V.R. has produced a thoughtful piece of scholarship that adds a new perspective through which to view the significance of soldiers in shaping the Hellenistic world. The book looks beyond the battlefield to consider how changing concepts of ‘soldiering’ had a direct and significant influence on Hellenistic economies, and subsequently on socio-cultural developments of this period. V.R. frames the study through the lens of labour history, contextualising the voluntary, paid soldiers of the royal armies as a form of wage labour that was bought and sold freely through a labour market, with the overall aim of the book ‘to assess the relationship between the military and economic developments of the Hellenistic period’ (p. 7). Chronologically, the book focuses on the period of 359 to c. 215 bce, tracing a trajectory of developments from the reign of Philip II to the early Hellenistic kingdoms.

The book is organised into six chapters, which are structured to create a cohesive work that provides an accessible lens through which to understand economic history and theory in relation to the context and purpose of the study. Chapter 1, ‘Contextualizing Paid Military Service’, considers the intertwined nature of military and societal developments, not simply through the mechanics of war and conquest but also through an examination of soldiers as contributors to socio-economic change, a point that, the author argues, can be understood by using a labour history approach to the subject. This chapter succinctly introduces readers to scholarly debates about the nature and structure of the ancient economy. It also explores the notion of the mercenary and issues with the terminology and generalisations often associated with using this designation as a blanket term for paid soldiers. In Chapter 2, ‘The Concept of Wage Labour’, readers are presented with an overview of theories of labour as well as definitions of the key concepts of wage labour, labour relations and labour power. V.R. pulls the central strands of this chapter together to provide an effective argument for the changing nature of military service by focusing on the growing number of voluntary paid troops in the royal armies from Philip II to the early Hellenistic kingdoms, representing a distinct shift away from the conscripted citizen soldier, which reflects the changing scope of war. This allows us to consider the soldier as a sort of ‘free agent’ on the labour market, a perspective that is fundamental to the central argument of the book. Chapter 3, ‘Enlistment and Terms of Service’, provides parameters to determine whether soldiers can be considered wage labourers, before using a chronological approach to examine how the soldier as wage labourer became an increasingly more common occurrence from the reign of Philip II onwards, as well as the primary factors that drove this significant development. V.R. succinctly outlines and discusses the importance of exploring and understanding changes in enlistment processes so as to recognise the growing significance of the military as a career path that increasingly offered opportunities for economic and social mobility based on skill. As the scale of warfare continued to expand during these periods, so did the reliance on voluntary, rather than conscript, soldiers. This, V.R. argues, gave soldiers the ability to influence terms of enlistment, with regard to both pay and conditions of service. This chapter does an excellent job of presenting the changing nature of military service in the royal armies, while also pushing readers to re-evaluate preconceived ideas about career soldiers and the notion of paid military service as something that extends beyond traditional notions of the mercenary. Chapter 4, ‘Forms of Renumeration and Standards of Living’, explores how renumeration came to shape the soldier–commander relationship, and further, how it influenced the autonomy and decision-making processes of troops. This is a practice that V.R. traces back to the military reforms of Philip II in which the provisioning of equipment by the state served as an incentive to enlist, as it removed a significant financial barrier to joining the army. In addition to this, land grants were offered as an incentive to encourage enlistment in elite units, something well attested during the reigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great, and also used extensively by the Ptolemies. This chapter encourages one to consider diverse forms of renumeration, beyond the payment of wages with coins. Through the periods of the Successor Wars and the early Hellenistic kingdoms, kings and commanders had to develop new incentives to draw troops to the royal armies: this could take the form of higher wages and bonuses, but also of other benefits and social privileges, which are laid out in some of the surviving treaties and contracts between Hellenistic kings and their soldiers. An intriguing piece of evidence explored is the connection between soldiers working as wage labourers and improved quality of life. V.R. uses this to suggest convincingly that voluntary enlistment in the royal armies provided individuals with a desirable career path through wages and other incentives offered to soldiers. Chapter 5, ‘The Military Labour Market’, explores how the reliance on wage labour in the royal armies created changing labour markets as demand for soldiers increased. Key to these developments is the free choice of soldiers to negotiate contracts and to move between armies: they can serve based on their own financial interests, rather than duty to a specific individual or state. The most compelling point presented in this chapter is a rethinking of military upheaval/mutiny. V.R. argues that we should view these events as a form of collective action taken by soldiers to improve their conditions of service: a form of work action and collective bargaining that reflects changing labour relations, highlighting the greater say soldiers exercised as wage labourers. The final chapter, ‘Military Wage Labour and the Hellenistic Economies’, ties the threads of the book together to make a convincing case for the significant influence of a wage-labour-based military on the economy. V.R. outlines the ways in which the widespread presence of wage labour in the royal armies directly affected the production and distribution of services: soldiers used their wages to purchase goods. In other words, there is a growing degree of specialisation, with workers engaging in specific rather than subsistence tasks, which in turn affected the monetisation of society. All these points come together to convincingly confirm that we should reconsider the role of the soldier by examining their reach beyond the immediate consequences of battle to view them ‘as loci and instigators of major socio-economic change – first by revolutionizing the nature of military service by turning it into a profession open to all, and second by necessitating the creation of markets to satisfy the needs of the royal soldiers, whose generous wages sustained both these markets and their producers’ (p. 196).

This book is a well-researched piece of scholarship. V.R. makes extensive use of epigraphic and other textual material throughout, providing a wealth of relevant examples to support the key points and creating fulsome discussion of the evidence. The epigraphic material is also collected at the end of the volume in an epigraphic dossier that provides both the original Greek and an English translation. V.R. succeeds in achieving the aims of the volume. The logical approach to the topic, chapter structure, evidence and discussion makes a clear case for thinking about the diverse and far-reaching ways in which soldiers of the royal armies shaped Hellenistic society and life. The volume is a welcome and useful contribution to our understanding of the Hellenistic world and will be of interest to scholars of both military and economic history.