5 ms·
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
by beloch 5y ago
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.
- estaseuropano 5y agoThanks for spelling this out, i know nothing about the topic but felt too there was a stretch between biology and social/political guesses. What i was wondering: Does the strontium ratio in teeth change over the course of your life or is it determined by where you grew up/your teeth developed?
- jhgb 5y ago> they speculate that the non-local individuals present were mercenaries From the infamous Mauro Nero company?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoMavro Nero :) "Mauro" is the word for "black" in the Venetian dialect. Side-by-side with "Nero" (also "black") I thought you were making a joke in Italian, but I couldn't tell what it was. Also, in ancient Greek it would be "Melan Ydor" (Μέλαν Ύδωρ).
- jhgb 5y agoI was under the impression that 'nero' and 'hydor' were both 'water' in Greek. But apparently I mixed up modern and ancient usage in my head. Oh, well...
- d_tr 5y agoWe actually do use both in modern Greek, but "hydor" is mostly used in compound words. In ancient (but also in modern) Greek, "nearon hydor" means "young (i.e. "fresh") water", and at least according to a greek professor whom I was watching on tv the other day, this phrase is where the modern "nero" originates from.
- utopcell 5y agoIndeed, nero (νερό) is water in Greek, as is hydor (ύδωρ). Mavro Nero (μαύρο νερό) translates to black water.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago"Nero" also means "water" in Greek (modern Greek, as explained by d_tr). I was confused about whether you meant it as a Greek or Italian word by "mauro" that made the whole phrase sound Italian, at first. Sorry for the confusion :)
- wutangson1 5y agoI think the joke was 'Black Water' the infamous mercenary security company
- gostsamo 5y agoSoldiers are unlikely to have too different diet from the regular population. First, soldiers in greek cities were drawn from the population itself. Second, the enamel is formed during childhood and shows where the person has grown up, not where they've lived. The possibility of a local coalition is not negligible, but you should also consider that the amount of different origins of the bodies implies that this coalition is really wide in geographic terms and is hard to form on diplomacy only. It would be illogical for an italian city to reach out to a Black Sea one for help and for the latter to respond in time and in force. It is more likely that the soldiers were already on the area and they were acting in their own interests, not in the interests of their origin city.
- Amezarak 5y agoIt might be illogical, but it's extensively documented - check out Thucydides. Indeed colonies were almost expected to be militarily supportive of the mother city, and when they weren't, it was sometimes a cause of war.
- gostsamo 5y agoYou might be right, but this can be checked by listing the colonies of the city in question. If the origin cities of the bodies and the list of colonies differ, it will be telling. Also, Black Sea was colonized from mainland Greece and Malaysia, not Sicily as far as I know. The greek diaspora was moving east to west in the Mediterranean Sea and east to west in Black Sea.
- w0de0 5y agoMalaysia is a typo for Ionia in Asia Minor, where most Black Sea colonists come from, I assume? Ie, Miletus. In any case, an important point missed here in this thread that’s made in Thucydides is that Syracuse was a cosmopolitan melting pot of the Greek Mediterranean, large, rich, and attracting both Dorian and Ionian immigrants. An army raised there probably had Massalians and Athenians and Greeks from the Euxine and a dozen other tribes/cities.
- 3327 5y agoI think you are going out on a limb too. Clearly you have never set foot in Greece, if you had, you would understand the logic behind the author argument. I will save you the travel... Greeks have a very standard diet, and is also fairly uniform across Greece. Even taking today, it probably hasn’t changed much to 2000 years ago at least for the staples.
- cudgy 5y agoTrue, stating that they were mercenaries is a big leap that needs further proof (some compensation for their efforts beyond any sense of duty as citizens from extended colonies). I’d posit that these individuals could also have been slaves that were used as “meat-shields” to soften opposing armies resulting in a higher ratio of deaths amongst the group.
- utopcell 5y ago> 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. The paper makes a weird mental leap here, in that the relative percentages of dead soldiers corresponds to the relative percentages of soldiers that participated in the fights. One would expect that if Himera (in Italy) went through the trouble of procuring the services of Greek mercenaries from far-away mainland Greece, it did so because Greek mercenaries were good at their job, which essentially was: not dying.
- variable11 5y agoMaybe the other side hired even more mercenaries who were even better, we have no way of knowing. We don't even know if anyone was hired, could be some form of feudal obligation.
- tovej 5y agoI think it's a fair assumption that every soldier is equally likely to die. Zero bias is the easiest one to qualify here. If the greek were less likely to die, how much less likely would that be exactly? I don't see how that could ever be determined.
- utopcell 5y agoWell, that is the point: it cannot be determined.