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THE MERCENARIES OF THE HELLENISTIC WORLD by

G. T. GRIFFITH LONDON

Cambridge University Press

Fellow ofGon'Uille and Caius College, Cambridge

FETTER LANK

NEW YORK· TORONTO BOMBAY· CALCUTTA· MADRAS

Macmillan TOKYO

Maruzen Company Ltd

HARE PRIZE ESSAY, 1933

All rights reserved

CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1935

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT

page vii

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ABBREVIATIONS

IX

INTRODUCTION

I

Chap. I. PHILIP AND ALEXANDER Appendix. A note on Alexander's mercenaries 11. THE SUCCESSORS

8 27

33

Ill. MACEDONIA I. Demetrius after Ipsus 2. Pyrrhus 3. The Antigonids in Macedonia 285-168 B.C.

57 57 60 65

IV. THE GREEK LEAGUES AND CITIES I. Athens and other small employers 2. Sparta 3. The Achaean League

80 80 93 99

V. THE PTOLEMIES I. The Ptolemaic army before Ipsus 323-301 B.C. 2. Macedonians, mercenaries, and Egyptians. 3. Raphia: the army of Egypt at war strength 4. The peace strength of the army 5. Mercenary cleruchs 6. Conclusion

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

Vlll

VI. THE SELEUCIDS I. The war strength 2. The" Macedonians" 3. The mercenaries

108 109 III

118 125 135 139 142 143 147 165

VI

CONTENTS

Chap. VII. I.

2.

VIII.

PERGAMUM AND PONTUS

Pergamum Bithynia, Cappadocia and Pontus

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 194 194 207

THE WEST

Sicily Carthage Appendix. Mercenaries with Rome I.

2.

IX.

234

THE PROVENANCE AND RECRUITING OF MERCENARIES I.

2.

X.

Provenance Recruiting

THE

PAY

AND

MAINTENANCE

OF

MER-

CENARIES

(etc.) and 1l10"6os: the process of payment in the classical period 2. O"ITWVIOV (etc.) and O\jJWVIOV: the process of , payment in the Hellenistic period 274 3. Rates of pay. 294 4. The standard of lif.L~i~ies ". 3 Whatever standing army the king of Macedonia could maintain must have been an arf!1Y_Qfl!1~ICenaries, but it is impossible to determine its size, though it may be said that it was probably kept down to a minimum, because the kingdom was, comparatively speaking, a poor one. But after the fall of Demetrius a space of ten years passed before Antigonus Gonatas could establish himself on the throne.

sqq. 1

3

GAv.

pp. 60 and 63. W. Tarn, in C.A.H. vii. p. 201. Pol. ii. 55. I; cf. Plut. Cleam. 25.4.

GHA

5

HELLENISTIC MERCENARIES

66

In those years of waiting, Antig()I1..us found himself in a very similar position to that of Demetrius himself after Ipsus: he could do no more than cling to what he held in Greece with a small army of mercenaries. 1 All particulars of his forces that in 285 B.C. he sent soldiers are (who can only have been mercenariesrtonelp Pyrrhus again~t Lysimachus, and his military weakness is perhaps reflected m the loss of the forts at Athens, which may have occurred after the reinforcement to Pyrrhus. 2 Financial difficulties (his only source of revenue being direct taxation of the Greek cities) would also help to keep his army small. And though he was able to hold the Piraeus until 280 B.C.,3 his possessions in that year can have amounted to no more than the fortresses of Demetrias, Corinth and the Piraeus, the island of Euboea, and some small towns in the eastern Peloponnese,' a " kingdom" which probably required fewer than 10,000 men for its defence. But at length, after ten years of waiting, something happened. It was the famous invasion of the Gauls, which left Macedonia kingless and helpless, and ready ~o. the hand o~ ~y m~n ~ho could show himself a man. In resIstmg the GallIc IrruptIOn mto Greece, Antigonus seems to have played an insignificant part; his contingent at Thermopylae was only 500 strong. 1i But a little later (~Z7__.~_.gJ_ he met a Galli? a,r1l1Y of 18,000 near Lysimacheia in Thrace, and defeate? It handsomely, .the ~rsr occasion on which Greek or Macedoman arms proved VIctOrIOUS over Gauls in a pitched battle. 6 Macedonia was now Antigonus' obvious goal, and, with a view to expelling the pretender Antipater, he engaged some or all of the beaten Gauls who survived, for a short campaign which ended in victory.7 The final

wanbng:Butlfli-known-

1

Cf. Po!. ii. 41 for garrisons and tyrannies in small towns of the Pelopon-

nese. ul,s' f h • Plut. Pyrrhus 12: for the most probable date of the e~p IOn 0 t e Athenian garrisons (I. G." ii. 1.666-,]), cf. W. W. Tarn, Anttgonos Gonatas, p. 1I8, and in J.H.S. 54 (1934), pp. 30 sqq. 3 Plut. Moral. 754 B, cf. Tarn, ibid. ~ Cf. Tarn, A.G. p. 137· . '" ." 5 Paus. x. 20. Tarn, A.G. p. ISO n. 50, supposed that Pausamas . Atheman. fleet must have been manned by Antigonus' mercenaries as mannes; but hiS latest word on this subject (J.H.S., ibid.) makes this impossible. • I.G.' ii. I. 677; Diog. Laert. ii. 141; Justin 25. 2; Trogus, Prol. 25· 7 Polyaen. iv. 6. 17. Gauls were at this moment perhaps the cheapest, certainly the most plentiful, soldiers in northern Greece.

MACEDONIA step was to win the powerful city of Cassandreia, now for some years separated from the kingdom of Macedorua and governed by the tyrant Apollodorus, who had won his tyranny by playing the demagogue and conciliating the mercenaries of Lachares,1 and maintained it by enlisting Gauls and a strong force of mercenaries at a high rate of pay.2 Cassandreia was a hard nut for Antigonus to crack, but he cracked it with the aid of Ameinias, the Phocian pirate king: in a night attack a storming party of 2000 merce!l:l!rj(!s. with some pirates (.headed hyten Aetolians)' endea-the-long siege successfully.3 Antigonus could now sit back and pause for breath. He ow~d. his throne and his fortune to the army of mercenaries who had learnt their discipline and steadiness in of watchful tediu_m as garrison troops, and had not forgotten it in face of an unknown unconquered enemy at Lysimacheia. The strength of the new kingdom was very soon tried by Pyrrhus when he returned from Italy (p. 63). To meet his invasion, Antigonus seems to have led an army in which the only mercenaries were Gauls, who died fighting when the Macedonians deserted or surrendered.' This state of affairs argues that he had sufficient regular mercenaries only for the garrisons in Greece and probably on the Macedonian coast; bu( his speedy recovery of the territories captured by Pyrrhus must have been accomplished with what mercenaries he had, and such as he could quickly recruit. Again in the Peloponnese, in 272 B.C., the relief of Sparta was undertaken by Ameinias the ex-pirate, now lYitig.oDiTh~ general. commandin.g the mercenaries at Corinth: Ii and it seems unlikely that the army of Antigonus himself at Argos can have contained a national levy, in view of his recent experience. It was undoubtedly politic not to call out the Macedonians except in absolute necessity, so that anything approaching the standing army of Philip and Alexander was out of the question. Indeed the Antigonid kings appear to have kept about them no more than a guard of Macedonians, namely the" agema "

years

1 Whoever he may have been. P.-W. (s.v.) supposes him to be identical with the Lachares who had been expelled from Athens by Demetrius. He may have been the minister or general of Eurydice, the real ruler of Cassandreia before Apollodorus. 3 Polyaen. iv. 6. 18. • Polyaen. vi. 7. 2; Diod. xxii. 5. 2. • Plut. Pyrrhus 26. 3; cf. Justin 25.3.2. 5 XIll!,-P.l'-1"l"~29--.6.

5-2

68

HELLENISTIC MERCENARIES

of infantry, 2000 strong, and a survival of the" Companion" cavalry which in the reign of Philip V remained at some figure higher than 400. 1 The onl...J other permanent soldiers of whom we know weJ:t; tD!C}nerceIiades{n: garr,isons:1)ut recruiting was alWays quick and easyiimongthe numerous barbarian populations on the confines of the kingdom. There is in fact evidence for believing that the use of barbarian soldiers by Macedonian kings was on the increase. A reference in Plutarch 's Life of Aratus deprecates the possibility in 226 B.C. of the Peloponnese again becoming "barbarized" with Macedonian garrisons and the citadel of Corinth filled with Gauls and Illyrians, which implies that the earlier garrisons (i.e. those of Gonatas) were recruited at least in part from the barbarian fighting stocks. 2 No direct evidenc~J!~_~ survived from Athens or Corinth, the two biggest gar-ns~n citie;;-th~uih--lnCorlnth at the time of its capture by Aratus there were at least 400 Syrians for whose presence it is not easy to account. 3 It is possible, too, that the tyrants of the Peloponnese, who owed their position to Macedonian support,' terrorized their subjects with half-savage soldiers as Dionysius 11 had done at Syracuse: a case in point i~Jh~LQf A ristotiII!!!.s of Elis., who lost his tyranny because \\Tas unable to restrain the bJutality of the "mixed barbarians_'~_who wer~Jllamer~ T~roaucti~n of Illyrians, Gauls and the like into Greece raises the question of how they compared as soldiers. with the Greek mercenaries \VD9mthe}':_dispIaCed. Were they a~ed andtralnedi-OlightlTke Greeks or Macedonians? Aristotimus' barbarian officer would incline us to answer that they were not. Were they paid as much as Greeks? Again the answer is probably No: a soldier of the line probably always received more than a light- or half-armed warrior. 6 For their entry into the Macedonian armies and garrisons several reasons may be sug-

he

Po!. iv. 67. 6; Livy 42. SI. 4. Plut. Arat. 38. 4. Cf. Justin 26. 2. I sqq. for the mutiny of Gauls (265 B.C.). • Ibid. 18. 2 sqq.; 24. I. I know of no Syrian mercenaries elsewhere, but I can suggest no remedy, unless it be to read MvO"o{ and MvO"ovs for LVPOl and LVp0V