Profits and Losses in Ancient Greek Warfare

Throughout the Archaic and Classical period, Greek generals and military leaders were traditionally rewarded with the largest shares of booty. After the rise of the democracy, however, the Athenian demos progressively exerted tighter and tighter control over its strategoi and the booty they collected while on campaign (Pritchett, 1991, 400-425).

War changed dramatically from the time of Homer to the later polis period. Wars grew in size and changed in nature, with more participants and more diverse types of combatants. Wars also became more aggressive, longer, and more sustained. Thucydides states that the smaller and less concentrated encounters of Homer’s Trojan siege were different from wars in his own day not because of a lack of manpower (oliganthropia), but due to the lack of resources (chrêmata), literally “tools” or “useful things” (1.11).

Although the Hellenistic polis suffered from inferior resources compared to those of the Hellenistic kings, a relatively large proportion of its limited revenue was channeled into the military (Chaniotis 2005: 115-6). Military operations were expensive and consideration will have been given to the cost of warfare. This paper considers what factors were weighed up in a balance-sheet approach to warfare. Warfare as both inter-state conflict and disturbances during peacetime (e.g. piratical raids; see Migeotte 2008) threatened the security of the polis.

While describing the aftermath of the battle of Plataea, Herodotus recounts the Spartan regent Pausanias’ reaction to Xerxes’ tent, part of the spoils of the Lacedaemonians’ victory over the Persians (9.82). At a surface glance, Pausanias represents the Spartans’ reputed scorn for wealth in his disdainful comparison of Persian excess with Greek frugality. Herodotus’ emphasis on the regent’s visceral attraction to the Persian luxuries he wished to put on display, however, indicates that the spoils of victory did not sit well with the Spartans.