mercenaries

mercenaries

Greek and Hellenistic

For there to be mercenaries, three conditions are necessary—warfare, people willing to pay, and others to serve. Warfare existed almost throughout Greek history, and there were probably also always those whom love of adventure, trouble at home, or poverty made willing to serve. Alcaeus' brother, Antimenidas, and Xenophon himself are, perhaps, examples of the first; the latter's comrades, the Spartans Clearchus and Dracontius, of the second. But in the heyday of the city-state, when military service was the duty of all citizens, mercenaries usually only found employment with tyrants or with near eastern potentates. The pharaoh Psammetichus I of Egypt, for example, used Carians and Ionian Greeks from western Asia Minor to seize power around 660 BC, and Pabis of Colophon and Elesibius of Teos were...

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