy the fortress in the bay at Syracuse), but he was soon hard pressed by Hicetas.

  Hicetas, either upon receiving the appeal from Syracuse or not long before, concluded a treaty with Carthage. He even invited a Carthaginian army to Sicily to aid his cause. Of the Carthaginian host we hear:71

  They prepared and transported to Sicily a large sea and land force of their own, and appointed Hanno to the command as general. They had one hundred and fifty battleships, fifty thousand infantry, three hundred war chariots, over two thousand extra teams of horses, and besides all this, armour and missiles of every description, numerous siege engines, and an enormous supply of food and other materials of war. Advancing first on Entella, they devastated the countryside and blockaded the country people inside the city. The Campanians who occupied the city were alarmed at the odds against them and appealed for help to the other cities that were hostile to the Carthaginians. Of these, none responded except the city of Galeria. These people sent them a thousand hoplites, but the Phoenicians intercepted them, overwhelmed them with a large force, and cut them all down.

  Hicetas also reacted quickly to the Syracusan call for aid and marched upon the city. He did not attempt a potentially lengthy siege, but engaged in a series of skirmishes with the mercenaries of Dionysius, which proved inconclusive.72

  Now at the time when Dionysius was still master of Syracuse, Hicetas had taken the field against it with a large force, and at first constructing a stockaded camp at the Olympieium carried on war against the tyrant in the city, but as the siege dragged on and provisions ran out, he started back to Leontini, for that was the city which served as his base.

  Dionysius was not prepared to simply allow Hicetas to walk away, however. He followed the tyrant out of Syracuse and, after further skirmishing, a major battle developed.

  Hicetas wheeled upon him, joined battle, and having slain more than three thousand of the mercenaries, put the rest to flight. Pursuing sharply and bursting into the city with the fugitives, he got possession of all Syracuse except the Island. Such was the situation as regards Hicetas and Dionysius.

  Plutarch gives more detail on the situation in Syracuse and with Timoleon:73

  For Hicetas, after defeating Dionysius in battle and occupying most of the outlying portions of Syracuse, had shut the tyrant up in the acropolis and what was called The Island, where he was himself helping to besiege and wall him in, while he ordered the Carthaginians to see to it that Timoleon should not land in Sicily, but that he and his forces should be repulsed, and that they themselves, at their leisure, should divide the island with one another. So the Carthaginians sent twenty triremes to Rhegium, on board of which were envoys from Hicetas to Timoleon carrying proposals which conformed to his proceedings.

  Three days after the capture of the major part of the city, Timoleon and his mercenary army landed at Rhegium after dodging a Carthaginian fleet. From there they again outmanoeuvred the enemy and landed at Tauromenium, an ally of the Syracusans, and from there they marched against Hicetas.74

  Hicetas now put himself at the head of five thousand of his best soldiers and marched against the Adranitae, who were hostile to him, encamping near their city. Timoleon added to his force some soldiers from Tauromenium and marched out of that city, having all told no more than a thousand men. Setting out at nightfall, he reached Adranum on the second day, and made a surprise attack on Hicetas’s men while they were at dinner. Penetrating their defences he killed more than three hundred men, took about six hundred prisoners, and became master of the camp. Capping this manoeuvre with another, he proceeded forthwith to Syracuse. Covering the distance at full speed, he fell on the city without warning, having made better time than those who were routed and fleeing.

  Hicetas escaped this embarrassing disaster by fleeing to the relative safety of Syracuse. Timoleon followed closely behind, and as he approached the city he received an offer of surrender from Dionysius, the only condition being that he be allowed to leave peacefully along with his personal possessions.75 Timoleon readily agreed to this, and he then took possession of the fortress that Dionysius had been occupying, along with the huge arsenal of weapons stored there. He also accepted into his ranks the 2,000 mercenaries that were formally employed by Dionysius. This campaign had been very rapid, taking only fifty days from the landing at Rhegium to the surrender and flight of Dionysius.76 Timoleon was riding high after his against-the-odds victory, and his supporters in Corinth sent another 2,000 mercenaries to further demonstrate their commitment. Hicetas responded by requesting the Carthaginian army become more involved in the conflict. Mago, the Carthaginian general, responded by marching on Syracuse and making camp close to the city.77

  But when Mago got tidings of his approach, disturbed and fearful as he was, he was made still more suspicious for the following reason. In the shoals about the city, which receive much fresh water from springs, and much from marshes and rivers emptying into the sea, great numbers of eels live, and there is always an abundance of this catch for anybody. These eels the mercenary soldiers on both sides, when they had leisure or a truce was on, used to hunt together. And since they were Greeks and had no reason for private hatred of one another, while in their battles they risked their lives bravely, in their times of truce they would visit and converse with one another. And so now, as they were busy together with their fishing, they conversed, expressing their admiration of the richness of the sea and the character of the adjacent lands. And one of those who were serving on the Corinthian side said: ‘Can it really be that you, who are Greeks, are eager to barbarize a city of such great size and furnished with such great advantages, thus settling Carthaginians, who are the basest and bloodiest of men, nearer to us, when you ought to pray for many Sicilies to lie as a barrier between Greece and them? Or do you suppose that they have collected an army and are come hither from the pillars of Heracles and the Atlantic sea in order to risk their lives in behalf of the dynasty of Hicetas? He, if he reasoned like a true leader, would not be casting out his kindred people, nor would he be leading against his country her natural enemies, but would be enjoying a befitting amount of honour and power, with the consent of Timoleon and the Corinthians.’ Such speeches as these the mercenaries disseminated in their camp, and made Mago suspicious of treachery, though he had long wanted a pretext for going away.

  This passage of Plutarch is an interesting insight into the Greek mercenaries on Sicily. They had no personal animosity towards the mercenaries employed by the enemy of their chosen employers, and would socialize with them when ‘off duty’. Mago, however, did not understand the mercenary psyche and, suspecting treachery, he left the vicinity of Syracuse without offering a battle.

  Hicetas and the Carthaginians had been driven back, but it was far from clear that this would be permanent and, given that no Syracusan citizen came forward to offer his services as general, Timoleon continued in command of the mercenary troops. He was now also offered the command of some citizen levies to supplement his mercenary forces, but he declined, perhaps preferring the professionalism of a small, mobile and highly skilled army for the raiding operations that he had planned. Funding, as so often with a mercenary army, remained a problem. Neither Syracuse nor Corinth were prepared or able to foot the bill for the entire army, and
the traditional mechanism of pillaging was not immediately available to Timoleon, as doing so against fellow Greeks would potentially have been highly unpopular with his employers. Timoleon’s only option was to raid the territory controlled by the Carthaginians in the hope of gathering enough plunder to pay his mercenaries for the immediate future.78

  . . . he sent forth the troops under Deinarchus and Demaretus into that part of the island which the Carthaginians controlled, where they brought many cities to revolt from the Barbarians, and not only lived in plenty themselves, but actually raised moneys for the war from the spoils they made.

  Diodorus adds that the raiding party consisted of only 1,000, but that they were the best of the forces available, and the plunder that they gathered was taken to Timoleon, who sold everything that was gathered, raising a significant sum of money. This he used to pay his mercenaries.

  Timoleon was undoubtedly a tactician of great skill, and he must have understood what the inevitable reaction from the Carthaginians would be to his raid.79

  In the west, the Carthaginians prepared great stores of war materials and transported their forces to Sicily. They had all told, including the forces previously on the island, more than seventy thousand infantry; cavalry, war-chariots, and extra teams of horses amounting to not less than ten thousand; two hundred battleships; and more than a thousand freighters carrying the horses, weapons, food and everything else.

  It hardly needs saying that the numbers are exaggerated, but the army was not put together with the intention of a reciprocal raid into Greek territory; this was an army of invasion. Timoleon now gathered together what mercenaries he could, around 4,000 in total. He also accepted the previous offer of citizen levies and mustered as many citizen hoplites and cavalry as were available from Syracuse and the other allied states, perhaps 4,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry in total. He was still massively outnumbered, however, and so he took the unlikely step of offering an alliance with Hicetas, which the latter (very surprisingly) accepted, and provided 3,000 mercenaries to the Greek army.80

  Timoleon was bolstered by his recent success against a numerically superior enemy, and he chose not to allow the Carthaginians to advance upon Syracuse and risk a siege of the city. As soon as his forces were gathered, he marched out to confront the invaders. He did not get too far, however, before a mutiny broke out over non-payment of wages.81

  He had reached the territory of Agrigentum when unexpected confusion and discord broke out in his army. One of his mercenaries named Thrasius, who had been with the Phocians when they plundered the shrine at Delphi, and who was remarkable for his mad recklessness, now perpetrated an act that matched his former outrages.

  Thrasius appears to have attempted to instigate this revolt only partly because of the issue of their wages having fallen into arrears, but also partly because of the realization of the size of the Carthaginian army ranged against them.82

  He said that Timoleon was out of his mind and was leading his men to certain destruction. The Carthaginians were six times their number and were immeasurably superior in every sort of equipment, but Timoleon was nevertheless promising that they would win, gambling with the lives of the mercenaries whom for a long time because of lack of funds he had not even been able to pay. Thrasius recommended that they should return to Syracuse and demand their pay, and not follow Timoleon any further on a hopeless campaign.

  Thrasius spoke to the mercenaries and tried to persuade them to abandon Timoleon, a speech that was apparently persuasive and received enthusiastically by the Greeks who heard it. Timoleon managed to quell the rebellion only with great difficulty, with the liberal distribution of gifts and promises of more in the future. He was not entirely successful, however, as Thrasius did desert along with 1,000 of his fellow mercenaries, a perfect illustration of the dangers of relying too heavily on this type of soldier. Timoleon sent messengers to Syracuse with instructions that these deserting mercenaries should receive the full pay that they were owed, a generous act but a necessary one to calm those that remained. Timoleon’s army was thus reduced in numbers, but he was not distracted from the coming battle, and in early June of 339 the two armies met at the River Crimisus.

  The Greeks arrived on the battlefield early in the morning, probably around dawn, as it was still dark, and there was a heavy fog that shrouded the enemy. Timoleon could not see their preparations or dispositions, and could only hear the clamour of men and arms preparing for battle. The Greeks took up a position on a hillside overlooking where the enemy army were camped. As the morning wore on and midday approached, the fog burned off and the enemy became visible for the first time. Timoleon now realized that the enemy had camped on the far side of the river and were endeavouring to cross it as quickly as they were able. Any chance he may have had of gaining a tactical advantage by using the river as a defensive line and attempting to stop their crossing had been lost by the presence of the all-concealing fog of the morning.83

  . . . in the van [of the Carthaginian army] their four-horse chariots formidably arrayed for battle, and behind these ten thousand men-at-arms with white shields. These the Corinthians conjectured to be Carthaginians, from the splendour of their armour and the slowness and good order of their march. After these the other nations streamed on and were making the crossing in tumultuous confusion.

  Whilst Timoleon had lost the chance of opposing the crossing, he realized that he could still use the river to his tactical advantage, as only some of the enemy had crossed, and the others were either struggling to do so or were waiting their turn.84

  [Timoleon] ordered Demaretus to take the horsemen and fall upon the Carthaginians and throw their ranks into confusion before their array was yet formed. Then he himself, descending into the plain, assigned the wings to the other Sicilian Greeks, uniting a few of his mercenaries with each wing, while he took the Syracusans and the best fighters among his mercenaries under his own command in the centre. Then he waited a little while, watching what his horsemen would do, and when he saw that they were unable to come to close quarters with the Carthaginians on account of the chariots which coursed up and down in front of their lines, but were forced to wheel about continually that their ranks might not be broken, and to make their charges in quick succession after facing about again, he took up his shield and shouted to his infantrymen to follow and be of good courage; and his voice seemed stronger than usual and more than human, whether it was from emotion that he made it so loud, in view of the struggle and the enthusiasm which it inspired, or whether, as most felt at the time, some deity joined in his utterance. Then, his men re-echoing his shout, and begging him to lead them on without delay, he signalled to his horsemen to ride along outside and past the line of chariots and attack the enemy on the flank, while he himself made his vanguard lock their shields in close array, ordered the trumpet to sound the charge, and fell upon the Carthaginians.

  The Carthaginians held up to the initial charge well, owing largely to the quality of their equipment, but as the battle turned into a hand-to-hand skirmish the superior quality of the Greeks started to show through. As the fighting wore on into evening, a thunderstorm started, accompanied by wind and torrential rain. The Greeks fought on but Plutarch tells us the Carthaginians became fearful and confusion reigned.85

  Then the darkness hovering over the hills and mountain summits came down to the field of battle, mingled with rain, wind, and hail. It enveloped the Greeks from behind and smote their backs, but it smote the Barbarians in the face and dazzled their eyes, a tempest of rain and continuous flames dashing from the clouds. In all this there was much that gave distress, and most of all to the inexperienced; and particularly, as it would seem, the peals of thunder worked harm, and the clatter of the armour smitten by the dashing rain and hail, which made it impossible to hear the commands of the leaders.

  The heavy armour of the Carthaginians was also acting against them, as the ground became muddy and their armour and clothing filled with water. The lighter-armed Greeks appea
r to have struggled slightly less with the deteriorating conditions, and they began to push the Carthaginians back towards the river. Before the onset of the battle, the river was swollen with rain that had fallen over the previous few days, and the storm caused it to quickly flood its banks. The many streams feeding into the river also began to flood and added to the confusion in the Carthaginian ranks, as many in their army were still trying to cross as those in the vanguard fighting the Greeks were being pushed back towards the river.86

  Many were overtaken in the plain and cut to pieces, and many the river dashed upon and carried away to destruction as they encountered those who were still trying to cross, but most of them the light-armed Greeks ran upon and despatched as they were making for the hills. At any rate, it is said that among ten thousand dead bodies, three thousand were those of Carthaginians–a great affliction for the city. For no others were superior to these in birth or wealth or reputation, nor is it recorded that so many native Carthaginians ever perished in a single battle before, but they used Libyans for the most part and Iberians and Numidians [mercenaries] for their battles, and thus sustained their defeats at the cost of other nations.

  Timoleon did not follow up this great victory by harrying the retreating Carthaginians and inflicting even heavier losses.87 His mercenaries were too intent on plundering the dead and the enemy camp to follow. This continued for three days before Timoleon was able to regain control and erect a trophy; the vanquished army was long gone by that time.88

  The rank of those who had fallen was made known to the Greeks from the spoils. For those who stripped the bodies made very little account of bronze and iron; so abundant was silver, so abundant gold. For they crossed the river and seized the camp with its baggage-trains. As for the prisoners, most of them were stolen away and hidden by the soldiers, but as many as five thousand were delivered into the public stock; there were also captured two hundred of the four-horse chariots. But the most glorious and magnificent sight was presented by the tent of Timoleon, which was heaped about with all sorts of spoils, among which a thousand breast-plates of superior workmanship and beauty and ten thousand shields were exposed to view. And as there were but few to strip many, and the booty they came upon was great, it was the third day after the battle before they could erect their trophy.