Mercenarii
（
μισθωτοί, μισθοφόροι, ξένοι, and collectively
τὸ ξενικόν). Mercenary troops. Apart from a few earlier examples of
the employment of mercenaries, a regular organization of such troops was formed among the
Greeks in the course of the Peloponnesian War, especially by the Arcadians, who were compelled
by the poverty of their own country to utilize their strength and courage by seeking
employment outside it. It was most easily found by serving as soldiers in the continual wars
between the Grecian States. When the mercenary system was at its height, Arcadians formed by
far the larger portion of the mercenary forces, even as early as in the first great army of
mercenaries of 13,000 men, which the younger Cyrus led against his brother Artaxerxes, king of
Persia, in B.C. 401. In Greece in the fourth century the ground became more and more
favourable to the growth of the mercenary body, and the citizens of the Greek States, instead
of bearing arms themselves, became more and more inclined to leave their wars to be fought out
by mercenaries, especially since it had become a trade to form troops of mercenaries, and to
let them out wholesale for service, no matter whether to Greeks or barbarians. Even prominent
men, such as Agesilaüs and Philopoemen, did not consider it beneath their dignity to
fight for strangers at the head of mercenaries. One of the chief recruiting places in the
fourth century was Corinth, and afterwards for a time the district near the promontory of
Taenarum in Lacedaemon. The generals of mercenaries were called
στρατηγοί; their captains, through whom they raised companies of different kinds
of troops, known as
λόχοι, one hundred men in number,
λοχαγοί. The usual monthly pay of a common soldier was on
the average a gold daric (=20 silver drachmae or $3 in intrinsic value of silver, but in
intrinsic value of the gold contained in it a little more than $5). Out of
this he had to maintain himself entirely, to buy his armour, and keep it in good condition.
The pay of the
λοχαγοί was double and of the
στρατηγοί four times that amount. In later times the
στρατηγοί, when they entered with complete armies into the service of
some power at war, seem to have generally received considerable sums at the conclusion of the
contract. The Romans also employed foreign mercenaries after the Second Punic War, especially
as archers and slingers, and after the time of Marius a recruited army of mercenaries (see
Legio) had sprung out of the earlier levied army of
citizens; but the mercenary organization never took among the Romans a form similar to that
among the Greeks.
