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15 - War and society

from Part II - The Hellenistic World and the Roman Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

J. Lendon
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of Virginia
Philip Sabin
Affiliation:
King's College London
Hans van Wees
Affiliation:
University College London
Michael Whitby
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Summary

introduction

Peloponnese stretches three ambitious fingers towards the coast of Africa. Taenarum is the middle cape, and the longest, a terror to mariners despite the pleading temple to Poseidon set upon its rocky tip. And in the years after the death of Alexander the Great, this crag redoubled its evil fame as a hiring fair for mercenary soldiers. Here that breed of ‘exiles, deserters, a congeries of evil-doers’ (Isoc. 8.44) awaited those who came to bid for their services, thrust into the sea as far from respectable hearths as geography allowed. And to Taenarum bidders came, for despite their dark reputation mercenaries were ubiquitous in the armies of the Hellenistic world: sometimes whole hosts were hireling, or nearly so; often mercenaries formed the corps in which most confidence was placed; rarely were they absent.

Yet a mercenary arriving in Latium would despair of his reward. In the middle Republic, when the Romans traded a parochial sway in Italy for lordship of the Mediterranean world, they employed mercenaries only rarely. This contrast between the Greek world and Rome betrays the dissimilarity of their military cultures, the different ways Greeks and Romans thought about the nature of military prowess. The Hellenistic Greeks, although they valued inborn courage, were inclined to regard soldiering as a learned craft, while the Romans, although they accepted that there was much to learn about warfare, were more apt to think that fighting displayed inherited virtue. This disparity of outlook is a matter of delicate shading rather than stark contrast, but it has consequences for the evolution of military technique, the harmony of society and the incidence of war.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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  • War and society
    • By J. Lendon, Professor of History, University of Virginia
  • Edited by Philip Sabin, King's College London, Hans van Wees, University College London, Michael Whitby, University of Warwick
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521782739.016
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  • War and society
    • By J. Lendon, Professor of History, University of Virginia
  • Edited by Philip Sabin, King's College London, Hans van Wees, University College London, Michael Whitby, University of Warwick
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521782739.016
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • War and society
    • By J. Lendon, Professor of History, University of Virginia
  • Edited by Philip Sabin, King's College London, Hans van Wees, University College London, Michael Whitby, University of Warwick
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521782739.016
Available formats
×