Mercenaries in the Classical World- To the Death of Alexander

by Stephen English

  . . . only a few warships, but brought together troops from Libya and Sardinia as well as from the barbarians of Italy. The soldiers were all carefully supplied with equipment to which they were accustomed and brought over to Sicily, being no less than eighty thousand in number and under the command of Magon.

  They landed in western Sicily and immediately began to win over by force, deception or threats some of the cities in that region loyal to Dionysius, but they did not advance far into the interior, as Dionysius, unlike during the earlier invasion, gathered his forces quickly and marched out to confront this new threat. The Syracusan tyrant gathered to his banner as many citizen soldiers as he could arm, and hired a large mercenary army (from where and how this was achieved so quickly we are not told); his forces numbered around 20,000.50

  When he came near the enemy he sent an embassy to Agyris, the lord of the Agyrinaeans. This man possessed the strongest armament of any of the tyrants of Sicily at that time after Dionysius, since he was lord of practically all the neighbouring fortified communities and ruled the city of the Agyrinaeans which was well peopled at that time, for it had no less than twenty thousand citizens. There was also laid up on the acropolis for this multitude which had been gathered together in the city a large store of money which Agyris had collected after he had murdered the wealthiest citizens. But Dionysius, after entering the city with a small company, persuaded Agyris to join him as a genuine ally and promised to make him a present of a large portion of neighbouring territory if the war ended successfully.

  This was a vital alliance for Dionysius to have concluded as he approached the enemy; it secured for him not only extra front-line troops but also supplies to feed his existing army during the campaign.

  Magnon and the Carthaginians were at a significant disadvantage now, being in hostile territory with long supply lines. The troops of Agyris were harrying them at every opportunity, laying ambushes at opportune positions, and not allowing their foraging parties to work unmolested. The Syracusan generals wanted to attack Magnon, but Dionysius held back, saying that ‘time and want would ruin the barbarians without fighting.’51 Dionysius’ strategy proved very astute; the Carthaginians could not survive for long in hostile territory without supplies, and so Magnon sued for peace. Once the treaty was concluded, Magnon sailed back to North Africa without a major engagement. The treaty ceded to Dionysius the territory of the Sicels, the majority of whom he banished; in their place, he settled the best of his mercenaries. By 383, Dionysius was ready to finally drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily.52

  This year Dionysius, the tyrant of the Syracusans, after preparations for war upon the Carthaginians, looked about to find a reasonable excuse for the conflict. Seeing, then, that the cities subject to the Carthaginians were favourable to a revolt, he received such as wished to do so, formed an alliance with them, and treated them with fairness. The Carthaginians at first dispatched ambassadors to the ruler and asked for the return of their cities, and when he paid no attention to them, this came to be the beginning of the war.

  When Dionysius ignored the Carthaginian ambassadors, it became obvious to Magnon, their king, that war was inevitable. Realizing the potential severity of the coming war, Magnon reaffirmed alliances with some of the southern Italian states, armed his citizen soldiers and hired as many mercenaries as his treasury would allow. Once his army was ready, he shipped ‘many tens of thousands of soldiers across to Sicily and Italy, planning to wage war on two fronts.’53 Dionysius responded by also dividing his forces; some he sent to Italy, but the majority remained behind in Sicily. The first few months of the campaign saw many minor skirmishes on both fronts, but no decisive encounters. Each side was wary of the other and looking for both weaknesses and opportunities. There were, however, two major engagements:54

  In the first, near Cabala, as it is called, Dionysius, who put up an admirable fight, was victorious, slaying more than ten thousand of the barbarians and capturing not less than five thousand. He also forced the rest of the army to take refuge on a hill which was fortified but altogether without water. There fell also Magnon their king after a splendid combat.

  With their forces in Sicily defeated twice, and their king dead, the Carthaginians sued for peace. Unlike in previous campaigns, however, Dionysius saw an opportunity to rid Sicily of the Carthaginian presence permanently. His reply to the envoys was that he would accept peace only on condition that all Carthaginians left Sicily and their cities be handed over to him. The Carthaginians were loathe to accept such terms, but requested a few days in which to gather the views of the cities in question; a request that Dionysius readily agreed to, as he thought their acceptance was a formality. The Carthaginians used the time to give Magnon a great funeral and to replace him as their supreme commander with his son. They then spent the whole of the time of the truce drilling and training their troops to a higher state of competence than they had demonstrated during their two defeats at the hands of the Greeks. When the period of the truce expired, the Carthaginians set up their troops in battle array and awaited the Syracusan response. Seeing that the truce was nothing more than a ruse, Dionysius ordered his troops to take to the field as well. The ensuing battle was fought at Cronium in 379:55

  Leptines, who was stationed on one wing and excelled in courage, ended his life in a blaze of glory, fighting heroically and after slaying many Carthaginians. At his fall the Phoenicians were emboldened and pressed so hard upon their opponents that they put them to flight. Dionysius, whose troops were a select band, at first had the advantage over his opponents; but when the death of Leptines became known and the other wing was crushed, his men were dismayed and took to flight.

  Once the Greeks were routed and fleeing, the Carthaginians pursued them with orders to take no one alive. The slaughter was terrible; perhaps up to 14,000 Greeks were killed, the majority of that number during the flight after the defeat. The bloodshed was only stopped by nightfall. The surviving Greeks had made it to their camp, and the Carthaginians retired to Panormus. The Carthaginians, happy with their victory, chose not to press the issue with the Syracusans, perhaps feeling they were ultimately not strong enough to capture Syracuse, given their lack of a large-enough fleet. Embassies were dispatched to Dionysius offering to end the war:56

  The tyrant gladly accepted the proposals, and peace was declared on the terms that both parties should hold what they previously possessed, the only exception being that the Carthaginians received both the city of the Selinuntians and its territory and that of Acragas as far as the river called Halycus. And Dionysius paid the Carthaginians one thousand talents.

  Dionysius had little choice but to accept terms, since he lacked the strength to drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily. This treaty ended what could have proved to be a long and indecisive war, but it did not end the ambitions of Dionysius to control the whole of Sicily. In 367, Dionysius made his final attempt to seize Sicily in its entirety, but again achieved nothing of note. He died during the campaign and, whilst the cause is debated, it appears not to have been on the battlefield. The passing of Dionysius was the end of an era in mercenary service; he had been one of the largest and most consistent employers of mercenaries the ancient world had seen. Whilst he used them to maintain his power base, they were ultimately unsuccessful in achieving his aim of controlling the whole of Sicily.

  In 366, Dionysius I was succeeded by his son, Dionysius II. The new tyrant had none of his father’s ability or ambition, and he immediately sued for peace with the Carthaginians. With a series of expensive foreign wars conducted by his father having seriously depleted the treasury, Dionysius II tried to reduce the wage paid to his mercenaries, with very nearly disastrous results. The mercenary forces that he inherited threatened revolt at the prospect of lower wages. Dionysius II was, however, wise enough to understand that he needed them and backed down before he was abandoned. The leader of the miniature mercenary rebellion was Heracleides, who left Syracuse immediately after these difficulties. He reappear
ed in 357 in Corinth with Dion, another exile from Syracuse. Together they formulated a plot to overthrow Dionysius II. The two appear to have had something of a history of this, one reason why both were in the Peloponnese.57 They agreed to sail in two separate detachments with the intention of overthrowing Dionysius II. They gathered small groups of mercenaries without informing them of their ultimate goal, not wholly unusual, as Cyrus’ 10,000 were in the same boat when initially hired. Dion met up with his mercenaries on route to Sicily:58

  The rendezvous was the island of Zacynthus, and here the soldiers were assembled. They numbered fewer than eight hundred, but they were all well known in consequence of many great campaigns, their bodies were exceptionally well trained, while in experience and daring they had no equals in the world, and were capable of inciting and inflaming to share their prowess all the host which Dion expected to have in Sicily.

  Although Dion’s mercenary army was small, it consisted of highly trained veterans and would have the advantage of a certain amount of stealth. Dion set sail for Sicily in midsummer of 357 in perhaps only five vessels, again with stealth being paramount.59 Whilst in the ships bound for Sicily, Dion revealed to his mercenaries their true destination, and again, as with Cyrus’ 10,000 when they became aware of their goal, they thought their mission mad and were only persuaded to continue with difficulty.

  They eventually landed to the west of Sicily in Carthaginian-controlled territory, but their force was small enough to go unnoticed. They anticipated gathering local dissidents to their cause and carried with them several thousand panoplies of spare armour.60 Recruits were not hard to find. Once Dion marched into territory controlled by Dionysius II, thousands flocked to the rebel banner.61 Either by good fortune or blind luck, Dion was marching upon Syracuse whilst Dionysius II was campaigning in Italy, and the citizens of that city were not unhappy to see his approach. We can assume this from the numbers of volunteers that joined him as he marched. Dionysius’ mercenaries, mostly Campanians from Leontini, felt no such desire to rid themselves of their paymaster. In an excellent display of tactical awareness, Dion let it be known that he intended to attack Leontini.62 This had exactly the desired effect of encouraging the mercenaries to flee to protect their homes and families. Dion, of course, waited until the mercenaries were removed and marched on Syracuse. He entered the city as a liberator, but was flanked by a mercenary bodyguard.

  Dionysius retuned around a week after Dion occupied the city, and the latter had not spent that week idly. He had fortified his position within the city, and he rejected Dionysius’ initial attempts at diplomacy.63

  For this reason on both sides men outstanding in gallantry met in the action and since Dionysius’ mercenaries, by the size of the promised rewards, and the Syracusans, by the hope of freedom, were wrought up to a high pitch of rivalry, at first the battle stood equally poised, as the valour of both sides in the fight was equal. Many fell, and not a few were wounded, receiving all the blows in front; for on the one hand those in the front rank courageously met death defending the rest, and those arrayed behind them covering them with their shields as they fell and holding firm in the desperate peril took the most dangerous risks to win the victory.

  The mercenaries on both sides fought ferociously, Dionysius’ because of the promises he had made of huge rewards, Dion’s men partly because they had no escape and partly after an inspirational individual act from Dion himself:64

  After this engagement Dion, wishing to display his valour in the battle and eager to win the victory by his own deeds, forced his way into the midst of the enemy and there in an heroic encounter slew many and having disrupted the whole battle line of the mercenaries was suddenly cut off and isolated in the crowd. Many missiles hurled at him fell upon his shield and helmet, but he escaped these owing to the protection of his armour, but receiving a wound on his right arm he was borne down by the weight of the blow and barely escaped capture by the enemy. The Syracusans, fearing for their general’s safety, dashed into the mercenaries in heavy formation and rescued the distressed Dion from his perils, then overpowering the enemy, forced them to flee. Since likewise in the other part of the wall the Syracusans had the superiority, the tyrant’s mercenaries were chased in a body inside the gates of the Island. The Syracusans, who had now won victory in a significant battle and had securely recovered their freedom, set up a trophy to signalize the tyrant’s defeat.

  Heracleides then arrived with the second wave of troops: 1,500 mercenaries to bolster their now combined position. This was not a blessing for Dion as the bulk of the work had already been completed and Heracleides immediately set about trying to win favour with the populace with a view to becoming sole ruler. He even persuaded the assembly to elect him admiral instead of Dion. Dion objected on the grounds they had already offered that role to him, and the assembly retracted the offer to Heracleides.65 Dion essentially won the day, although Heracleides was also voted a bodyguard of mercenaries like Dion. Despite Dion’s success, he gave the command of the naval forces to Heracleides. The new admiral gained some significant early success with a victory over a contingent of the Dionysian fleet. This compelled Dionysius to offer terms again, but the conditions he was offered were unacceptable (the surrender of the acropolis, which he still controlled, and the disbanding of his mercenary army).

  The democrats in Syracuse held rather more power than under either tyrant, and Dion had not managed to replicate their position, although he seemingly tried. The differences between Dion and the democrats only widened through his time in Syracuse. The democrats realized that to undermine a potential tyrant they needed to remove his bodyguard, and so they allowed the pay of the mercenaries to fall into arrears. Once this was done, they also refused to elect Dion general for the following year, and the latter was forced to retire to Leontini after the situation became more dangerous for him in Syracuse. When Dion left the city, Syracuse was left in a position where it employed no mercenaries at all, probably the first time since before the reign of Dionysius I that that had happened. They were also still besieging Dionysius II’s mercenaries on the acropolis. The position of these mercenaries was becoming increasingly desperate and they decided to establish a democracy within their ranks in an attempt to rectify their problems.66 The mercenaries held an assembly meeting at which they voted to ask for terms from the Syracusans. Whilst the embassy was negotiating, however, a shipment of grain and troops arrived from Dionysius, along with a new commander, Nypsius.

  Heracleides inflicted another naval defeat upon the new arrivals, but ultimately could not prevent the troops and supplies reaching the besieged mercenaries. The Syracusans, not being professional soldiers, retired for the evening to celebrate their victory and soon most were in a somewhat inebriated state. Biding their time, the mercenaries on the acropolis waited for the merriment to die down and broke out of the acropolis, slaughtered the guards that were still on duty, and set about the citizens of Syracuse in an orgy of rape and slaughter. Diodorus describes events:67

  The bravest of the mercenaries climbed on the wall with these, slaughtered the guards, and opened the gates. As the men poured into the city, the generals of the Syracusans, becoming sober after their drunkenness, tried to bring aid, but, their efforts being hampered by the wine, some were slain and some fled. When the city had been captured and almost all the soldiers from the citadel had rushed inside the circuit-walls, since the Syracusans were panic-stricken by the suddenness and confusion of the attack, a great slaughter took place . . . Once the market-place had come into possession of the enemy, the victors straightway attacked the residences. They carried off much property and took off as slaves many women and children and household servants besides. Where the Syracusans formed to meet them in narrow alleys and other streets, continuous engagements occurred and many were killed and not a few wounded. So they passed the night slaying one another at random in the darkness, and every quarter teemed with dead.

  The citizens had no option but to beg Dion to retur
n from Leontini and rescue them. There, the mercenaries had enjoyed both full pay and the benefits of citizenship, but Dion persuaded them to return with him to Syracuse.68

  Dion, a man noble in spirit and civilized in his judgements because of his philosophical training, did not bear a grudge against his fellow citizens, but, after winning the mercenaries over, straightway set out and, having quickly traversed the road to Syracuse, arrived at the Hexapyla [the gate to the north of the city].

  When Dion arrived, the mercenaries of Dionysius were still plundering and ravaging the marketplace area of the city, their appetites and desire for gold not yet sated. Their undisciplined looting was their undoing, however:69

  At this very moment Dion, rushing into the city in several places and attacking the enemy as they were busily engaged in their looting, slew all whom he met as they were lugging furnishings of various sorts off on their shoulders. And because of the unexpectedness of his appearance and the disorder and confusion, all of those who were making off with their plunder were easily overpowered. And finally, after more than four thousand had been slain, some in the houses, and others in the streets, the rest fled in a body to the citadel and closing the gates escaped the danger.

  After succeeding in driving the mercenaries back into the acropolis, Dion ingratiated himself to the citizenry by ordering his troops to help put out the fires. He also ordered the fortifications repaired and constructed defences to prevent a recurrence of this mercenary sortie. The siege continued for some time, but eventually the mercenaries of Dionysius, with no further help evident or expected, surrendered the acropolis to the Syracusans.