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How much of this picture is actually grounded in the ancient evidence?

And was Macedon’s financial situation in 336, when Philip died, meaningfully different from what Alexander had at his disposal in 334 when he set out for Asia, or was it about the same?

Finances on Campaign (or everything you didn't know you didn't know about warfare)

Alexander’s money situation up until Issos was dicey. Also, this is about to get a LOT longer than the asker probably imagined. (Why it took so long to write.)

TL;DR: prior wars in Macedon and prep for war in Persia left Alexander with squeaker finances when he crossed over into Asia. Although how much he had (and how in debt he was) varies with Arrian (for once) being the most extreme, putting him in debt at about 1300 talents (7.9.6). His supplies covered about 30 days of war, according to Duris (Plut. Alex. 15.1). Plutarch also quotes Aristobulos for 70 talents of silver, and Onesikritos for being 200 in debt. Curtius (10.2) says it was 60 talents of silver and 500 in debt. This can’t really be reconciled, but he’s essentially broke.

He HAD to win, and win fast.

When it came to money, Philip had similar issues. I’m not sure where the story is located—maybe Athenaeus?—but the soldiers “mutinied” at one point while they were in Thessaly because (like American TSA agents) they’d been fighting with only a promise of future pay. I put “mutinied” in quotes because it wasn’t as serious (apparently) as we hear later at Opis with Alexander, but they were NOT happy and Philip had to talk them down. My memory is placing it at a pool in a gymnasion or such, so it’s likely between king and officers, as the soldiers wouldn’t all fit in the building! Sorry, I don’t have time to run down the citation. But the fact that Philip paid his soldiers regularly (not just with loot)—yet they weren’t mercenaries—was itself an innovation. One he apparently introduced.

In any case, Philip’s finances went up and down because he waged war in areas that weren’t especially rich. And this brings me to an important point:

Where does money for war come from? There are a couple different areas that provide what we call “loot.”

But first, I want to note that war is expensive, and its profits (or losses) tend to be absolute. This differs from trade. Trade will be win-win, although the win is lower. War’s “win” might be quite substantial…but the possibility of (absolute) devastation only deepens the financial risk. Plus, a lot of the loot accrued goes to paying bills, or into the war chest for the future.

This is something rarely discussed in too many military histories. Alexander Meeus and James Lacey each provided a chapter in Anson’s Brill’s Companion to the Campaigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great, for those interested. In addition, Borja Antela-Benárdez talks about the slave trade in the second chapter of his book Alexander the Great in Love. There’s also Donald Engel’s old (and somewhat outdated) Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. So there’s your reading list. 😉

All right, so… early forms of war finances were simple, as were wars themselves. You go over the hill, beat the shit out of your neighbors, then take their stuff (e.g., loot). Or that’s the plan. Sometimes they fend you off and you go home empty-handed (and out the cost of the fight).

How this loot was collected and distributed varied. In some cases, it was a free-for-all, with soldiers grabbing whatever they could lay hands on…and sometimes other soldiers attacked them for it (and even killed them). This never entirely goes away, btw.* It was always a factor.

Over time, strong generals could impose a collection of the “best” stuff with whatever was left allotted to soldiers. This not only allowed for more even distribution but also tended to prevent post-battle killing over pricy loot. It also allowed the general/leader to recoup costs, and reward soldiers/leaders who he saw as particularly deserving.

That, btw, is what we often see happening in the Iliad. It’s why Achilles gets Briseis as a “war prize.” He earned her.

This is a fairly simple form of war funding.

Then an odd thing happened, at least in Greece. Kinglets were ousted and oligarchies took over. Individual landowners now outfitted their dependent farmers at need (yes, think Achilles’s Myrmiddons on a smaller scale). Sometimes they fought each other, sometimes they took jobs in foreign armies, especially in Asia (Assyria), and Egypt, as mercenaries. The pay came from these large ANE kingdoms, which provided a model both for funding extended campaigns and for offering regular pay to troops in addition to/in place of loot. Sure, the land-owner took the lion’s share of this, but his men got some too.

Back home in Greece, when city-state fought city-state, it was framed as an honor required for timē and the duty of citizens. As city-states increasingly granted more rights to their citizens—breaking the back of absolute oligarchies—the burden of funding these wars began to be spread among citizens, as well. Citizens weren’t paid and had to supply their own armor and supplies.

Thus, taking loot, either from the defeated (and dead) on the battlefield … or from farms they raided for supplies along the way, helped citizen soldiers recoup their losses. These battles tended to be relatively close, men marching for days, or maybe a week … not months on end. The loot was small as well. But being able to bring home a bit of bronze from some poor sod’s discarded helmet or shield … that could provide the new owner with the raw metal for tools (or armor) himself.

Again, hoplites (infantry) weren’t paid for military service, and social pressure tended to be enough to force engagement, at least throughout the Archaic Age. We DO start to hear about conscription by the time of the Peloponnesian War, but that was “a war like no other” (to quote Thucydides), and broke a lot of cultural “rules.”

In any case, the semi-voluntary nature of warfare created issues of both discipline and training. Farmers weighed the fear of death in battle (if they skipped training) against fear of starvation for themselves/their family if they didn’t get crops in the ground before summer battles. That said most battles were arranged around the planting season as most fighters were also farmers. In fact, the Southern Greek states screamed when Philip of Macedon took his professional army on the road all year.

The rise of democracy first in Athens, then elsewhere, continued the tradition of voluntary military service as part of citizenship duties, and by the time we get to the Peloponnesian War, we also have obligatory training and service for ephebes (boys c. 18-21ish), plus the rise of the conscription/draft, noted above. The expense of war increasingly fell on the state, which meant the wealthy within the state as part of something called a “liturgy.” No, obviously, not a church service. This was a state-demanded gift from the rich, such as (say) the cost of building a trireme.

It’s really in the Classical era that we begin to see the rise of paid soldiers. This owes to several factors. One was Athens’ payments to their rowers (1 drachma a day, or the typical day-wage). Yet these rowers belonged to the thetes (lowest citizen) class. Hoplites were typically a class (or two) above, and still fought without pay, while supplying their own armor. That said, we see the armor “requirements” going down. Gone are the days of a full panoply (below top) for most. Sometimes we see only a shield and helmet, as on the memorial for a young man apparently killed in battle (below). Heavy equipment is fading in favor of more maneuverability … but also, lower cost. The Classical era also sees the rise of the linothorax over the bronze breastplate. It was both lighter and cheaper (and still pretty effective).

(This is from the Classical era, but he's wearing a more complete panoply w/ muscle cuirass. National Museum, Athens)

National Museum, Athens, note the only things he has are a helmet and shield.

(Etruscan in a linothorax, National Archaeological Museum of Florence; yes, he looks Macedonian, he's not, dates to c. 360)

After the Peloponnesian War, we also see a rise in mercenaries. Too many men lost their farms in the war, so turned to the only other thing they knew how to do: fight. That way, they could still earn a living. But this also matched a shift we see in other ways of financing war.

Wars became increasingly “professional,” and more often fought at a distance. Thus, war in Greece began to look more like war in the ancient near east, where campaigns might extend for months. Especially after the Peloponnesian War, “extended” warfare was normalized.

All that brings in the necessity of paying soldiers so they don’t have to support themselves via farming. Again, part of the gradual professionalization. (I’m ignoring Sparta here, btw; they were a somewhat unique system w/ helots.)

Other things we start seeing are military suppliers. Blacksmiths increasingly specialize (had been for a while) so we see the emergence of particular “city-state” helmet styles. The “Greek” helmet of pop media is really the Corinthian helmet worn in the Peloponnesos—not what Athenians wore, or Ionians, or Thebans, etc. (See below, actual helmets) We also have merchants who followed armies or sold to them when they were in the neighborhood. The Greeks aren’t really inventing the wheel here. They copied from the east. It’s just that up through the Archaic Age, there simply wasn’t that much demand for it in Greece.

A last comment before I return to Alexander. Food. They did not have the infamous MREs that my father hated so. Furthermore, they didn’t (really) have mess tents. This is partly a factor of no preservatives (beyond salt and some spices) and a holdover from short-range wars. Plus, grain is heavy…as is water, and oil. Those were the large demands. Soldiers were expected to supply themselves—either by bringing it with them, or by buying it. Hence the need for military suppliers.

This brings us to foraging (and ravaging). E.g., agricultural warfare (which is something Ann Haverkost and I wrote an entire article about). While they marched, soldiers (who were farmers, or had been, or had relatives who were) also often halted to gather food. You can carry only so much …especially of the heavy stuff. GRAIN was the #1 target of foraging. Fields would be harvested and/or burned. So invading armies wanted food for themselves, but also to deny food to the enemy. Ergo, secret storage “bunkers” in the hills might be used and (expensive) animals were sent elsewhere for safety. (Athens sent their flocks to Euboia in the early years of the Peloponnesian War). This was a particular form of “loot” gathering, in fact. You’re not taking it home to use/sell, but stealing food prevents the need to buy it. And, again, it denies that same food to your enemies. Ergo, after the battle, another battle follows for the losing/invaded side missing their winter stores. They might still die (of starvation).

It’s too easy to forget this side of combat. It’s not over in an afternoon. The devastation lasts, assuming the (defeated) survivors aren’t sold into slavery.

Finally: loot from battle itself.

This can range from taking things off the bodies of the dead—armor, weapons, luck trinkets that might involve precious metals/gems (most people carried amulets, etc.)—to stealing from rural homesteads during the march (very common), to stealing wholesale from defeated cities. The latter is why sieges tended to get especially nasty. People are literally fighting for their survival and all their worldly goods. Sieges are also where the really large numbers of slaves come from, including mixed gender.

Slaves are one of the big money-makers. Remember, ancient Greece had absolutely no connection between “race” and slavery. The chief way anybody became a slave was via war and capture. The second was to be born a slave (from those prisoners-of-war)—which is still indirectly by war. Ergo, it’s not really until after the Persian Wars that non-Greek slaves began to rise in number. Before that, they were exotica. Another quick reminder: a “foreigner” was simply a person not from your city-state. So, a Theban was a foreigner in Athens, or Corinth. Most city-states had rules disallowing citizens from owning (as a chattel slave) fellow citizens. But again, that’s just your city-state…not the one over the hill. (And this ignores debt-bond slavery, which is a whole ‘nother thing.)

Ergo we don’t get a lot of non-Greek foreign slaves until the Classical Era. In fact, the number of slaves at all in the Archaic Age is a much-fraught question due to institutions such as debt-bond slavery and other forms of dependent workers. They simply didn’t need chattel-slave field hands to the degree we see later, or in Rome. (Most of) Greece (minus Sparta) was a society that owned slaves…not a slave society. And those are two different things. Most families might have one slave, maybe two…if they had any at all.

This starts to change in the early Classical Era (post Persian-Wars), then gains steam with the Peloponnesian War and its widespread devastation of Greece due to the internal fighting. But it’s the wars of Philip, and especially Alexander that completely changed slavery with a veritable FLOOD of non-Greek slaves back into Greece. This is something Borja Antela-Bernárdez talks about in chapter 2 of his Alexander in Love. (I know, seems like an odd topic given the book title, but it fits; trust me.)

All right, that finally brings us back to Philip and Alexander.

Yet it’s important to understand the prior nature of warfare and financing warfare to understand why Alexander was broke when he invaded Persia. And why Philip (and Alexander) wanted to invade the east. “Revenge” (for the Persian War) was just propaganda and spin. PERSIA WAS RICH.

Of course, compared to the city-states of the Greek south, the Macedonian kings were rich too. Just not as rich as the Great King. Still, royal coffers funded wars, so wars returned money to those same coffers (along with mining, timber sales, and [some] agricultural work).

In Macedon, theoretically, the king owned all land, which he then loaned out to the Hetairoi by grant. Of course, that land had been in elite Hetairoi families for generations/centuries, but the king did have the right to take it back, even if he seldom used that right. The threat was there, compelling fealty.

Anyway, the Hetairoi managed this land for the king, and got much/all revenue from it. Who farmed it? Their dependent workers. Yes, this is a feudal system.

Furthermore, the king owned all logging rights and all mining rights. Limited logging rights might also be “loaned” to high-placed Hetairoi, and dependent workers on royal (or other) farms in summer turned into lumberjacks in winter. Timber and mining were the real money-makers as far back as Alexander I, so the king tended to retain most of these, but his workers couldn’t do it all. Alexander I sold boat-loads of timber (literally) to Athens in the Persian Wars for her fleet. YES, while fighting for Persia. (Ha.) Mount Pangaion yielded a talent of silver a day for him too. Philip later added gold mines to that.

Philip first changed some of this by separating dependent workers from their Hetairoi, and paying them to become soldiers. He could DO that (as Bill Greenwalt has noted) because half the army died with his brother Perdikkas up on the edge of Illyria in 359. That would have included a number of Hetairoi. And if those men no doubt had heirs, the power was sufficiently upset for Philip to make really substantial changes in his first five-to-seven years. Ed Anson has also talked about this in a great chapter in the edited collection that Tim Howe and I put together.

But what I want to underscore here was Philip’s institution of a PAID professional army … who are also citizens. Sparta sorta had this with their Homoioi, or Equals…the full-Spartan members of their army. They weren’t paid, but they were given farm plots (kleroi) which were worked by helot slaves. That divorced them from the need to farm so they could train as, essentially, professionals. The only other true professionals in Greece before Philip were mercenaries … who were indeed paid. But (importantly) NOT citizens of the cities for whom they fought. That made them untrustworthy in Greek eyes, if also increasingly a necessity.

By paying his men, Philip could professionalize them. AND because they were Macedonians, he created one of the first professional citizen armies in Greece, after Sparta. But in Sparta the full Spartans (Homoioi) were elites. They may have been trained, sure, but they weren’t former farmers turned soldiers; they were noblemen and acted like it. It’s part of the Spartan mirage to imagine these guys the same as modern recruits. They’d be closer to kids at Westpoint: destined for the officer class. (As were Macedonian Hetairoi.) Philip’s new(ly paid) soldiers are commoners. They’d ARE akin to modern army enlisted grunts hoping for a better life.

But that meant Philip did have to pay them. It was the assumed “contract.”

Which he could do, mostly. Because (again) Macedonian kings were bloody rich. (Just look at their burials. No really, follow that link and take a look.) This persistent notional that Macedonia was some country-bumpkin poor Appalachia of Greece is built entirely on Athenian propaganda. In fact, Macedonia was rolling in natural resources…which the king totally exploited!

But running an army is expensive because not only was Philip paying his men but also providing them with the sarissa (whenever that came into use, which is debated), as well as at least some equipment. And all the machinery of moving them around, including feeding them.

The thing is, if you create a well-oiled military machine that allows for successful conquest, not only will it become at least partly self-sustaining, but that very professionalism demands a war to fight in. Not unlike the Latin alliance system of Italy, which drove Rome to find a convenient war to get into each year to maintain her allies for later, “in case” she needed them. Same thing here. Philip made a lot of money off natural resources, but it wasn’t enough to fund the state and a professional army. Loot from wars enriched the kingdom, and the soldiers who fought for it… so they wanted more of it.

Ergo, let’s gooooo. (Find another war to fight to refill the bank.)

This is why Philip was sometimes out of money. He’d drained down his savings/income and needed to win (again) to fill it back up. And because cities in Greece and towns in Thrace and Illyria generally weren’t that rich, his victories were occasionally Pyrrhic. (E.g., he didn’t make as much as he spent.)

Following Philip’s death, most areas he’d conquered revolted (minus Thessaly and Epiros). Alexander spent two years reconquering them … and emptying his coffers in the process. He did receive some loot when Thebes was razed, but not all of it. (Some went to his allies, who’d been the ones to elect to raze the town, no doubt for revenge, but also goodies.)

Before he left, he threw a bunch of parties in classic “potlatch” behavior. He also had to outfit the army for the campaign. Unlike the Greek south, Macedonian kings subsidized campaigns as noted, especially weapons such as sarissai but also some armor for foot soldiers. Also food and supplies, which meant carts. And siege equipment, and their carts. Everything not only needed to be repaired and updated, but spares provided for the sarissai hafts, spear points and butt spikes, artillery equipment, etc., etc., etc.

It wasn’t cheap. Alexander also reportedly gave away some of the royal lands, perhaps as incentives. When his friends asked him what he was keeping for himself, he replied, “My hopes.” Or something like that. Truth was, he knew that if he didn’t win, he likely wouldn’t be coming home. In the taking of the throne, he’d eliminated all other viable Argead males except one: his brother Arrhidaios.

It was all or nothing.

So, when he crossed into Asia, he didn’t have much cash on hand, was in debt, and had limited supplies. But that was partly strategic: if he brought too much, they had to carry it. (More carts! And animals to pull them!) Plus having a limited supply incentivized his men to fight harder. They were literally fighting to eat. But he could take that risk because he moved into well-known territory partly under Parmenion’s control with the advanced force—at least around the landing point.

Yet it helps to explain why he was as eager as the Persians to force an early battle.

Even after Granikos, his logistics remained hand-to-mouth for a while, despite support from Asian Greek cities … which also explains why he was nice to them. He needed those supplies. It wasn’t until part of the Persian treasury fell into his hands after the Battle of Issos that he had sufficient funds to do something like sit down outside Tyre and wage a seven-month siege. Even then, he had sub-commanders running around the Levant demanding supplies.

I hope that absurdly lengthy review helps give insight onto something that isn’t “sexy,” and so doesn’t get a lot of airtime. How does one PAY for war? The military-bros don’t like to talk much about logistics. They’re boring. It may also explain why the video-game set isn’t thinking about the BILLIONS of dollars Trump is wasting blowing up shit in Iran.

But the chick rehabbing the career of Alexander’s chief logistics officer does think about this stuff. 😉 Hephaistion wasn’t made chiliarch for his pretty face.

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Doing the Queen's Makeup - Iris & Hera