In the summer of 323, the Athenian Assembly voted to embark on the Lamian War, a somewhat impromptu attempt to liberate Greece from the Macedonian hegemony following the ominous news of Alexander’s death. According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, however, this decision was not the result of a renewed desire for freedom, but rather a consequence of the large number of citizens in the Assembly that day who had become accustomed to make their livelihood through war.1 In effect, earlier that summer, 8,000 men are said to have gathered at Cape Taenarum in the southern Peloponnese, where they were awaiting military employment – soldiers, who would soon find themselves among the ranks of passing warlords for decades to come.2

These men and their search for employment typify the sweeping military and economic changes that engulfed the eastern Mediterranean from the rise of Macedonia onwards.