This paper examines the didactic purpose of military manuals in subordinating effective tactical advice to political advice. I argue that these writers held the mercenary in disdain and advocated against employing mercenaries—advice...
moreThis paper examines the didactic purpose of military manuals in subordinating effective tactical advice to political advice. I argue that these writers held the mercenary in disdain and advocated against employing mercenaries—advice that flew in the face of the practice of hiring increased numbers of mercenaries and, more importantly, the evidence of mercenary armies outperforming their counterparts on the battlefield. Such a situation, I argue, is best explained by the realization that these tacticians betray a vested interest in preventing the mercenary from becoming the standard of the battlefield. For the sake of brevity this paper focuses on the evidence of Polyaenus and some comparanda from Xenophon’s works, mainly Hipparchikos
Polyaenus, the author of a eight-book compilation of stratagems, dedicated to Marcus Aurelius, devotes several passages to tricking, blaming, or otherwise dealing with mercenaries, detailing them in accounts of dozens of commanders, including Clearchus, Iphicrates, Timotheus, Philip II, Antigonus, Demetrius, and many of the Sicilian tyrants, among others. The overarching portrayal of the mercenaries is effectively an urging to betray the mercenaries out of financial, tactical, or even moral considerations. The mercenaries are simply not to be trusted and thus should be betrayed first.
Entirely absent, however, is the urging of Xenophon or Scipio (by way of Polybius) to keep the mercenary soldiers well-paid. This is a fascinating omission; it is unthinkable that such a prodigious miner of texts (Polyaenus draws over 800 examples from centuries of texts) would simply miss such exempla in such prominent writers, especially in his native language. Other writers attest to the loyalties of well-paid mercenaries (the mercenaries of Mithridates refused bribes to betray the besieged city of Sinope) and the tendency of mercenaries to revolt when their pay was in arrears. The evidence may even suggest that mercenary employers were less trustworthy than mercenary employees.
This is especially telling in that Marcus Aurelius relied increasingly upon paid soldiers to defend the northern and eastern borders, particularly during the Marcomannic wars. What are we to make of advice that contains dozens of suggestions on how to murder his own soldiers and get away with it? I argue that it is intended to cause the emperor to rethink his positions on mercenary employment—and that this was considered more important than military considerations. This contributes to a growing body of evidence that the volunteer citizen soldier led by the aristocratic magistrate-general was well on its way out.
Polyaenus is hardly alone. Aphorisms of similar sentiment can be found in many of the Roman historians. Similar disdain is heaped by later authors of military handbooks onto the auxiliaries (who often provided a more-specialized form of combined arms to the infantry legion). The handbooks echo the advice that hirelings should not outnumber citizens in the force(e.g Vegetius DRM 3.1). Even as some advise keeping a small number of specialist mercenaries, most advocate against hiring foreigners into the rank-and-file.
Ultimately, I argue, the advice to exclude foreign mercenaries that is so frequent in military handbooks and ancient historians stems from a practical political concern: to keep these groups from gaining social power at the expense of the aristocrats. Thus, despite the assertions of it being straightforward military advice, we find a didactic purpose, realized or unrealized, within the writings of Polyaenus and many other ancient writers.
