[HN Gopher] Mercenaries Were More Common in Greek Warfare Than A...
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Mercenaries Were More Common in Greek Warfare Than Ancient
Historians Let On
Author : diodorus
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-10-07 05:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| duxup wrote:
| I'm curious how the economy of hiring mercenaries worked.
|
| Was it cheaper than encouraging locals or paying them?
|
| Did these guy just travel in groups looking for a state to hire
| them?
|
| Could you make a living doing that/ was there enough work or was
| this more of an odd job type opportunity for people from places
| where there were few options?
| rjsw wrote:
| > Did these guy just travel in groups looking for a state to
| hire them?
|
| In the case of Swiss ones, yes [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_mercenaries
| edgyquant wrote:
| We're discussing a period thousands of years prior where the
| logistical and economic shape of transactions are entirely
| different.
|
| The ancient Greeks worked at a time when even maps were non-
| existent and/or a new thing
| account-5 wrote:
| The Antikythera Mechanism indicates that those assumptions
| may not be true.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The Antikythera Mechanism dates to the 2nd century BCE,
| so about 300 years later than the period in question.
| ummonk wrote:
| Agree that we can't extrapolate much from the late medieval
| era to Ancient Greece. But mapmaking isn't required for
| logistical and economic sophistication. All you need is
| writing.
| Retric wrote:
| > Was it cheaper than encouraging locals or paying them?
|
| A great deal of ancient warfare was profitable as you could
| both loot and take slaves after the battle. You can't exactly
| pay someone to take their stuff and turn their kids into
| slaves. But, you might be able to pay mercenaries to take their
| neighbors's stuff.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The Anabasis, by Xenophan, is the story of Greek mercenaries
| looking to become wealthy from looted treasures and slaves
| hinkley wrote:
| The older I get, the more I see the association between
| Vikings and Mongols with rape and pillage is just PR.
| filoleg wrote:
| It isn't just a PR, it is about the scale, especially
| when we are talking about Mongols.
|
| Sure, ancient greeks did raping and pillaging, but
| (please correct my historical knowledge here if I am
| wrong, because I definitely could be) iirc ancient greeks
| didn't come even close to the scale of mongols who
| essentially conquered and held and insane chunk of the
| continent under their thumb for nearly a century
| (counting from the start of what's considered their
| golden age until the start of their decline). Especially
| considering the time period in question. It is one thing
| to control a large occupied territory using modern
| logistics, communication, and transportation tech. In the
| era before firearms were widely used, telegraph didn't
| exist, and where horse cavalries and archers were
| extremely relevant, that's a whole other magnitude.
|
| It's like saying "Nazi Germany atrocities are all just
| PR, look at those african warlords over there." Sure,
| atrocities of those warlords are absolutely terrible and
| inhumane, but it is the scale of Nazi Germany that,
| rightfully, gives them that "PR".
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >please correct my historical knowledge here if I am
| wrong, because I definitely could be
|
| Alexander the Great was Greek, and though less successful
| than the Mongols he conquered a comparable amount of the
| world. His personal empire collapsed quickly, but Greeks
| still controlled much of it for quite a while.
|
| His army committed similar atrocities, but we remember
| him as "The Great."
| Retric wrote:
| There are a few ways of comparing them but the Mongol
| empire grew to about four and a half times the physical
| size of Alexander the great's empire and had at least an
| order of magnitude more people.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Because it was so prevalent everywhere or because you
| think Vikings and Mongols didn't rape & pillage?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not the OP, but yeah, it is like saying "Oh, look, Fred
| over here is such a naughty drinker" when the whole city
| is chock-full of raging alcoholics.
| hinkley wrote:
| I am SHOCKED to learn that there is gambling going on in
| this establishment!
|
| Here are your winnings, sir.
| Retric wrote:
| They both got a reputation for raiding christian
| institutions in areas where they where normally left
| alone in wartime. A major difference for the people
| recording history at the time, but largely meaningless
| for most of the population back then.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If a city full of raging alcoholics think Fred has a
| drinking problem, then he very likely does.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Good argument. But maybe the speaker just wants to draw
| attention away from his own drinking problem... ?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Standing armies are freakishly expensive. So either you raise
| and train it for some purpose. Have it as mostly second
| occupation. Have some specialist paid by area.
|
| Or just hire some group offering services, allowing your own
| people to focus on farming or whatever profitable.
|
| The ratio of farmers(including their families) to everyone else
| is immense through most of history. And most of time soldiers
| don't produce anything.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| For as long as there have been people with more money than men, I
| think there have been mercenaries. Contender for the second
| oldest profession.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Just cuz it's fun to talk about: Third. Food prep is (IMO) the
| contender for second :)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Long ago, I read an article about an experiment where
| chimpanzees in captivity were given a banana vending machine.
| The machine took tokens that the chimpanzees could earn doing
| various tasks.
|
| The researchers soon found that the male chimps were earning
| tokens, getting bananas, and trading the bananas to the female
| chimps for sex.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I'd guess that fire-starter and flint-knapper are the two
| oldest actual professions, with their origins pre-dating the
| evolution of 'modern humans'. The so-called 'oldest profession'
| (prostitution) likely required the development of agricultural
| civilization and wouldn't be that viable within hunter-gatherer
| societies. Similar arguments apply to the origins of priests
| and kings, to some extent. Hunter-gatherer tribes might also
| have had tribal leaders, shamans, and sex-for-food dealings.
| ummonk wrote:
| Your comment is confusing. Are you saying that tribal leaders
| aren't kings, shamans aren't priests, and sex-for-food is not
| prostitution?
| zkirill wrote:
| Xenophon's Anabasis [1] has been on my reading list for a while
| but it was difficult to find a particular translation that I was
| interested in.
|
| However, I just checked again and saw that Loeb Classical Library
| now offers individual subscriptions! [2] Better yet, it looks
| like you can read your book in the browser where original Greek
| appears next to the English translation! [3]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)
|
| [2] https://www.loebclassics.com/page/subscribe/
|
| [3]
| https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL090/1998/pb_LCL090.1.xm...
| pjungwir wrote:
| Have you seen there is a "Landmark" Anabasis now? I don't know
| what the translation is like, but when I read Herodotus &
| Thucydides all the maps were a big help, and the appendices had
| lots of interesting bits of info.
|
| If anyone has an opinion on the translation they used, I'd be
| curious to hear it.
| mgaudet wrote:
| Big thumbs up to the Landmark Histories project
| (http://thelandmarkancienthistories.com/). Excellent
| production value making reading these histories much more
| managable -- you're 100% right on the frequent maps and good
| appendixes.
|
| Don't have Anabasis, but Herodotus was excellent.
| jeff-davis wrote:
| What is the calculation for hiring mercenaries vs volunteers vs
| drafts? I would guess it depends on whether you have money or
| not. But it also seems like there are other dangers, like being
| outbid at the last moment by the enemy and having the mercenaries
| turn on you. Or maybe desertion, or being too selective about
| their missions. Maybe mercenaries might even drag out a conflict
| or misrepresent the conditions in hopes of getting more pay. But
| mercenaries probably come already trained and with experience,
| and maybe inside knowledge or even special arrangements to ensure
| a victory.
|
| And what is the calculation for being a mercenary? Obviously you
| want to avoid becoming cannon fodder, but how do you know?
| bombcar wrote:
| Mercs that accepted competitive bids would not be hired again
| by nearly anyone.
| tomcam wrote:
| plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose
|
| The more things change... The more they stay the same
| pradn wrote:
| In "The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece", Joshua Ober describes
| the Mediterranean of the classical period as a zone of free
| exchange, unified by a common Greek language, a common set of
| commodities (olive oil, wine, grain). This promoted competition,
| exchange, and specialization. Another one of these common
| commodities was mercenary labor. Ober describes them memorably as
| "violence specialists", just as they were craftsmen of amphorae
| or viticulturists, haha. Good book to learn of the efflorescence
| of Classical Greece, where Athens boasted a 100 different kinds
| of craftsmen, where surplus wages were higher than any time until
| after the 1890s.
|
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691140919/th...
| tomcam wrote:
| > "violence specialists"
|
| Now changing all of my online profiles
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It reminds me of the Wagner Group motto: "Our business is
| death and business is going well."
|
| They are Russian mercenaries, so a bit of cynicism fits them.
| The Ukrainian war may prove too literal for Wagner Group,
| though. They are deployed in the worst locations and they had
| so many KIAs that they are now recruiting in prisons.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Well they didn't specify whose deaths
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| > where Athens boasted a 100 different kinds of craftsmen,
| where surplus wages were higher than any time until after the
| 1890s
|
| Wow, I find that incredibly hard to believe. Better wages for
| tradesmen than ever existed in Rome, Mughal empire, imperial
| China, 19th century Britain? I'm curious how he got that
| figure.
| qwytw wrote:
| Empires might not be the places with the highest per capita
| productivity. E.g. the Netherlands had the highest
| (estimated) GDP per capita in Europe (and probably the world)
| between the early 1500's and 1800.
|
| Not sure about ancient Greece, I would assume that craftsmen
| wages in the Low Countries must have been significantly
| higher by the late middle ages.
| nindalf wrote:
| Perhaps they meant in Greece specifically?
| smitty1e wrote:
| The tech varies; people are constant.
|
| When we get a time machine and peek in on these ancient
| struggles, I anticipate very unromantic and unsurprising results.
| hinkley wrote:
| Shakespeare's been dead 600 years, and we still make movies
| based on his archetypes.
| alehlopeh wrote:
| Try 400
| WalterBright wrote:
| His archetypes aren't original with him, either.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| My first reaction to seeing a random few minutes of Outlander
| was "ugh those people must have smelled awful!"
| karaterobot wrote:
| Just to be skeptical here: I grant that the genetic evidence
| demonstrates they were foreign, but what is the evidence that
| they were mercenaries? That is, that they were professional
| soldiers taking money in exchange for fighting in battles. Might
| they have been allies? Slaves? Might some of the Greeks also have
| been mercenaries? Perhaps this is discussed in the paper, even if
| it's not mentioned in the article.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Well it's a really mixed group of people all buried in a common
| pit. If they were Allie's they'd have been buried in less
| heterogeneous groups according their own customs. Some may have
| been slaves but that doesn't seem to be a common situation
| outside of Sparta and some rare occasions.
|
| It's well documented that there were a lot of mercenaries used
| in the Mediterranean at the time. The Greeks didn't write much
| about their own use, but it makes sense. You'd probably want
| unit types other than hoplites in a large conflict, and
| specialized mercenaries are a great way to achieve that.
| ummonk wrote:
| It's refreshing to see an ancient DNA study that actually
| incorporates archeological context into its interpretations. I've
| been seeing a growing increase in ancient DNA papers that make
| far reaching conclusions while ignoring archeological context.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| > Researchers found that many of the soldiers were born far away,
| in places like the eastern Baltic, Central Europe, Central Asia
| and the Caucasus Mountains.
|
| I like that because I'm used to thinking that most mercenaries
| were Balearic slingers, Numidian horseman, and Cretan archers.
| Probably because that's what Caesar wrote about in Conquest of
| Gaul. I guess you can't forget about Iberian and Libyan infantry
| that Carthage used quite a bit as well as Spartan mercenaries and
| the infamous Italian mamertines.
|
| Caesar:
|
| Ch. 7 Thither, immediately after midnight, Caesar, using as
| guides the same persons who had come to him as messengers from
| Iccius, sends some Numidian and Cretan archers, and some
| Balearian slingers as a relief to the towns-people, by whose
| arrival both a desire to resist together with the hope of [making
| good their] defense, was infused into the Remi, and, for the same
| reason, the hope of gaining the town, abandoned the enemy.
|
| Ch 10 Caesar, being apprized of this by Titurius, leads all his
| cavalry and light-armed Numidians, slingers and archers, over the
| bridge, and hastens toward them. There was a severe struggle in
| that place. Our men, attacking in the river the disordered enemy,
| slew a great part of them
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I found this line _The Greeks were also "obsessed with being
| Greek" and considered anyone who did not speak the language to be
| a "barbarian," as Katherine Reinberger, a bioarchaeologist at the
| University of Georgia_ of the article extremely funny. That's a
| weird way to say that yes barbaros does indeed mean someone who
| does not speak Greek, a foreigner in Ancient Greek.
| srcreigh wrote:
| I heard that barbarian as a word itself is mocking non Greek
| language. Like speech in other languages is just bar bar bar
| bar
| CactusOnFire wrote:
| I mostly hear this word in the context of the Romans, but I
| thought that it was a term for facial hair- implying those
| external to the "civilized" empire had a tendency for ragged
| and long facial hair.
|
| Hence the term 'barber' for a person that cuts said facial
| hair.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| no, that's a false friend etymology.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/barber
|
| "barbarian" is onomatopoeic for "people who talk like bar
| bar bar bar and aren't greek". the (themselves barbarian)
| romans adopted the term.
| unity1001 wrote:
| The usage of the word today and back then are not necessarily
| the same.
| eftychis wrote:
| I would say that that statement of Reinberger is a
| "sensualized" one. (Also saying "the Greeks think/thought Y" is
| like saying "the whole U.S. over 200 years was thinking Y"
| times 30+.)
|
| To add to your comment: Anyone who didn't speak Greek was by
| definition a barbarian because that is what it meant. That is
| one was barbarizei (~varvarizi) (verb), as that is what other
| neighbouring languages sounded (and sound) in our ears: a
| constant bar bar (var var) sound.
|
| The Romans added Latin to the non-sounding var var /barbarian
| languages, when they came in contact with us. Mostly out of
| prestige/common trade/allying. So the term was later enforced
| to mean anyone that doesn't speak Greek or Latin is a
| barbarian/"barbarizes."
|
| And by the time of Pax Romana to mean inferior, as it did not
| have the knowledge and resources to learn the lingua franca of
| the times. In Hellenistic times, prior, the lingua franca was
| Greek, but I am not sure at the moment of the average Joe's
| perception on the matter. Generally a lot of trading cities
| where open to new ideas so I doubt that it was seen as
| inferiority more like a peculiarity or annoyance -- if you were
| trying to trade.
|
| There is the notorious "to an unknown God" inscription/offering
| Athenians had [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_God -- if
| you excuse my laziness with wikipedia]. That is not the
| behaviour of someone obsessed with themselves.
| morelisp wrote:
| It does literally mean that but it contemporaneously had a
| connotation of "not civilized" just as it does today. I don't
| think there's a word in English that carries this same double-
| meaning. For example, "un-American" certainly has the right
| meaning for the second connotation but it's never used in the
| purely literal sense. Conversely "foreigner" does have that
| literal first sense and can be used with a pejorative
| connotation, but still only one meaning; the foreignness is
| inherently pejorative, it's not a synecdoche.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| How about "third world"?
| morelisp wrote:
| A good suggestion!
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| If USA can grant permanent residency in exchange for military
| service, the whole world will flock to the states. Isn't it an
| instance of mercenerism?
| kodah wrote:
| > If USA can grant permanent residency in exchange for military
| service, the whole world will flock to the states. Isn't it an
| instance of mercenerism?
|
| We already do, at least during war time. I served with someone
| who enlisted directly from Mexico and was getting citizenship
| in return. Other militaries do it with us too, for instance the
| French Foreign Legion and Australian military recruit heavily
| out of the US.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > If USA can grant permanent residency in exchange for military
| service, the whole world will flock to the states.
|
| I'm not so sure about that.
| ip26 wrote:
| It's certainly an exaggeration, but there are a billion or so
| military age people in the world, and millions of people
| waiting in the U.S. visa backlog. I would not be surprised if
| such a program was very popular.
| frozencell wrote:
| Nothing about the celts and the gallic/gaul mercenaries who fight
| with _many_ tribes?
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