Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/307

 MERCENARY SOLDIERS. 281 Amidst this increasing indisposition to citizen military service, the floating, miscellaneous bands who made soldiership a livelihood under any one who would pay them, increased in number from year to year. In 402-401 T. c., when the Cyreian army (the Ten Thousand Greeks) were levied, it had been found difficult to bring so many together ; large premiums were given to the chiefs or enlisting agents ; the recruits consisted, in great part, of settled men tempted by lucrative promises away from their homes. 1 But active men ready for paid foreign service were perpetually multi- plying, from poverty, exile, or love of enterprise 2 ; they were put under constant training and greatly improved, by Iphikrates and others, as peltasts or light infantry to serve in conjunction with the citizen force of hoplites. Jason of Pherae brought together a greater and better trained mercenary force than had ever been seen since the Cyreians in their upward march 3 ; the Phokians also in the Sacred War, having command over the Delphian trea- sures, surrounded themselves with a formidable array of merce- nary soldiers. There arose (as in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in modern Europe) Condottieri like Charidemus and others generals having mercenary bands under their command, and hiring themselves out to any prince or potentate who would employ and pay them. Of these armed rovers poor, brave, desperate, and held by no civic ties Isokrates makes repeated complaint, as one of the most serious misfortunes of Greece. 4 1 Isokrates, Orat. v. (Philipp.) s. 112 ..... KV eneivotf 6e rolf %povoi( OVK TJV SSVIKOV ovdev, WOT' u.vayK.a6[j.Evoi fefoAoyeZv kn TUV 7ro/ljv, elf riif Sidofievaf roif avTiXeyovat. 6upeuf, r) TTJV elf Toi)f arpar About the liberal rewards of Cyrus to the generals Klearchus, Proxenas, and others, for getting together the army, and to the soldiers themselves also, see Xenoph. Anabas. i. 1, 9 ; i. 3, 4 ; iii. 1,4; vi. 8, 48. 3 See the mention of the mercenary Greeks in the service of the satrapess Mania in ^olis of the satraps, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, and of the Spartan Agesilaus Iphikrates and others, Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 1, 13 Iii. 3, 15; iv. 2, 5; iv. 3, 15; iv. 4, 14; iv. 8,35; vii. 5, 10. Compare Harpokration AEVLKOV kv Kop'.v&if) and Demosthenes, Philipp. i. p. 46. 4 Isokrates pours forth this complaint in many places : in the fourth or Panegyrical Oration (B. c. 380) ; in the eigh;h or Oratio de Pace (356 B.C.); in the fifth or Orat!: ad Philippum (346 B. c.). The latest of these dis- 24*
 * Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 1. 5.