Soldiers, Wages and the Hellenistic Economies.CharlottevanRegenmortel, (Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 276. ISBN 9781009408981. Hbk. £85)

The relatively recent focus on armies as social and economic actors has opened up an important and fruitful field of research.Ancient economies in particular can hardly be understood without the economic impact of the military sector.Although this is widely acknowledged, there is surprisingly little economic research beyond the calculation of military expenditure and war income in state budgets.Charlotte van Regenmortel's approach to the Hellenistic empires as mass employers of military wage labour is therefore a welcome contribution to a rising interdisciplinary field.In her highly readable study, she argues that the vastly increasing numbers of so-called mercenary soldiers serving in Hellenistic armies did not just form one but the crucial factor for making the Hellenistic world a market society.The imperial politics of the competing kingdoms following Alexander's conquests created a permanent demand for paid soldiers who were recruited from a pool of a highly mobile military labour force.Competition between imperial commanders created a market where soldiers could leverage better terms.Within armies, progression was merit-based, incentivizing performance with higher pay.Soldiers, moreover, more than any other social group, could organize collective action, including strikes and mutinies, to improve wages and work conditions.Many military uprisings were economically motivated, pressing for better wages, land grants, or other material benefits.Increasing monetization and coinage in circulation is generally recognized as a key factor of economic transformation in the Hellenistic period.Yet the precise nature of their impact at a local, regional, and imperial level is a complex question.Van Regenmortel rightly argues that soldiers' wage labour was a key driver of monetization.It required increased minting activity, whilst coins entered circulation via soldiers' need for daily necessities in all corners of the Hellenistic world.Their reliance on markets stimulated urban market exchange, specialization, commercialization of civic activities, and urbanization itself.Intensification of agrarian production and specialization in manufacture reflected growing market orientation of primary producers, as did investment, growth of credit, and other profit-oriented economic behaviour amongst elites.Tendencies of this kind had been visible in the classical period, but the size and geographical spread of Hellenistic armies made the balance tip, acting 'as the catalyst in the emergence of transformed, and fundamentally different, market-based economies ' (p.194).