War and the Economy

War-making was a constant factor in the anarchy of the interstate system that characterized the Hellenistic period. Military victories legitimated the power of rulers, both externally and internally.^[403] War-making developed in close interaction with the other essential functions of early states that Tilly identified—that is, protection, extraction, and state-making.

The comparison of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid armies in the following suggests that both empires had similar expansionist goals. They faced the same challenges in extracting revenues in order to cover their enormous military costs. Intense warfare therefore put pressure on these states to develop their capacity to seize resources but also, to some extent, to develop economic production. A central aspect of the political economy of these empires—one that perhaps represented an innovation, in terms of scale—became the production and circulation of coins in order to pay soldiers. Interestingly enough, however, each pursued different monetary strategies. While its actual level is constantly reassessed in scholarship, monetization undoubtedly facilitated the state's integration of the economy and the development of long-distance trade.^[404] It may also have increased private economic activities, though this would be more a side effect than primary aim of the state's monetary policy.^[405]

The Seleucid and Ptolemaic armies were most impressive for their multiethnic character, the diversity of their forces, and the number of troops they could muster (up to 70,000 soldiers each), all of which is detailed by the historian Polybios in his account of the Battle of Raphia (217 bce) between Ptolemy IV and Antiochus

III. ^{^[406]} The armies were organized according to Macedonian traditions that had been elaborated by Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Successors.

The cavalry had become an essential element in Alexander's army at a ratio of one horseman for every six infantry. By the Battle of Raphia, however, this had decreased to one in ten, remaining stable thereafter.^[407] The infantry was divided between heavy infantry, armed as Macedonian hoplites with a long pike called a sarissa and fighting in a phalanx formation, semi-heavy infantry, such as the Hellenistic peltasts, and light infantry that included archers and soldiers with medium-length spears and missiles.^[408] Elephants had also become part of the Hellenistic special forces, but their role was almost never decisive when both armies were able to deploy them on the battlefield.

Each empire attempted to surpass its rival, not only for self-preservation, but above all for purposes of expansion. Both were able to mobilize a similar number of troops, in both cases at very high cost, relative to total revenues. Both empires also competed with other states, for instance, Antigonid Macedonia and the Attalid kingdom in western Anatolia. The Seleucids, in addition, faced growing Parthian pressure from the second century bce onward.^[409] Intense competition also necessitated the maintenance of a fleet, in which the Ptolemies invested far more than the Seleucids in the third century. In total, one may estimate the annual military cost of the third-century Ptolemaic army, in wartime at least, at 10,20013,400 (Attic) silver talents and that of the Seleucid army at 9,000-10,000.^[410] The Ptolemies managed to curb their military cost during periods of peace by relying on cleruchs—soldiers who received land in exchange for military service—who were paid a wage only when they were mobilized for a war or for garrison duties. This may have reduced their cost to 4,500-5,700 talents, while the Seleucids seem to have used this system much less, reducing their cost at peacetime to perhaps 7,0008,000 talents only. The lower cost of the Ptolemaic army, thanks to cleruchic settlement, seems at first advantageous, but as a consequence the Seleucids had a better trained army by the 220s bce.^[411]

It is possible to estimate the percentage of the total revenue taken up by military expenses in each empire.

The annual revenue of both can be reached thanks to figures given by ancient authors, and checked against calculations based on population size and taxation rates. The Ptolemaic kings collected about 14,000 to 16,000 (Attic) silver talents per year from their subjects, while the Seleucid kings gathered about 14,000 to 19,000 (Attic) silver talents.^[412] Military costs therefore represented about 78 percent of Ptolemaic revenues and 57 percent of Seleucid, in wartime, while in peacetime this decreased to 34 percent and 45 percent, respectively. Such military spending approaches that of early modern European states.^[413] The more unstable the international system, the more states had to extract revenue to protect and expand their territories. As Monson has shown, the level of taxation, both in kind and in coin, was higher in the Hellenistic states (i.e., more than 10 percent—even up to 33 percent—of the harvest in agrarian communities) than in systems with a hegemonic center, as in the earlier Achaemenid Empire and the subsequent Roman Empire.^[414] Extreme predation occurred during the wars between the Successors, when revenue came primarily from plundering locals and seizing the resources of rivals. Afterward, successful dynasties developed fiscal institutions that were less predatory by adapting the ones already in place and adding new ones (see section 3). However, the Ptolemies and Seleucids continued to act in predatory fashion in times of war and unrest. They needed the revenue not only to pay military elites and soldiers, but also to secure the loyalty of local elites, either by granting fiscal privileges or through contributions to local institutions (for instance, local cults).

One consequence of paying so many soldiers was the increasing monetization of the Mediterranean economy, which was also made possible by the enormous amount of silver that Alexander had seized and minted from the Persian treasuries in Susa and Persepolis.^[415] The use of movable mints, for instance, or the relocation of coin production to regions where conflict broke out, makes these connections clear.^[416] Soldiers were most often paid in silver coins, and far more rarely in gold coins (minted primarily as rewards, after the war ended).^[417] But a thorough comparison of the hoards found in Egypt, from 294 to 116 bce, with those found outside Egypt allowed Lorber to conclude that Ptolemy III and his two successors artificially removed silver coins from circulation in Egypt.^[418] Within Egypt, it was primarily bronze coins that circulated during this time.

Soldiers garrisoned there were therefore paid in bronze, whereas soldiers mobilized outside Egypt were paid in silver.^[419] In contrast, the Seleucids seem only rarely to have paid their soldiers in bronze coins, except when Antiochus III finally seized Coele-Syria from the Ptolemies (202-195 bce).^[420]

An even more striking difference between the monetary policies of the two empires is the choice of a particular weight system and its consequences.^[421] The Seleucids minted their coins according to the Attic “international” weight standard used by Athens and Alexander, and they allowed the circulation of foreign coins struck according to that standard throughout their entire territory. In contrast, Ptolemy I created a closed currency system around 305 bce, which did not prevent trade from flourishing.^[422] Ptolemy's coins were struck on a slightly lower weightstandard, which in turn created revenues for the king since anybody trading in Egypt and in its neighboring regions (e.g., Cyprus, Coele-Syria) had to exchange his or her heavier coins against Ptolemaic coins. For de Callatay, financial gain motivated this system, rather than the need to secure the flow of silver to Egypt, as is more commonly supposed.^[423] When the Seleucids seized Coele-Syria, they maintained the Ptolemaic weight standard in this province because it would have been too costly to replace the money already in circulation with heavier coins on the Attic standard, something that illustrates the benefit that the Ptolemies had gained through their lighter coin standard.^[424]

However, it seems that the different choices made by these empires—open versus closed monetary system—had, in the end, little effect on making one much wealthier than the other. In a recent article, lossif has attempted a new estimate of each empire's wealth on the basis of their coin production, and has shown that their economies were rather similar since their annual supplies of new coins were equivalent, although slightly higher in the Seleucid case.^[425] Their level of monetization was low, according to him, because the new coins produced every year (ca.

555 talents for the Seleucids and ca. 475 for the Ptolemies) represented only a small part of their annual revenues.^[426] Yet the Ptolemies produced annually, on average, about three times more coins than the Seleucids for supplying new coins within their closed currency system, while two-thirds of the coins in circulation in the Seleucid Empire were new coins supplied from elsewhere. If one turns from coin production to circulation, the fact that most inhabitants had to pay at least some taxes in coin (either silver or bronze) suggests increasing monetization.^[427] It is generally assumed that the Ptolemies suffered a lack of silver by the late third century and the Seleucids did likewise somewhat later (primarily because of war indemnities owed to the Romans). In either case, it would have weakened their international power. The silver shortage, however, has been questioned by some numismatists.^[428] In the case of the Ptolemies, as mentioned earlier, the use of bronze in Egypt instead of silver was a monetary strategy. But it was also connected to the inflation of the second century, though the intensity of this phenomenon may have been exaggerated by scholars.^[429] We do not know if taxes paid in cash represented a larger part of the revenue of the Ptolemaic state than taxes and rents on land collected in kind. However, for von Reden, the use of both may be due to economic and political deliberations rather than to a lack of capacity to monetize the economy.^[430] The question also remains open in the case of the Seleucids, since Aperghis's claim that taxes collected in coins had become the norm has not yet become the consensus.^[431] Soldiers serving any Hellenistic state, for instance, received from the state part of their salary in coin (the so-called opsonion), but often too, payment in kind (the sitonia or sitarchia).^[432] Indeed, the in-kind economy and the monetary economy were more closely related than is usually thought, as Criscuolo has shown for Egypt, while money could also play the role of a mere measure of value.^[433] In addition, thanks to official documents and private accounts uniquely preserved in the Egyptian sand, recent scholarship has now made clear that coined money was used by people of both Greek and Egyptian origins, challenging the idea that the Egyptians (that is, locals) were less inclined to use coins.^[434] Similarly, in the Seleucid Empire, the Babylonian elite began to use silver coins and even to adopt bronze coins, which were used increasingly in the second century bce.^[435]

Indeed, the private economic sphere was not conducted exclusively in kind, nor was the agricultural economy.

For instance, Egyptian contracts for loans of seeds recorded monetary penalties in case of non-reimbursement, according to market price.^[436] In both empires, the existence of private land tenure has been demonstrated outside the traditional land tenure mosaic made up of temple land, royal land (cultivated by royal peasants), cleruchic land, large estates (gifts for high officials), and land owned by city-states.^[437] The development of private banks (as opposed to public banks that represented the state), of private loans and credit, of craftsmen’s businesses, and small-scale trade by middlemen attests to the high level of private economic activity.^[438] The evidence is diverse, as were the economic actors. The private archive of Ptolemaios, a soldier’s son in service to the Syrian goddess Astarte at the Serapeum in Memphis, reveals that he traded textiles as a means of extra income. In his Greek funerary inscription at Kandahar, Sophitos, an Indian merchant who belonged to a well-connected family, explains that he made a fortune through traveling for commerce.^[439] It is also worth noting that even in the closed economy of the Ptolemaic kingdom, the state needed to produce coin to facilitate export trade.^[440] Trade seems to have advanced hand-in-hand with the spread of monetization and the development of new state institutions that lowered predatory behaviors and transaction costs (see section 6.3). Such macro-analysis tends to support the New Institutional theory that connects empire formation with an increase in trade, especially long-distance trade, which was also fueled by the aggregate urban demand of megalopoleis like Alexandria and Antioch.^[441] Indeed, trade between the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, notably in aromatics (myrrh and incense), took on a new shape not only thanks to the increasing use of coinage, but also because the Ptolemies and the Seleucids developed the necessary infrastructures (e.g., cities, harbors, roads, entrepots), each on their own side of the Red Sea.^[442] Expanding from these bases, long-distance trade in the Roman imperial period grew even more in scale.

This section has shed light on military and economic developments that can be credited to empire formation in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East following Alexander’s conquest. War was costly, but it also had a positive effect on the economy and society, not only by creating opportunities to seize others’ resources, but by redistributing material goods, land, and money—the “trio” emphasized by Chaniotis and Austin.^[443] Intense competition between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires constrained them to develop measures to maximize revenue in order to pay their soldiers, notably by expanding land cultivation through land grants and by monetizing the economy. Whether the level of monetization was low or not can only be assessed in a relative way. It did increase over time, though not always in a linear way, and one of its side effects was the facilitation of trade and of private transactions. The monetization process of both empires also allowed for the spread of royal ideology, imagery, and portraiture to an extent never before encountered.^[444] However, despite the success of both empires in collecting and distributing revenue, their loss of territories through continuous rivalries, the increasing Roman and Parthian pressure (though the latter was on the Seleucids only), the dynastic conflicts, and the internal revolts caused their revenues to decrease below a sustainability level. In the case of the Seleucids, this was a reality by the 130s bce, though in the Ptolemies’ case perhaps only by the mid-first century.

III.

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Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press,2020. — 1352 p.. 2020

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