In Sicily, Baltic mercenaries fought with the Greeks against Carthage

It was a fight to the death for the inhabitants of the town of Himera in northern Sicily. Twice – in 480 BC and in 409 BC – this Greek colony faced an attack from Carthage. They won the first battle, not the second – with catastrophic results. Their settlement was destroyed.

DNA research now shows that the Sicilian Greeks received help from soldiers who came from the Baltic region and the Ukrainian steppe in the first battle they won. It is the first hard evidence of the presence in the Greek world of mercenaries from so far beyond the Mediterranean. The research was published last week in the scientific journal PNAS.

Himera was founded in 648 BC by Greek settlers. The city was part of what has come to be called Magna Graecia, the area of ​​southern Italy that was colonized from Greece between 800 and 600. Sicily was not only popular with the Greeks because of its central location. From Carthage (in present-day Tunisia) a longing glance was cast on the island. Carthage was founded by settlers from Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon) and the Cathagers were an emerging power seeking to dominate trade in this part of the Mediterranean. Magna Graecia’s merchants got in their way. A war was therefore inevitable.

mass graves

In 480 BC, a Carthaginian army led by Hamilcar Mago arrived for Himera. The historian Diodoros of Sicily wrote in his Bibliotheca Historica that the inhabitants of Himera won the battle with the help of Greek troops from Syracuse and Agrigento. In 409 they were alone and perished.

Archaeologists uncovered a necropolis in 2009 in which more than ten thousand bodies are buried, some in mass graves. On the basis of the analysis of weapons and grave goods, among other things, it was possible to identify people who had died in the battles of 480 and 409. From among them, archaeologists have now analyzed the DNA of 33 people, along with the DNA of 21 people who came from neighboring settlements of the Sican people. From this DNA they could deduce the origin of the ancestors of these people. With the help of research on the isotopes in bones and teeth, they were also able to determine in which region the fallen had grown up.

Also read an interview with archaeogeneticist David Reich: The endless migrations and mixings of ‘peoples’

In the end, it was possible to distill a usable DNA profile from sixteen soldiers from 480 and five from 409. Of the sixteen, seven were of mixed local/Greek descent, the five out of 409 were all of them. Of the nine soldiers from 480 who came from elsewhere, two had their roots in the Balkans, two in the Baltic region, two in the Ukrainian-Russian steppe and one in the Caucasus.

For these mercenaries, not only did their DNA show that their parents came from elsewhere, the isotope research showed that they themselves had grown up outside the Greek world. So they had come to Sicily as grown men to fight. In the fifth century, Sicily was ruled by tyrants, who had the means to hire military adventurers thousands of miles away.

According to the authors of the article in PNAS Their research shows that not only traders and settlers, but also soldiers were important long-distance travelers in ancient Greece. They often lived for extended periods of time within the community they served, thus being a potential source of cultural – and genetic – change.

steppe nomads

Archaeologist Jorrit Kelder, affiliated with Leiden University and Oxford University, is enthusiastic about the research. “We suspected that mercenaries from outside the Mediterranean were fighting with Greek armies, but until now they were hypotheses. This DNA test provides hard evidence.”

Archaeological and written evidence of the presence of soldiers from Northern and Eastern Europe has so far been scarce, Kelder says. “For example, we know vases from classical Athens from which you could infer the existence of a Scythian police force, men from the Ukrainian steppe. So their presence in Sicily is not a complete surprise.”

Kelder published earlier this year on the role of mercenaries in the Bronze Age (3000 to 1100 BC) and concluded that these soldiers had an important role in spreading new techniques and ideas. “You brought in mercenaries because they mastered a trick you hadn’t mastered. Think of the steppe nomads’ ability to shoot a bow from their horse.”

This research shows once again how intertwined the world was in antiquity, says Kelder. “These mercenaries followed trade routes that had been in use for ages. We know that Greece imported amber from the Baltic region, so why not soldiers?”