This chapter discusses the concept of wage labour and its history and proposes a definition of wage labour that includes the provision of remuneration in exchange for labour power, but also emphasizes the labourers’ continued free status and their concomitant ability to influence the price of their labour power, and thus the level of their wages – thereby allowing the price of labour power to be set on the market. From this follows discussion of the role of wage labour in debates on the ancient economy – in part asking which workers can be seen as wage labourers – and, further, of how paid military service can constitute a form of wage labour. It is argued that for soldiers to constitute wage labourers, their service needs to be voluntary, of temporary nature, and remunerated in coin or in kind.

After 1945, the United States took unprecedented levels of responsibility for leadership of the capitalist world economy, offering the dollar as the anchor for world currencies, championing free trade, and setting the standard for the consumer society, to which most other countries aspired. Related to that, it also acted as pacesetter in the adoption of petroleum-based fuels. For three decades, the system championed by America seemed to work well, not least for the West Germans and the Japanese. Suddenly, however, everything changed. US President Richard Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system in 1971, ushering in floating currency exchange rates. Two years later came the first of two oil crises that buffeted global trade and economies. The Germans and Japanese must have felt that, instead of entering a US-style Garden of Eden of earthly delights, they had instead been led down the garden path. The impact of these crises involved unaccustomed negative current account deficits for both countries through the early 1980s. However, reduced use of energy, changes in the energy mix, and highly successful export drives soon led to a pronounced recovery. These surpluses have generally remained positive ever since, although at far more modest levels in Japan than in Germany.

Hired soldiers had to be incentivized to enlist, and subsequently induced to continue their service. Hence, together with the growing reliance on paid, voluntary tropps, we see the development of increasingly sophisticated systems of remuneration, comprising rewards in both coin and kind. Enlistment across all ranks of the royal armies was incentivized and, indeed, made possible via the provision of armour and equipment, or via grants of land to those recruited into elite divisions. Coined payments going beyond mere rations, as well as occasional bonuses, formed the bulk of the remuneration attested in both the textual and numismatic record. Additional benefits and privileges – such as the occasional right to plunder, tax breaks, legal protections, and family support – were also sometimes granted. Together, these incentives seem to have offered soldiers of the royal armies an above-average standard of living, as indicated by the qualitative and (sparse) quantitative evidence.

This dossier, included for ease of reference, contains the texts and translations of a selection of inscriptions cited in this volume, presented in chronological order. In each case, the text is accompanied by core information on the stone and bibliographical details of editions; the edition printed is indicated in bold. This is followed by the date, and discussion where major controversy exists. Abbreviations follow SEG and the Liste de Sigles of L’Année Philologique ; for all other publications, see the Bibliography.

Within a few decades following the end of the Second World War, Germany moved from a country of middling wealth per capita to one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In the meantime, the Japanese, very poor indeed in 1945 in spite of a strong showing in terms of industrialisation and technology, joined that select club only about a decade after the Germans. At the same time, Germans and Japanese became in general more economically equal. This is reflected in the rise of consumerism in both countries, and increasingly the nations’ affluent consumers showed no hesitation whatsoever in purchasing domestically manufactured white goods and many other products. In doing so, they helped power the countries’ respective economic miracles. Moreover, their purchases and savings also made the companies that produced the goods more financially secure while at the same time enabling increasing levels of technological capability. This provided a sound basis for those firms to move ever more aggressively into export markets by the end of the first quarter-century after the war’s end. West Germany forged into these export markets earlier than the Japanese, who were less reliant on export for growth.

In the early stages of the Iliad, an enraged Achilles famously questions the purpose of his presence at Troy: why are he and his soldiers risking their lives on the battlefield, when they have no stake in the war at hand and gain no share in the rewards of battle? Achilles, of course, had knowingly joined the deadly expedition in pursuit of eternal glory and yet, in doing so, he had forced his men to do the same.

The Homeric hero’s desire to acquire status on the battlefield was not merely a literary trope but also the expression of a harsh reality of elite society in the Archaic and Classical Greek world, whose members’ position of authority was based on their military service and status.1

In this concluding discussion, key aspects of Hellenistic economic development are discussed and related to the presence of military wage labourers. In particular, the presence of paid soldiers and a market for labour are connected to the increased production of goods and services for the market, to the period’s rapid and significant monetization, and to the apparent rise in private wealth generation and profit-seeking behaviour. As a key part of this argument, military wage labourers are discussed as the driving force behind the Hellenistic world’s budding market economy.

This chapter provides the historical and scholarly context to the book’s main argument, and hence treats the military and economic developments that engulfed the Greek world in the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods. arguing that these should be seen as intrinsically connected. Following discussion of scholarly approaches to the economic transformation of the Greek world at this time, paying special attention to the old formalist–substantivist debate, the chapter advocates a closer look at the types of markets available, especially the market for labour. This market, the book contends, first appeared in a full form in the military sphere; accordingly, the chapter questions scholarly approaches and attitudes towards paid military service, debating especially the notion of ‘mercenary’ soldiers, who should better be conceived of as military wage labourers.