Mercenary Service Research Articles

The Mercenary Identity in Byzantium: the case of Western European mercenaries

Throughout its history the Byzantine army relied heavily on foreign soldiers of diverse cultural and ethnic background. By focusing on the west-European soldiers who served in Byzantium from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, this paper investigates Byzantine ideas about mercenary service, as well as the self-concepts of mercenaries.

SOLDIERS ON STAGE: ATHENIAN ATTITUDES TOWARDS MERCENARIES IN MENANDER'S COMEDIES

In many of his comedies, Menander puts on stage the figure of the mercenary soldier. A survey of extant plays confirms that these characters are no lawless brutes but sympathetic figures, good Athenian citizens who act according to the laws and social norms of the polis. Previous scholarship has interpreted Menander's characterization of soldiers as a stylistic innovation from the stock type of the braggart soldier. Instead, I argue that his comedies reflect Athenian popular perception of mercenary service. A comparison with the depiction of mercenaries in Isaeus’ speeches confirms that Athenians did not look down on individuals who chose to serve abroad for money.

Piracy, Pillage and Plunder in Antiquity: Appropriation and the Ancient World (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) ed. by R.J. Evans, M. De Marre

Reviewed by: Piracy, Pillage and Plunder in Antiquity: Appropriation and the Ancient World (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) ed. by R.J. Evans, M. De Marre Richard Alston Evans, R.J. and De Marre, M. (edd.) 2020. Piracy, Pillage and Plunder in Antiquity: Appropriation and the Ancient World (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies). London and New York: Routledge. Pp. xiv + 245. ISBN 978-1-138-34100-5. £115.00. The focus of this collection is elusive. I began with Clifford Ando's introduction (pp. 1-8) and Seth Richardson's essay on Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia (pp. 9-26) and thought that the book was about bandits and, potentially, pirates. Matthew Trundle (pp. 27-37) provides an essay on mercenary service and Athenian state structures before Richard Evans's treatment of [End Page 268] state finances and raiding with a focus on Syracuse (pp. 38-59). Alex McAuley (pp. 60-83) shifts attention to Seleucid colonisation and issues of identity. Roman Roth's argument follows (pp. 84-96), focusing on coastal colonies as manifestations of Roman naval power and policy. He suggests that pirates lurked in the colonial walls. Aaron Beek (pp. 97-114) considers Rome's habit of calling its enemies 'pirates', seeing them more as mercenaries. This is followed by Stephen Harrison's paper on Tibullus (pp. 115-28), which transitions the volume to a more literary focus, with John Hilton's paper on the rebellious boukoloi in Leucippe and Clitophon (pp. 129-44) and Martine de Marre's consideration of the female Circumcellions, who are in the tradition of morally bad, rural and poor heretics (pp. 145-69). The volume finishes with two papers on reception topics. The first from Eve MacDonald and Sandra Bingham (pp. 170-84) points to tropes of piracy which came to justify imperial expansion in modern North Africa and finally comes Liliana Carrick-Tappeiner's consideration of Classical motifs in the hyper-masculine King Solomon's Mines (pp. 185-202). This shifting focus reflects an essential slipperiness of the subject. The terms 'pirate' or 'bandit' are often applied in modernity and antiquity, but rarely after a carefully consideration of the sociological and political characteristics of the individual or group so labelled. Such terminology is descriptive and invective. One who called Domitian a latro (Plin. Ep. 1.12; Suet. Dom. 12), could not plausibly have been claiming that the Roman emperor conformed to the same sociological categories as the Cilician bandits or the Cretan pirates. But if invective is in play, are we looking principally at elite social discourses tarring the socially and politically marginal with a label reinforcing their externality? For historians of antiquity, the problem is worsened by linguistic issues. Inevitably, we are translating 'bandit' or 'pirate' across multiple languages, sociological settings and moralizing practices. Can the supposed roaming bands of heretics in North Africa be meaningfully compared with Hellenistic mercenaries or Bronze Age herders? Is there anything that connects other than a translated word? Within the comparative historical and anthropological literatures, the category of bandit is not particularly homogeneous. Ando's introductory survey goes back to Brent D. Shaw's work, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s.5 Shaw wrestled with this definitional problem, particularly in his long article on 'Bandits in the Roman Empire', which collated a multiplicity of reports of bandit activity. Lurking behind Shaw's engagement was a cross-disciplinary initiative, 'bandit studies' which drew inspiration from the pioneering work [End Page 269] of Eric Hobsbawm (not in the bibliography here). Hobsbawm invented the terminology of the 'social bandit' drawing on an experience of near contemporary banditry as a form of armed resistance.6 Bandit studies looked to recuperate the stories of low-level, low-class resistance as evidence for mostly agrarian social conflict. For Marxist-inspired historians, the bandit, or the primitive rebel, offered evidence of class struggle before modern political ideology. But as Hobsbawm well knew, the social bandit was not a straightforward figure. In places, the social bandit was mythologized and romanticized. Robin Goodfellow became a very bourgeois bandit in Romantic and modern receptions. In the Mediterranean, the klephts, armatoles, and pallikari of the nineteenth-century Balkans metamorphosed into nationalistic icons, defenders of anti...

UKRAINIAN SERDIUKS AND OTTOMAN SERDEN-GEÇTIS (towards to discussion about etymology and terms using)

Serdiuki’s infantry regiments were the basis of the hired troops of the rightand left-bank hetmans of the second half – the end of the 17th century, and played an important role in their military and political history in Ruina’s period. Among many other issues related to their early history, researchers are still debating the origin of the name serdiuk. Historiography has suggested that the word comes from the angry attitude of the soldiers, or their faithful, cordial service to the hetmans, or the name of Colonel Serden’. The context of references to serdiuks in the sources of the 60 - 70's of the 17th c. testifies that formations with this name were distributed both in the army of Hetman Petro Doroshenko and in the Crown troops. Thus, the term itself meant a community of okhotnyky (volunteers) from the freelancers of the Right Bank of the Dnieper region who were recruited for hired service. Its etymology is most likely derived from the Turkish word serden-gecti, which indicated the volunteer formation of the Janissary corps in the Ottoman army. The Serden-gecti were volunteers who participated in especially dangerous military operations for high pay and career promotions. The system of recruitment of these formations (serdengectiler) could serve as a model for the organization of mercenary service in the army of Petro Doroshenko, and hence give them the name serdiuki.

Inscription of Greek Mercenaries to Abu Simbel

On the leg of one of the colossal statues on the facade of the great funerary temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, in Nubia, Archon son of Amoibichos and Peleqos son of Eudamos, two mercenaries of Greek-Carian origin who militated in the ranks of the Egyptian Army, engrave a five lines inscription in which they recall the salient data of the expedition against the Nubian populations launched by the pharaoh of the XXVI dynasty Psammethicus II between 593 and 592 BC. The different origins of the people who left their mark in this and in the other graffiti on the Abu Simbel temple, explained by the palaeographic and dialectal peculiarities of the texts, confirm what we can learn from other sources, above all Herodotus, on the opening of the Saitic Egypt to external presences, also organised in stable settlements. The reasons for such a reception were certainly of an economic nature, but it is undeniable that for the Egyptians a considerable advantage came also from the possibility of exploiting the new military potentials of the Greek hoplite tactics, contributing to the spread of a mercenary service that encouraged different degrees of ethnic and social integration.

Inscription of Greek Mercenaries to Abu Simbel

On the leg of one of the colossal statues on the facade of the great funerary temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, in Nubia, Archon son of Amoibichos and Peleqos son of Eudamos, two mercenaries of Greek-Carian origin who militated in the ranks of the Egyptian Army, engrave a five lines inscription in which they recall the salient data of the expedition against the Nubian populations launched by the pharaoh of the XXVI dynasty Psammethicus II between 593 and 592 BC. The different origins of the people who left their mark in this and in the other graffiti on the Abu Simbel temple, explained by the palaeographic and dialectal peculiarities of the texts, confirm what we can learn from other sources, above all Herodotus, on the opening of the Saitic Egypt to external presences, also organised in stable settlements. The reasons for such a reception were certainly of an economic nature, but it is undeniable that for the Egyptians a considerable advantage came also from the possibility of exploiting the new military potentials of the Greek hoplite tactics, contributing to the spread of a mercenary service that encouraged different degrees of ethnic and social integration.

Caria and Crete in Antiquity: Cultural Interaction between Anatolia and the Aegean by Naomi Carless Unwin

Reviewed by: Caria and Crete in Antiquity: Cultural Interaction between Anatolia and the Aegean by Naomi Carless Unwin Gary Reger Naomi Carless Unwin. Caria and Crete in Antiquity: Cultural Interaction between Anatolia and the Aegean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xx, 266. $99.99. ISBN 978-1-107-19417-5. Over the last couple of decades archaeological work at Miletos in southwestern Asia Minor has brought to light abundant evidence of the presence of Minoans and Mycenaeans in the Bronze Age. In conjunction with material-cultural remains already known that indicate interconnections between Krete and southwestern Asia Minor, this new material has reinforced our sense of tight links between coastal Anatolia and the Aegean world that were attested also in Hittite documents and myth. The common notion that Krete and Karia resembled each other basically as reservoirs of mercenaries is only part of a very complex and historically deep tale. It is this tale, in all its ambiguities and complexities, that Naomi Carless Unwin seeks to unpack in her detailed and thoroughly researched new book on Caria and Crete in Antiquity. [End Page 596] Carless Unwin’s approach to her topic rests on two chief methodological and interpretative pillars. First, she sees the uncovering of networks as a basic means of identifying interconnections and explicating their power in interstate relations. “[T]he Cretan link in Caria,” she writes, belonged “in a wider historical framework. It reflected something about the participation of Carians in the social and cultural networks of the Aegean” (6). These networks are revealed, in part, through mythological tales linking Krete and Karia—a central subject of her introduction (2–31)—and through claims of relationship asserted in Hellenistic diplomatic interactions, where deep mythological ties were deployed to shape what John Ma has called a “network of relatedness” (160). A good example of the way Carless Unwin plays out this approach occurs in her analysis of the Kretan origin myth of Magnesia on the Maiandros, known thanks to a long inscription (IMagn. 17, reprinted with translation, 213–16; 169–88). Second, she insists on the role of mobility in creating, maintaining, and deepening links. For Kretans in the post-Bronze Age period, this mobility, in her analysis, revolves especially around their attraction to mercenary service. The very large number of Kretans who were settled near Myous she sees as bringing with them Kretan traditions and religious practices that may have inflected both Miletos and Magnesia (which controlled Myous briefly) in their claims to Kretan “historical kinship” (186, treating Milet I, 3, 37a). These two approaches intersect in her discussion of the problem of Karian ethnic identity, about which she comes to the reasonable conclusion that no such stable identity existed; instead, labile over time, it was adjusted and reworked according to need (32–60). Her treatment of the mythological connections between Krete and Karia is nuanced and fully alive to contradictions and complexities. That there may be some historical kernel to many of the myths that link the two regions seems, as she suggests, likely, especially in light of the archaeological discoveries mentioned above. At the same time, myth plays a role in articulating claims of connection often displayed for diplomatic purposes, notably when one party wants something from another, as in the assertion of a “kinship” between Mylasa and the Kretans. Carless Unwin insists on the futility of a search for an “original” of mythological tales; it was handy to have different versions available for use as appropriate to different circumstances. This review has space only to highlight a few of the matters Carless Unwin addresses; her book is rich and deep, and not only contributes to the history of Karia and Krete but can also serve as a case study for larger questions of network, mobility, and interconnectivity. Two additional observations: first, the scope is both larger and smaller than Karia: two chapters are devoted to non-Karian poleis, Miletos and Magnesia on the Maiandros (91–123, 169–88), while Karia east of Mylasa is virtually ignored. The largely coastal and river-valley territory of Kretan impact on Karia tracks in a striking way the arena of Minoan and Mycenaean penetration into the same scene...

Alcaeus and Antimenidas: Reassessing the Evidence for Greek Mercenaries in the Neo-Babylonian Army

SummaryThe alleged testimony of Alcaeus about the mercenary service of his brother Antimenidas in the Neo-Babylonian army has long served as the inspiration for a range of theories concerning the possible employment of Greek mercenaries in Near Eastern armies and their assumed role in the transfer of eastern influences to Greece during the Archaic period. A careful reassessment of Alcaeus’ fragments and Strabo’s testimony as well as the historical and archaeological evidence at hand suggests that there is little reason to believe that Antimenidas served Nebuchadnezzar II as a mercenary, and the evidence is certainly insufficient to conclude that Greek mercenaries were routinely employed in the Neo-Babylonian army.

The Golden Age of the Celtic Aristocracy in the Fourth and Third Centuries BC

The greatest period of Celtic expansion occurred between the fourth and third centuries BC, with the conquest of new territories on the margins of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Historians often underemphasize this period: while the barbarian raids and the rise of mercenary service in the fourth century BC are stressed, colonization is neglected. In addition, Celtic society at that time was radically different from those found in coeval Mediterranean cultures. Imports from the south were much less common than in previous centuries, and attempts at urbanization were abandoned. Celtic society became distinctly rural, with its craft industries, settlement, and sanctuaries dispersed throughout the countryside. Although there were local variations, art and religion assumed original and consistent characteristics. Celtic society was composed of peasants and warriors and dominated by large aristocratic families.

The Unwanted Child. The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany. By Joel F. Harrington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 456 pp.)

In his fascinating study, Joel F. Harrington acquaints the reader with the realities of child abandonment and infanticide and the challenges that early modern social distortions, triggered by wars, economic crisis, and climate change, to name but a few, held for poor families. Focusing on five poor families in the city of Nuremberg, the author pursues a microhistorical approach. The density of archival sources makes his investigation conspicuous among the ones on the market already; Harrington's overriding achievement is to provide a view of early modern history that contributes to its so-called specifics, rather than to its potential for yet another unifying and therefore simplifying theory. This pivotal characteristic makes the book essential for students as well as for researchers. Harrington's five case studies lead us into distinct, though interwoven, social fields. In his first chapter, he offers the example of an unmarried mother who kills her child shortly after giving birth. As soon as rumors began to circulate, she was arrested, confessed to the birth and the death of the child, and was condemned to death in 1578. Working outward from this incident, Harrington undertakes a broad discussion of how unwed mothers managed to survive with or without children in 16th- and 17th-century Nuremberg. He focuses on a structural cause of illegitimate pregnancies, that is, subjugation to masters and fellow male servants. In his second chapter Harrington concentrates on the “absconding” father as one of the main reasons for early modern infanticide and social distortion. Military service in general and mercenary service in particular allowed men to ignore or evade their social responsibilities to mother and child. In chapter 3 the author widens the study's horizon by turning to what he calls the “beleaguered magistrate.” In so doing, Harrington attempts to overcome the usually claimed gap between norms and practices that often accompany a “top-down” approach. From this perspective, the magistrate comes into sight as one of many actors. Indeed, Harrington highlights norms and practices and their variously induced interconnections for every social group or field in question. The interplay between state actors, common people, and social institutions, such as orphanages and prisons, becomes visible in the book's fourth chapter on street orphans and youth gangs in the 16th and early-17th century. Of particular interest here are parents and their respective social equivalents, such as blood relatives, foster parents, and various neighbors. This discussion makes particularly convincing Harrington's contention that the history of unwanted children is the history of multifaceted and socially embedded child circulation. The fifth chapter deals with state wards and the social life in so called Findelhäuser, the public houses where foundlings were sheltered. Much of what Harrington tells us here about mortality rates, social integration, and the overall importance of Findelhäuser for their former inhabitants has been demonstrated by other path-breaking studies on Waisenhäuser and Findelhäuser as forms of poor relief (i.e. Thomas Max Safley, 1997; Markus Meumann, 1995). In reading the information the way he does, Harrington frames a narrative of the history of childhood in which the ways children were treated are indicative of break points in early modern social interaction.

PAYING ARCHAIC GREEK MERCENARIES: VIEWS FROM EGYPT AND THE NEAR EAST

This study addresses the payment of archaic Greek mercenaries, a neglected subject. Putting the Greek literary evidence into context with materials from the Near East and particularly Egypt reveals that the invention of coinage did not bring about the concept of pay for mercenary service. Rather, payment informs such as plunder, uncoined precious metals, and land was common in the east before the Greeks arrived. Payment in coin did not begin a new tradition but rather complimented an existing one.

Catholic Exiles and the English State After the Gunpowder Plot

This paper discusses the immediate aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, examining the overlooked legacies of this event in relation to its influence on emerging categories of extraterritorial state sovereignty, international law, and stateless persons. The English state used the Gunpowder Plot as a pretext for justifying an unprecedented legal and political innovation: that the state could circumvent the law of nations and unilaterally assert its sovereignty beyond its national borders. English officials attempted to extradite a group of English Catholic exiles in connection with the Plot and induce European states to cooperate in forcibly repatriating these subjects. This episode was only one component in a broader effort to confine political agency to sovereign state bodies, a process in which the English state vied to suppress the various rogue economies that flourished beyond the reach of state authorities, from piracy and mercenary service to the circulation of Catholic dissidents and their texts.

The Swiss foreign service and Bernese reform politics in the late eighteenth century

The political system of Berne during the enlightenment era was dominated by landowning patricians who represented a “republican type of gentry.” These landowners promoted agriculture, traded in grain, wood, wine, invested in cottage industries, and also were involved in foreign military service. In the debates about republican political economy in the 1760s, there was a cleavage within the Bernese aristocracy. On one side, conservatives defended the mercenary service as part of existing political obligations, above all towards France. Against this, the Economic Patriots combated corrupting influences from abroad and censured military service. Socio-moralistic principles, condensed in the term “civic virtue,” ranked higher in the patriots’ eyes than economic or political interests; in a virtuous and frugal republic, there should have been no place for mercenaries. The paper reconstructs these arguments over key decades in the eighteenth century.

War in the Hellenistic world: a social and cultural history

List of Figures. List of Maps. List of Abbreviations. Table of Important Events. Preface. 1. The Ubiquitous War. The Visibility of War. The Frequency of Wars. Reasons to Fight. 2. Between Civic Duties and Oligarchic Aspirations: Devoted Citizens, Brave Generals, and Generous Benefactors. Fighting Against a Neighbor: A Privilege of the Polis. Warfare as a Citizen Duty. City and Land: Structure and Hierarchy. The Defense of the City as the Stage of Civic Elites. Local Hero: The Statesman as Military Leader. Euergetism in War and the Ideology of Inequality. From Individual Services to the Heredity of Leadership. 3. The Age of War: Fighting Young Men. Restless Warriors. Training Fighters. Rituals for Young Warriors. 4 The Interactive King: War and the Ideology of Hellenistic Monarchy. The Ideology of Hellenistic Kingship. The King and his Army. The King and the City: Big Spender, Defender, Peace-maker. The Wolf as a Sheep: Royal Peace-makers. War and Mortal Divinity. 5. War as a profession: Officers, Trainers, Doctors, Engineers. The Professionalisation of Hellenistic Warfare: Definitions and Modifications. The Social Context of Mercenary Service. The Conditions of Service. Garrisons and Foreign Troops in Hellenistic Cities. Professional Ideals: Discipline, Solidarity, Masculinity. Professional Risks: Doctors and Patients. War as a Science: Tacticians and Inventors. 6. The Gender of War: Masculine Warriors, Defenseless Women and Beyond. War and masculinity. In the Shadow of Soldiers: Women in Garrisons and Forts. Spectators, Judges, and Defenders: Women's Share of War. Anonymous Victims. 7. The Cost and Profit of War: Economic Aspects of Hellenistic Warfare. The Budget of War: Fiscal Aspects of Hellenistic Warfare. War and Agriculture. The Economy of Booty. Winners and Losers: The Impact of War on Hellenistic Economy. 8. An Age of Miracles and Saviors. The Effects of Hellenistic Wars on Religion. Communicating with the Gods, Boasting to Mortals. War and Cult Transfer. Violence Against Sanctuaries and the Discourse of War. An Age of Miracles: War and the Supernatural. Pragmatism Versus Tradition: War and the Dynamics of Rituals. 9. The Discourse of War. War Reflections. War Reveals the Character of Men and Groups. Naming Wars. Deciding and Justifying War. The Right of Conquest. Longing for Peace. 10. Aesthetics of War. Images of Violence in Hellenistic Literature and Art. Blood is Beautiful: Realism and Subtlety in the Representation of Violence. The Beauty of the Unexpected: Peripeteia and the Paradoxon in Narratives of War. 11. The Memory of War. The Memory of War: Individual, Collective, Cultural. War in Hellenistic Historiography. Monumental Historiography. Oral Commemoration of War. Commemorative Festivals. War Monuments. 12. Breaking Boundaries: How Warfare Shaped the Hellenistic World. Bibliography. Name Index. Subject Index. Source Index.

Ancient Greek Mercenaries (664-250 BCE)1

Greek mercenary service played a major role in the history of the Archaic and Classical ages (700–323 BCE) down to the early Hellenistic age (250 BCE). Mercenary service became more predominant in the Greek world in this period as the poleis (city-states) coalesced into more stable communities and coinage became more prevalent in the eastern Mediterranean. Greeks proved they were effective warriors in the later Archaic age and so found themselves in greater demand by the imperial powers of the east and the tyrants of Sicily in the Classical period. At the same time warfare became more specialized with the appearance of light troops and cavalry, often mercenaries from the periphery of the Greek world, on the battlefields of the Greek mainland. Mercenary service, like other aspects of Greek military life, reflected and influenced social, economic and political developments in the Greek world in the polis period. This article explores current debates about the origins, nature and general circumstance of Greek mercenary service and gives an overview of its history in the period.

The Urner Tellenspiel of 1512: Strategies of Early Political Drama

The Urner Tellenspiel of 1512: Strategies ofEarly Political Drama Martin W. Walsh The early sixteenth-century text known as the Urner Tellspiel or Tellenspiel (The Canton Uri TellPlay) has been called the earliest political drama of the German language.1 Given Switzerland's role as the avant-garde ofWestern democracy, it might well be considered the first purely secular, political drama ofWestern Europe. As the first theatrical treatment of the Wilhelm Tell saga, it is naturally overshadowed by its illustrious descendant, the great romantic drama of Schiller. Even in its own century this anonymous "folk" drama was recast into a more respectable literary form by Jakob Ruf of Zurich. It is this 1545, postReformation version that has received the lion's share of critical attention among scholars ofthe early Swiss stage. My purpose here will be to examine the earlier play,this first-ever"political drama."I shall be asking some basic questions. How might the piece have been realized? What were its original intentions? What dramatic strategies did it employ? The Urner play dramatizes the well-known episodes of the Tell saga, beginningwith the tyrannies ofdieAustrian Landvogt (bailif) Gessler,particularly his arrogant gesture of placing his hat aloft on a pole in the marketplace ofAltdorf and compelling me Swiss to do it homage. When the renowned marksman Tell ignores the object, he is arrested and die sadistic Gessler proposes the famous test—Tell must shoot an apple off his youngest child's head to gain his freedom. Tell succeeds in the amazing 155 156Comparative Drama shot (der Apfelschuf,) but when asked why he had readied an additional crossbow bolt, he replies that if he had injured his son, the second bolt wouldhavebeenfordieLandvogtTellismenled awayin chainstoalakeboat. A fierce storm,however, soon breaks over Lake Lucerne (Vterwaldstatersee) and none ofthe men-at-arms are capable ofhandling die craft in the raging waves. Tell is freed to ply his boatman's skills and save them all, but instead he maneuvers the craft toward a shelfof rock (site of the present Tell Chapel), leaps to safety while snatching up his crossbow, and shoves die boat back into the turbulentwaters.The boat eventuallylands and Tell heads off the party and manages to ambush and kill the Landvogt in a sunken lane (die Hohlegasse) near Küssnacht. Tell thus becomes a hero of the Swiss resistance, newly enkindled by the semi-legendary oath ofconfederation on Rudi field. The consensus as to the facts about and reasonable suppositions regarding the text ofthe Urner Tellenspielare as follows.2 It was printed by Augustin Friess in Zurich about 1545. It is this version which Ruf then reworked to create Das neue Tellenspiel. An earlier printed version might have existed affording an opportunity for some additions, for there appears to be more epilogue material than one could reasonably imagine being performed. Thiswas apparently added after the crisis to Swiss confidence occasioned bythe disastrous Milanese campaign of 1515, since it broods upon the Confederation's sins of greed and presumption and makes unfavorable comments upon mercenary service. The original playwas"performed in Uri" as Friess' tide page affirms. An internal reference to the Winter campaign (Winterzug) of 1511 provides a firm terminus ante quern. The play was therefore produced in some form in 1512 or shortly thereafter, most likely in Altdorf, chief market town of the canton and legendary birthplace of the Swiss Confederation . There are no further details as to this production. The fact that its playscript was printed some thirty years later strongly suggests that the production was not an isolated affair but had something of a performance tradition in the intervening years. Internal evidence suggests , aswell, thatthere mayhavebeen an earlier dramatic kernel, namely, the famous Apfelschuf,. Two distinct lines of source material appear to have influenced the play. One is the WhiteBookofSarnen, a chroniclecompiled between 1470 Martin W. Walsh157 and 1472, which contains the first mention of those events of the late thirteenth century that allegedly gave rise to the Confederation. The sources behind the White Book are unknown. Petermann Etterlin's Schweizer Chronik (1505-07), which contains the first Tell illustration, presumably served as the intermediary between the White Book and the Tell playwright. The other source...

Brokerage at the court of Louis XIV

ABSTRACTFor a commission brokers negotiated an exchange between those who had patronage to grant and those in need who were willing to give something in return. They received a fee for their help as intermediaries in the search for patronage. Brokerage differed from patronage in that it was a mercenary service which did not by itself create a personal bond. Noble brokers of royal patronage in the provinces and at court were prevalent during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Provincial brokers included the governors, lieutenants general, intendants, clerics, first presidents of the sovereign courts, military commanders, great nobles, and any resident provincials related to, or well-known by, high-ranking court or government personages. Court brokers included all those regularly at court, and ranged from those immediately surrounding the king, as the fount of royal patronage, downward and outward in layers of influence calculated upon their distance from the king. Brokers in the provinces became less important during Louis XIV's reign because the king himself insisted on supervising the distribution of royal patronage at court. Patronage became more easily obtainable at Versailles than in the provinces, and, increasingly, nobles in need of patronage went to court to find it, aided in their search by courtiers acting as brokers. During Louis XIV's reign, an absolute monarchy sought successfully to centralize the brokerage of royal patronage at court, a hitherto unrecognized aspect of the process of social and political centralization known as early modern statebuilding.

Stoics, Cynics, and the Spartan Revolution

In one of the supreme ironies of history, the austere Lycurgan system at Sparta failed in its primary aim – the fossilization of martial virtue – and succeeded in military victories, the heady profits of which undermined the precarious communism of the bivouac state. Conditioned to repress fear, the Spartan compensated by indulging greed – bribery, not cowardice, was his fatal weakness. After the collapse of the Spartan Empire at the Battle of Leuctra in 371, mercenary service became the principal Spartan occupation, even for Xenophon's model officer and gentleman, King Agesilaus. With landed estates encroaching on the traditional lots and great fortunes swollen by the gains of empire and mercenary adventure, the common Spartan found himself reduced to an equality of obligation only. The inflation and economic stress of the Hellenistic era intensified the imbalance between wealth and poverty in Lacedaemon. In a brief reign (244–241), the idealistic young King Agis IV tried to revive Sparta's military glory by restoring „Lycurgan ways” and did effect the abolition of debts but failed to redistribute land lots – his agent, Agesilaus, avoided the issue until a counter-revolutionary coup led by the deposed King Leonidas overthrew the reformers and lynched Agis. In 227, Leonidas' son, Cleomenes III, seized power and completed the aborted reforms of Agis-his subsequent success forced his rival for leadership of the Peloponnse, Aratus of Sicyon, into an alliance with Macedon, and Cleomenes was defeated at Sellasia in 222 to die shortly after in exile in Egypt.

The Greek as a Mercenary Soldier

Every young man in Greece during the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. had to be a soldier or a sailor, whether he liked it or not, for the greater part of his life; we may recall that Socrates ‘trailed a pike’ when he was forty-five at the battle of Delium, and the records of those times certainly show that anyone to whom the life of soldiering appealed had ample opportunity to indulge his taste to the full. If he did not like it, there was little remedy, and no provision for conscientious objection in the city-state. There were some, however, who found an outlet for their surplus energies not in the army of their own city but in that of a foreign overseas power, or even of a neighbouring and rival state, sometimes from choice, often compelled by a variety of causes which we shall shortly mention. It was with the Carians of southern Asia Minor that mercenary service of this sort traditionally originated in the eighth and early part of the seventh centuries b.c.—with their neighbours from Ionia they had long been troubling the shores of the Nile Delta by their freebooting expeditions until Psammetichus I actually took them into his service in his successful attempt to gain the throne of Egypt, and then formally incorporated them in his army, stationing them at Daphnae on the eastern frontier of the Delta. From that time onward Egypt also knew other large bodies of Greek soldiers, still mainly from Asia Minor; in return for their help the Egyptian kings on various occasions sent gifts to the great shrine of Apollo at Branchidae. Later on we find that this habit of mercenary service spread to, and grew in, mainland Greece.