[HN Gopher] Isotope study hints ancient Greeks used foreign figh...
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Isotope study hints ancient Greeks used foreign fighters in key
battle
Author : pseudolus
Score : 45 points
Date : 2021-05-21 10:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Given the colonialism of Greece, couldn't they have been Greek
| mercenaries? The Herodotus source linked just says the Greeks in
| Sicily fought, not the Greeks of Sicily.
| alchemism wrote:
| Scythian archers were paid to guard the walls of Athens, so
| there was a clear understanding in doing business with
| barbarians (which is their word).
| mc32 wrote:
| Weren't Scythians also Greek? Or rather Greeks came from one
| of the Scythian tribes? Or am I mistaken in my recollection?
| Bayart wrote:
| Those we call Scythians now are a group of Eastern Iranian
| horse-ridding people living on the Eurasian Steppe between
| modern Romania and Kazakhstan. What _Greeks_ called
| Scythians was anybody riding a horse and living a bit
| North.
|
| Starting from Late Antiquity they've been completely pushed
| out of the steppe, at least culturally, by nomads that came
| from further East (Turkic peoples). The last Eastern
| Iranian group living North of the Caucasus is the
| Ossetians.
| Bayart wrote:
| Greek colonies employed mercenaries rather than the other way
| around. But Greek mercenaries were quite popular in Greece
| proper (between city-states) and around it. Egyptians and
| Persians used them extensively. One of the famous stories of
| the ancient world (you can find it in the Anabasis) is that of
| the Ten Thousand : an army of Greek soldiers left stranded in
| Persian territory after their Persian employer, Cyrus the
| Younger, died in battle.
| duxup wrote:
| The Greeks were known for having lots of colonies / communities
| across the Mediterranean:
|
| "like frogs around a pond" -Plato
|
| Presumably this required some skillful diplomacy, alliances, and
| the ability to call for help when / if it was needed. Mercenaries
| seem like a logical tool in that case.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > some skillful diplomacy
|
| I think you're projecting modern population density into pre-
| classical times.
|
| Colonies were just a bunch of people from one place that
| decided to grab some available land somewhere else.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't know what you mean. You're going to have to trade
| with others and get along with your neighbors regardless.
| variable11 wrote:
| "Ancient Greeks" spans a ton of history, multiple centuries.
| Military and political structures change over time. Over-hyped
| headline.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Maybe I am missing something, but the study I'm looking at just
| looks at mass graves after a Carthaginian attack, so they could
| very easily have been Carthaginian mercenaries?
|
| Which would not be surprising at all; Carthage was a nautical
| trading state which is known to have used mercenaries
| extensively.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _But did warfare really play out that way? Teeth found in
| fifth-century B.C. mass graves in Sicily suggest otherwise_
|
| Teeth found in one city (out of the major cities of mainland
| ancient Greece, Sicily's was more recent-ish colonies) is not
| exactly proof of widespread mercenary use "against popular lore"
| (which includes existing history and centuries of scholarship).
|
| (They did use Scythes for something like guards/cops in Athens,
| and ocassionally made use of others, but nothing major).
| beloch wrote:
| The paper compares two battles in the same area, one (480 BCE) in
| which historical accounts say a Greek colony was defended by a
| coalition of Greek allies, and another, later battle (408 BCE),
| in which it stood alone and was defeated.
|
| They establish a baseline of what they expect local strontium
| isotope composition should be both from local flora and fauna
| samples and from burials not associated with the battle. They
| then compare this to the greek combatants of these two battles.
| They find that 67% of Greek soldiers from 480 BCE are likely non-
| local, while 36% of Greek soldiers from 408 BC were non-local.
|
| Up to this point, the paper supports historical sources and seems
| to be quite well done. After this point, they speculate that the
| non-local individuals present were mercenaries based solely on
| the strontium isotope ratios in their tooth enamel, and further
| speculate on where specific individuals might have originated.
| This is where the authors might be going out on a limb.
|
| Greek colonies were widespread at this point in history, and it's
| very likely that some "mercenaries" were just from distant
| colonies. This doesn't seem to be adequately addressed in the
| paper. It's also possible that soldiers ate a different diet than
| the locals, possibly higher in fish or imported foods, which
| could have made them appear non-local. It's also possible
| soldiers moved around more, and that might have affected their
| levels in difficult to predict ways.
|
| Bottom line, strontium isotope analysis is great at the
| population level, but there's a lot that can go wrong when
| dealing with individuals. I find the notion that Greek's hired
| mercenaries plausible, but this paper doesn't provide strong
| evidence for it.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-
| news/contrary-popular-l..., which points to this.
|
| Also, the original article title ("Contrary to popular lore,
| ancient Greek armies relied on foreign mercenaries") seems to
| have had linkbait powers, resulting in some reflexive objections
| in the comments here. Keep that in mind as you read them.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| What. I thought it was pretty well known that Greece used lots of
| non "Greek" soldiers and mercenaries. Same with Rome. Is this
| really a non-mainstream idea?
| slibhb wrote:
| It's well known among scholars but I think the title here is
| aimed at popular culture.
|
| Hoplites (shield, spear, helmet, greeves) were rich citizens
| which is how they could afford their armor. Many of the men who
| fought in the Classical era were slaves or foreigners or
| teenagers, often from Macedonia, called peltasts or psiloi.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| ...and Carthage famously, no?
| kodah wrote:
| I don't think it's non-mainstream. It was taught to me in
| school that the downfall of the Greeks was outsourcing their
| army to mercenaries and I've heard it again and again in
| reference to Spartan lore.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| No mention of slaves, which were internationally trafficked? Just
| because these people were put into mass graves doesn't mean they
| had core combat roles purportedly reserved for local citizens.
| [deleted]
| tgv wrote:
| > She adds, "The Greeks were obsessed with being Greeks,"
| considering all those who didn't speak the language "barbarians."
|
| But "barbarian" meant something like "speaking another language".
| cryptonector wrote:
| "barbarian" == "people who say bar bar bar bar bar" == "people
| who speak gibberish"
|
| "barbarbar" ~ "blahblahblah"
| dylanwisor wrote:
| It's a tricky sentence to parse, but I think the divide between
| those who spoke Greek and those who didn't was what she
| intended to communicate, not that they affixed the modern
| connotations of the word "barbarian" to non-Greek speakers.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, a modern close to the spirit of the original translation
| would be "blah-blah-rian", "yak-yak-rian" or "indicipherable-
| rian".
|
| They however had no ideas about the inferiority of those
| (except that they preferred their own lifestyles which
| considered free-er).
|
| Ancient slavery also was not about race, but about e.g. losing
| the battle and being caught or debt. Greeks could be (and often
| were) slaves to other Greeks.
| keiferski wrote:
| _I was not intending to go beyond Italian and recent examples,
| but I am unwilling to leave out Hiero, the Syracusan, he being
| one of those I have named above. This man, as I have said, made
| head of the army by the Syracusans, soon found out that a
| mercenary soldiery, constituted like our Italian condottieri, was
| of no use; and it appearing to him that he could neither keep
| them nor let them go, he had them all cut to pieces, and
| afterwards made war with his own forces and not with aliens._
|
| - Machiavelli, _The Prince_ , on Hiero II of Syracuse (308 - 215
| BC)
| arseniyandru wrote:
| I wonder why does he think it is a popular lore
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 300 presumably, one of the battles the corpses were from
| supposedly happened the same day as the Battle of Thermopylae.
| If Herodotus was wrong about this battle, his records of
| Thermopylae become more suspect.
|
| Kinda silly though, as "popular lore" already ignores the
| thousands of other Greeks at the battle, as well as the also
| concurrent Battle of Artemisium.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Does anyone take Herodotus as factual? He's widely known as
| the father of lying in historical circles and is expected to
| play up a Romantic view of Greece.
| englishrookie wrote:
| This is so true! I was waiting in the checkout line in the
| supermarket, and people all around me were discussing how the
| ancient Greek armies were composed entirely of male Greek
| citizens. Popular lore can be so wrong! ;-)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I have been whooshed so hard. Never in my entire life have I
| heard or even dreamed of people in supermarket discussing
| things like that. I think it is time to start a new trend.
|
| Next time I am out grocering, I will be sure to mention that
| Carthage must perish ( and how Rome fell, because of communism
| -- gotta lure people in somehow )!
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