Hello and welcome to the 13th episode of Ancient Warfare Answers.

My name is Jos Pouartage and I'm here with Murray Dam, who is the assistant editor for Ancient Warfare Magazine.

And in between our busy work trying to get the magazine out, we are answering your questions.

Today we're answering Kozma's question which was, how were mercenaries recruited

in the ancient world? All right. Well, the short answer is lots of different ways for

mercenaries to be recruited. The biggest issue we've got, of course, is when do mercenaries become

a thing? And that tends to get pushed

earlier and earlier that there are evidence of mercenaries in a very early period in ancient

warfare. And then you've got the issue of, but were they really or were they, you know,

the fighting unit of a conquered people in which case your hiring was

come and fight for us or else uh so that probably actually that that caters for some and continues to

do so uh you know the the the submission of a people uh basically reliant upon fighting for the conqueror.

That goes all the way through to the late Roman Empire,

where the Goths cross the Danube,

based on the promise that they will fight for the Roman Empire.

So that's one.

The second one, of course, is a commander who basically goes out and finds mercenaries,

going from city to city and hiring mercenaries generally in return for cash and saying,

come and fight for me and I'll take you on a journey of plunder and excitement.

Probably the best example of that is the analysis of Xenophon, where we get

great descriptions of, you know, masses of different mercenaries being hired by individual commanders,

such as Proxenos, who was Xenophon's friend, and then he goes to join Clearchus the Spartan and they then join Tisyphernes

...