Mercenaries had long been part of warfare in the eastern Mediterranean world. During the early Classical period several poleis recruited small numbers of specialist light infantry, amongst them Thracian peltasts, Cretan archers, and Rhodian slingers. A few states also sought out hoplite mercenaries, many from the mountainous uplands of Arkadia. Sparta enrolled modest contingents of professional hoplites on several occasions during the Peloponnesian War, usually for missions considered too dangerous or distant for Sparti-ate citizens. The Spartan general Brasidas, for instance, took with him a thousand Peloponnesian mercenaries on his campaign in northern Greece (424-422); Brasidas also had 700 helot hoplites, who gained freedom in return for their service.
During the late fifth century, mercenary hoplites were much sought after by the Persian governors and local dynasts of western Asia Minor, to complement their light infantry and cavalry levies. A loyal hoplite bodyguard was also a fashionable status symbol. When the young Achaimenid prince Kyros was summoned to Babylon in 404, for instance, he took along the 300 hoplites of his personal guard and their Arkadian commanding officer. The Lykian dynast Arbinas, likewise, prominently depicted his hoplite guards in official art (Childs & Demargne 1989). The numbers of Greek mercenaries in Persian service increased substantially during the last quarter of the fifth century, primarily because of the political and economic disruptions of the Peloponnesian War. Persian gold beckoned invitingly to poverty-stricken or exiled Greeks, and by the end of the century, thousands of hoplite mercenaries served as city garrisons throughout Persian-controlled Ionia. In 401, some twelve thousand of these men joined the young prince Kyros in his failed attempt to seize the Persian throne from his elder brother Artaxerxes. The mercenaries, who became known as the ‘‘Cyreans,’’ managed to stick together despite the death in battle of their employer, successfully reaching Byzan-tion in 399 after an epic trek out of the heart of the Persian empire.
The Cyreans were the most visible sign of the increased presence of Greek mercenaries in the Aegean world, but they were not alone. The Persian demand for hired hoplites continued throughout the Classical period, but the fourth century for the first time witnessed widespread employment of Greek mercenaries by Greeks. Because of the new emphasis on combined arms, many of these were peltasts and other light troops. A significant proportion, however, were hoplites. Hardened professional soldiers of whatever sort were better trained and disciplined than citizen militia (Parke 1933: 77-9). In citizen eyes, mercenaries were also expendable, and therefore just the thing for carrying on a war while preserving citizen lives. Nonetheless, mercenaries never entirely displaced citizen hoplltes. Even In the later fourth century, polls militias still mustered when danger threatened close to home, and citizen-soldiers still fought and died on Greek battlefields.
The expansion of mercenary service into mainland Greece carried in some cases significant political consequences. Hired soldiers could help protect a polis, but in the hands of an ambitious commander they could become agents of tyranny. The fourth century witnessed a new generation of mercenary-supported military autocrats, most notably Dionysios I of Syracuse (c. 430-367), who skillfully used hired soldiers to build and maintain his Sicilian empire. The Athenians, with their powerful democratic traditions, successfully kept their mercenary commanders from creating private armies. Many small poleis were not so lucky, judging from the amount of attention the fourth-century military handbook writer Aineias Taktikos devotes to forestalling coups and factional strife.
Classical attitudes toward mercenaries were mixed but overarchingly negative. In the fifth century, the euphemism epikouros (‘‘helper’’) often designated the hired soldier, presumably to camouflage the embarrassing truth that he fought for pay. By the early fourth century, partly in reaction to the exploding number of mercenaries in mainland Greece, the derogatory misthophoros (‘‘pay-taker’’) had entered common use (Parke 1933: 20-1). Orators like Isokrates and Demosthenes played on Greek prejudices against the working poor to portray mercenaries as immoral, wandering, plundering scoundrels, a threat to civic virtue and the integrity of the citizen soldier. Aristotle judged mercenaries lacking in the true courage characteristic of citizen-soldiers (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3 1116b15). Aineias Taktikos (13.1-4) was more sanguine: mercenaries were a fact of life; they could be controlled, and they had their uses. For their part, mercenary units were sometimes more tolerant than the civilian Greeks who reviled them. The Cyreans, for instance, welcomed to their ranks both Greeks and non-Greeks, political exiles and renegades, gentlemen adventurers, ex-slaves, and at least one former professional boxer.
World History
