At the heart of loyalty : a comparative analysis of military loyalty in the armies of Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms
This thesis is a comparative analysis of the concept of military loyalty in the armies of Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms, combining ancient evidence with the use of modern theories of organisational structures and combat motivation. It presents a basic contrast between Polis armies, which displayed high levels of loyalty, and Royal armies, which suffered from frequent cases of non-compliance and disloyalty, and argues that this contrast is a consequence of two fundamentally different ways of generating compliance and loyalty. Polis armies, it will be shown, predominantly exercised normative power, i.e. they relied on a combination of symbolic incentives and rewards, and a civic ideology of sacrifice for the common good; correspondingly, the soldiers, over whom this power was exercised, predominantly displayed moral involvement with their army, that is they complied voluntarily, out of a belief in the righteousness of their cause and in the alignment of their own benefit with that of their organisation. Royal armies, on the other hand, primarily utilised remunerative power, i.e. the allocation and manipulation of material rewards, which in turn was met by predominantly calculative involvement from
Herzogenrath-Amelung, Tristan Andreas
military history ; loyalty ; Hellenistic history ; classical Greek history ; compliance theory ; military loyalty
At the heart of loyalty : a comparative analysis of military loyalty in the armies of Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms. This thesis is a comparative analysis of the concept of military loyalty in the armies of Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms, combining ancient evidence with the use of modern theories of organisational structures and combat motivation. It presents a basic contrast between Polis armies, which displayed high levels of loyalty, and Royal armies, which suffered from frequent cases of non-compliance and disloyalty, and argues that this contrast is a consequence of two fundamentally different ways of generating compliance and loyalty. Polis armies, it will be shown, predominantly exercised normative power, i.e. they relied on a combination of symbolic incentives and rewards, and a civic ideology of sacrifice for the common good; correspondingly, the soldiers, over whom this power was exercised, predominantly displayed moral involvement with their army, that is they complied voluntarily, out of a belief in the righteousness of their cause and in the alignment of their own benefit with that of their organisation. Royal armies, on the other hand, primarily utilised remunerative power, i.e. the allocation and manipulation of material rewards, which in turn was met by predominantly calculative involvement from
heart loyalty comparative_analysis military loyalty army greek_city state hellenistic kingdom comparative_analysis concept military loyalty army greek_city state hellenistic kingdom combine ancient evidence use modern_theory organisational_structure combat motivation present basic contrast polis army display high_level loyalty royal army suffer frequent case non compliance argue contrast consequence fundamentally_different way generate compliance loyalty polis army show predominantly exercise normative power rely combination symbolic incentive reward civic ideology sacrifice common good correspondingly soldier power exercise predominantly display moral involvement army comply voluntarily belief righteousness cause alignment benefit organisation royal army hand primarily utilised power allocation manipulation material reward turn meet predominantly involvement