SHOW:
|
|
- or go back to the newest paste.
| 1 | Introduction | |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | Compared with those who study modern military history, historians of Roman civilization (roughly 500 BCE to 500 CE) have very few sources to work with. There is no detailed census data, few ancient archives, and few soldiers’ letters home. The vast majority of everything written in antiquity has perished. Archaeological remains are difficult to interpret, and even the precise location of many important battles is unknown. What literary sources do exist are almost always one sided and written long after the events they describe, sometimes by littérateurs with no personal experience of war. To make matters worse, serious study of the Roman army requires mastery of not one but of at least two difficult ancient languages, for a great many sources are written in Greek. Meanwhile, on any given historical problem in Roman military studies, one will need to consult untranslated scholarship that continues to be published in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Roman army specialists also find themselves dipping into other subfields, such as archaeology, art history, computer applications, epigraphy, law, literary analysis, numismatics, papyrology, and textual criticism (correcting errors of the medieval copyists), not to mention the need to learn additional languages (e.g., Hebrew) as one’s research develops. So doing ancient Roman military history is difficult, and it is only getting more difficult as the field becomes more interdisciplinary. Students and nonspecialists can learn a great deal about the Roman army by reading the right kinds of books and articles, namely those written by responsible experts who have devoted decades to mastering the difficult source material. Other forms of media may be entertaining, but they are not trustworthy if one wants to be confident of learning good information. Enthusiasts who learn solely by consuming popular media (some books by commercial presses, magazines, television documentaries, movies, DVD commentaries, websites, chat boards, and video games—even when these involve the participation of credible academics) are likely to absorb a great deal of misinformation, despite feeling knowledgeable and well informed. Although a wide variety of works is included here, this bibliography focuses on recent books by professional historians of the ancient world. It was drafted independently of M. C. Bishop’s “Roman Military” article in Oxford Bibliographies in Classics. Overlap between the two lists is minimal, and Bishop’s thorough, excellent coverage of all things archaeological is not duplicated here. Bishop is also more generous in citing articles and older seminal works. Readers will benefit from comparing both bibliographies, and thereby learn more about a multifaceted aspect of Roman civilization, which has proven to be an inexhaustible source of interest. Unless otherwise noted, the publications listed in this article should be useful to specialists and nonspecialists alike. | |
| 4 | ||
| 5 | General Overviews | |
| 6 | ||
| 7 | There are two kinds of books to note here: first, those that offer broad overviews of Roman History, integrating military material into the wider developments of Roman civilization. Second, there are overviews of the Roman Army. | |
| 8 | ||
| 9 | Roman History | |
| 10 | ||
| 11 | Beginning students who lack background knowledge in ancient history have a number of general textbooks to choose from; the best may be Boatwright, et al. 2011. Recently, major presses have been issuing important series (e.g., Potter 2004, Wells 1995) and “companions” (Flower 2004, Potter 2006) that bring some of the best scholars together in one project. For reasons of space, only one example from each press’s series or companions is singled out here; readers can find related titles at each press’s website. Finally, the multiauthor, multivolume Cambridge Ancient History (Walbank, et al. 1990–2005) is built around an authoritative master narrative, with overviews of numerous topics and interpretive essays. | |
| 12 | ||
| 13 | Boatwright, Mary T., Daniel J. Gargola, Noel Lenski, and Richard J. A. Talbert. The Romans: From Village to Empire; A History of Rome from Earliest Times to the End of the Western Empire. 2d ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. | |
| 14 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 15 | Fairly traditional student textbook—a political-military narrative history interspersed with good maps and sections on social history. The 2004 edition offered abundant material on ancient Italy and early Rome, but little on late antiquity. The second edition compresses the early material and expands the late antique coverage with new chapters by Noel Lenski. | |
| 16 | Find this resource: | |
| 17 | Flower, Harriet I., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. | |
| 18 | DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521807948Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 19 | Includes a contribution by David Potter on the Roman army and navy during the republic (c. 500–27 BCE), as well as a chapter by John Lazenby on the Punic Wars. Many other parts of this volume touch on military matters. | |
| 20 | Find this resource: | |
| 21 | Potter, David S. The Roman Empire at Bay: AD 180–395. Routledge History of the Ancient World. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. | |
| 22 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 23 | At 762 pages, this weighty component of Routledge’s excellent History of the Ancient World series is particularly valuable for its treatment of the 3rd century. | |
| 24 | Find this resource: | |
| 25 | Potter, David S., ed. A Companion to the Roman Empire. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. | |
| 26 | DOI: 10.1002/9780470996942Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 27 | Part of the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series. Material pertinent to the Roman army is scattered throughout; Nigel Pollard offers a useful chapter (pp. 206–227) devoted solely to that institution. | |
| 28 | Find this resource: | |
| 29 | Walbank, F. W., A. E. Astin, M. W. Frederiksen, et al. The Cambridge Ancient History. 2d ed. Vols. 7.2–14. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990–2005. | |
| 30 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 31 | Written with specialists in mind, though beginners should not be shy to consult it. Volumes are chronologically ordered; each contains narrative histories, regional studies, and thematic essays in which military matters are well covered. | |
| 32 | Find this resource: | |
| 33 | Wells, Colin. The Roman Empire. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. | |
| 34 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 35 | Originally part of the Fontana History of the Ancient World series, this approachable paperback remains one of the best available textbooks or general entrées to the early Roman Empire. | |
| 36 | Find this resource: | |
| 37 | Roman Army | |
| 38 | ||
| 39 | Roth 2009 is intended for young or inexpert readers. Osprey Publishing specializes in handy, well-illustrated paperbacks (e.g., Fields 2009), which should be attractive to nonspecialists. Goldsworthy 2003 is an example of a good “coffee-table” book. The best basic undergraduate-level textbook may be Keppie 1998. Also useful is Southern 2007, a straightforward and meticulously organized survey. Erdkamp 2007 and Sabin, et al. 2007 are extremely valuable for the sheer amount of material they contain. | |
| 40 | ||
| 41 | Erdkamp, Paul, ed. A Companion to the Roman Army. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. | |
| 42 | DOI: 10.1002/9780470996577Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 43 | Goes beyond the army’s combat role to explore the institution “as an essential component of Roman society, economy, and politics” (p. 1). Also amply addresses the army’s organization of human and material resources, and civil-military relations. Several excellent contributors cover the entire span of Roman civilization. | |
| 44 | Find this resource: | |
| 45 | Fields, Nic. The Roman Army of the Principate, 27 BC–AD 117. Oxford: Osprey, 2009. | |
| 46 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 47 | Handsomely illustrated and inviting, though Latin jargon may turn off some nonspecialists. The press (Osprey) has many similar books on offer. Readers should take the maps and battle plans in such books with a grain of salt, as they often mask extreme uncertainty in the sources. | |
| 48 | Find this resource: | |
| 49 | Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Complete Roman Army. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003. | |
| 50 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 51 | Attractively produced, well illustrated, and written by a leading expert. | |
| 52 | Find this resource: | |
| 53 | Keppie, Lawrence. The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire. 2d ed. Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1998. | |
| 54 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 55 | A focused and reasonable chronological account, with helpful appendices tracking the creation and dissolution of different legions. The main drawbacks of this volume are that the post-Augustan army receives only one chapter, and the material in it does not go beyond the 1st century CE. First published in 1984. | |
| 56 | Find this resource: | |
| 57 | Roth, Jonathan P. Roman Warfare. New York and Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. | |
| 58 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 59 | Despite various minor errors, the clarity of the writing and color illustrations make this military history of Rome a suitable choice for high school readers and undergraduates. Includes a timeline, two glossaries, and bibliography. | |
| 60 | Find this resource: | |
| 61 | Sabin, Philip, Hans van Wees, and Michael Whitby, eds. The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. | |
| 62 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 63 | Thorough multiauthor work covering the Roman Republic in Part 2 of Volume 1, with Volume 2 divided into Part 1 on the Late Republic and Early Empire, and Part 2 on Late Antiquity. Each part offers an individual chapter on international relations, military forces (including the navy), war, battle, warfare and the state, and war and society. | |
| 64 | Find this resource: | |
| 65 | Southern, Pat. The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. | |
| 66 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 67 | Organized thematically, covering themes such as sources, types of units, conditions of service, and weaponry, with an appendix on rank structure and a glossary. The lack of notes limits its usefulness for advanced students, but graduate students in need of research topics may wish to consult the final chapter for the author’s assessment of the field and suggestions for further reading. | |
| 68 | Find this resource: | |
| 69 | Reference Works | |
| 70 | ||
| 71 | The works listed here are not focused solely on military history; they are broader resources, which are the first resort for initiating research on any topic relating to the ancient Greek or Roman worlds. | |
| 72 | ||
| 73 | Encyclopedias | |
| 74 | ||
| 75 | Hornblower and Spawforth 2003 and Shipley, et al. 2006 are one-volume encyclopedias covering all of classical antiquity; of these, Hornblower and Spawforth’s Oxford Classical Dictionary is the single most valuable resource. Bowersock, et al. 1999 addresses late antiquity in a volume that is part encyclopedia, part collection of interpretative essays. Brill’s New Pauly (Cancik and Schneider 2002–2010) is a magisterial multivolume encyclopedia, growing out of one of the most impressively thorough research projects of the 19th and 20th centuries. These encyclopedias’ audience is scholarly; although neophytes may have trouble with some articles, their bibliographical suggestions are not to be missed. Beginning researchers should avoid Wikipedia, which is untrustworthy, and the Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, an inferior abridgement of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. | |
| 76 | ||
| 77 | Bowersock, Glen W., Peter R. L. Brown, and Oleg Grabar, eds. Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. | |
| 78 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 79 | Offers encyclopedic entries on late Roman military subjects such as Alaric, Attila, barbarian settlements, bucellarii, comitatus, conscription, espionage, foederati, fortifications, Huns, Isauria, limes, Sassanians, and Vandals; see notitiae (p. 612) for the Notitia dignitatum. Brent Shaw’s intelligent essay on late ancient war (pp. 130–169) is highly recommended. | |
| 80 | Find this resource: | |
| 81 | Cancik, Hubert, and Helmut Schneider, eds. Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. 21 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002–2010. | |
| 82 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 83 | The latest incarnation of the old Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopädie project, whose eighty-plus volumes are still worth consulting by experts. The present work is an English translation (with some updated content) of Der Neue Pauly. Fifteen volumes cover an immense range of ancient topics. Later volumes cover the classical tradition, with supplements (including an atlas and index). | |
| 84 | Find this resource: | |
| 85 | Hornblower, Simon, and Anthony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3d rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. | |
| 86 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 87 | Impressively thorough for a one-volume encyclopedia; check here first to elucidate unfamiliar institutions, figures, or texts. As a veritable key to the sources, article bibliographies list recommended texts, translations, commentaries, and studies. The Oxford Classical Dictionary’s list of specialist abbreviations has become standard in the field. | |
| 88 | Find this resource: | |
| 89 | Shipley, Graham, John Vanderspoel, David Mattingly, and Lin Foxhall, eds. The Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. | |
| 90 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 91 | With its idiosyncratic and uneven coverage, this is no replacement for the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Hornblower and Spawforth 2003), which remains the indispensable one-volume encyclopedia. Nevertheless, it contains several sound articles relevant to the Roman army, and the table of wars on pp. 938–939 is useful. | |
| 92 | Find this resource: | |
| 93 | Geography | |
| 94 | ||
| 95 | Talbert 1985 is a trustworthy and handy student atlas, adequate for most basic geographical questions; Cornell and Matthews 1982 is also good for nonspecialists but is less straightforwardly cartographic (i.e., essays and illustrations far outnumber maps). Talbert 2000 is the key resource for research on more elusive locales and topographical challenges. | |
| 96 | ||
| 97 | Cornell, Tim J., and John F. Matthews. Atlas of the Roman World. New York: Facts on File, 1982. | |
| 98 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 99 | The full gazetteer includes longitude and latitude of all mapped sites. The volume doubles as a handsome coffee-table book, full of inviting illustrations, color maps, a basic historical narrative by two leading experts, and brief reports on several sites and regions. | |
| 100 | Find this resource: | |
| 101 | Talbert, Richard J. A., ed. Atlas of Classical History. London and New York: Routledge, 1985. | |
| 102 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 103 | Roughly chronological organization, with thematic maps and brief blurbs on important sites and developments. Ends with suggestions for further reading and a gazetteer of every site mapped in the volume. | |
| 104 | Find this resource: | |
| 105 | Talbert, Richard J. A., ed. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. | |
| 106 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 107 | The fruition of more than a decade’s work by a team of scholars, this is the most comprehensive and reliable tool for understanding ancient geography. Contains 102 color topographic maps covering North Africa and western Eurasia, plotting known sites from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. Extensive bibliographies and ancillary directories address probable locations of uncertain sites. | |
| 108 | Find this resource: | |
| 109 | Journals | |
| 110 | ||
| 111 | Of the journals cited in this section, only the Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies is focused solely on the Roman army, and only it and Historia lack book reviews (which are the sole purpose of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Classical Review, and Gnomon). The Journal of Roman Archaeology and Journal of Roman Studies contain both research articles and book reviews. The audience for all the above is largely fellow academics (say, graduate students and up); Greece & Rome deserves special mention for being more accessible to nonspecialists. | |
| 112 | ||
| 113 | Bryn Mawr Classical Review. | |
| 114 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 115 | The most widely read publication of book reviews in classics, available only online (by e-mail listserv or well-indexed archive). Reviews are often detailed and lengthy, usually in English (thus allowing monoglots to get some sense of books in other languages), but reviews written in other major European languages are common. | |
| 116 | Find this resource: | |
| 117 | Classical Review. | |
| 118 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 119 | Book reviews. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Classical Association. | |
| 120 | Find this resource: | |
| 121 | Gnomon. | |
| 122 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 123 | Published by C. H. Beck of Germany. Prints book reviews in a variety of languages: most numerous are reviews in German, with English reviews a distant second. | |
| 124 | Find this resource: | |
| 125 | Greece & Rome. | |
| 126 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 127 | Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Classical Association; insightful articles (in English) on military history regularly appear. The book review section takes the form of a selective, somewhat arbitrary, but smart bibliographical essay on major books published each year; recently, this overview has been authored by Barbara Levick. | |
| 128 | Find this resource: | |
| 129 | Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. | |
| 130 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 131 | Published by Germany’s Franz Steiner Verlag, but a good proportion of the articles are in English. On average, scholars can expect at least one or two articles relating to military history in every issue. | |
| 132 | Find this resource: | |
| 133 | Journal of Roman Archaeology. | |
| 134 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 135 | Presents detailed articles (mostly in English) on archaeological sites or broader issues concerning material culture, trade, and economics; several are pertinent to the army. Since 1998 the book reviews have appeared in a second annual fascicule; they tend to be extensive and not limited to archaeology. More than eighty supplementary volumes address particular places or themes. | |
| 136 | Find this resource: | |
| 137 | Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies. | |
| 138 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 139 | Edited by M. C. Bishop, this journal was “dedicated to the study of the weapons, armour, and military fittings of the armies and enemies of Rome and Byzantium” (from the homepage) and ran from 1990 to 2005; most articles are in English. Unfortunately, like Revue des études militaires anciennes, it now seems defunct. See David Brown Book Co. to order back issues. | |
| 140 | Find this resource: | |
| 141 | Journal of Roman Studies. | |
| 142 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 143 | Commonly regarded as the premier journal in the field. Articles and reviews in English. | |
| 144 | Find this resource: | |
| 145 | Primary Sources | |
| 146 | ||
| 147 | Primary sources on the Roman army and war can be roughly divided between Literary and Documentary sources. | |
| 148 | ||
| 149 | Literary | |
| 150 | ||
| 151 | Excellent translations of major authors are readily available. The newer Penguin Classics editions tend to be quite good, and their rival Oxford World’s Classics are consistently strong. The beloved Loeb Classical Library series presents the original Greek or Latin text with English translation on facing pages; newer volumes offer more generous introductions and footnotes. The Collection Budé is a similar French project with even more extensive introductions and notes, and wider coverage of more obscure texts. Students embarking on the study of any unfamiliar ancient source would be wise to start with The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Hornblower and Spawforth 2003, cited under Encyclopedias) for recommended translations and commentaries. Included in this section is a pair of works on two key military authors: Griffin 2009, on Julius Caesar (the only Roman to have left extensive accounts of campaigns that he led); and Milner 1996, on Vegetius (author of the only fully extant treatise on Roman military science). Campbell 1987 is a valuable essay on the genre of military handbooks; salient passages of these and other relatively obscure sources are translated in Campbell 2004. Thayer’s LacusCurtius website also has much to offer curious readers. Finally, Dillon and Welch 2006 deals with Roman representations of war in literature and in art. | |
| 152 | ||
| 153 | Campbell, Brian. “Teach Yourself How to Be a General.” Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987): 13–29. | |
| 154 | DOI: 10.2307/300572Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 155 | Campbell sheds light on obscure military authors such as Onasander and Polyaenus (both of whom wrote in Greek), placing them in the tradition of didactic literature—partly practical, partly for entertainment. Because Rome lacked anything like modern military academies, one should not entirely discount the use of these texts in military training. | |
| 156 | Find this resource: | |
| 157 | Campbell, Brian. Greek and Roman Military Writers: Selected Readings. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. | |
| 158 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 159 | Major authors are balanced against less famous ones in this well-rounded collection. The material is not presented chronologically but thematically, around topics such as training and discipline, generalship, battle, sieges, and military engineering, with useful signposting and commentary by the author. | |
| 160 | Find this resource: | |
| 161 | Dillon, Sheila, and Katherine E. Welch, eds. Representations of War in Ancient Rome. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. | |
| 162 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 163 | Despite fine papers on literature by top scholars (e.g., Jonathan Roth and William V. Harris), it is hard not to see the more numerous art chapters as the main virtue of this collection. Perhaps most interesting (if unsettling) is Dillon on women in the imagery of Roman victory (pp. 244–271). | |
| 164 | Find this resource: | |
| 165 | Griffin, Miriam T., ed. A Companion to Julius Caesar. Chichester, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009. | |
| 166 | DOI: 10.1002/9781444308440Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 167 | This project examines a complicated and problematic figure from several different angles. Nathan Rosenstein’s incisive essay (pp. 85–99) assesses Caesar as a general and imperialist; other chapters address his war commentaries and his later military legacy. | |
| 168 | Find this resource: | |
| 169 | Milner, N. P., trans. Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science. 2d ed. Translated Texts for Historians 16. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1996. | |
| 170 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 171 | Part of Liverpool’s excellent Translated Texts for Historians series, with introduction and notes, this is one of the best English translations of this problematic text. The second edition’s translation is an improvement over the first edition. Vegetius (late 4th century?) had no experience or interest in the military praxis of his own day; his antiquarian treatise prescribes a return to the fuzzy “good ol’ days.” | |
| 172 | Find this resource: | |
| 173 | Thayer, William. LacusCurtius: Into the Roman World. | |
| 174 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 175 | This quirky site is the treasure trove of an enthusiastic nonspecialist who posts out-of-copyright texts, including military treatises and second-tier historical sources, such as Ammianus Marcellinus, Appian, Cassius Dio, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Florus, Frontinus’s important Strategemata, the Historia Augusta, Polybius, Procopius, and Velleius Paterculus. | |
| 176 | Find this resource: | |
| 177 | Documentary | |
| 178 | ||
| 179 | Although sourcebooks typically include Literary sources, they are particularly valuable for introducing students to documentary sources; note examples in the chronological sections of this article (e.g., Campbell 1994, cited here and under The Imperial Roman Army). The richest sourcebook for Roman history in general is Lewis and Reinhold 1990, offering a wide variety of sources (literary, epigraphic, papyrological, numismatic). One of the friendliest introductions to epigraphy happens to have been written by a first-rate military historian: Keppie 1991. Heading into more specialized territory, Roxan 1978 collects and analyzes nearly five hundred discharge diplomas (inscribed on folded bronze sheets) issued to Praetorians and provincial auxilia. Fink 1971 examines more than two hundred papyri and ostraka (broken bits of pottery used for writing material) to uncover the internal organization of the army. More recent studies exist for major ostraka finds from a handful of sites, such as Douch and Krokodilô in Egypt; cited here are publications of ostraka from ancient Libya (Marichal 1992) and from Egypt’s eastern desert (Bingen, et al. 1992–2009). From the empire’s other extreme, the Roman auxiliary fort at Vindolanda in northern England near Hadrian’s Wall has yielded the largest ever find of Latin letters (see Bowman and Thomas 1983–2003); they were written on postcard-size wooden tablets and ended up in an anaerobic environment that fortuitously preserved them. The documentary sources mentioned here occasionally allude to slaves owned by soldiers. Specialist abbreviations for various publications of papyri, ostraka, and tablets are decoded in the Checklist of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets, an online bibliography published by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University. | |
| 180 | ||
| 181 | Bingen, Jean, Adam Bülow-Jacobsen, et al. Mons Claudianus: Ostraca Graeca et Latina. 4 vols. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1992–2009. | |
| 182 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 183 | Documents (mostly in Greek with French translations) relating to the administration of an imperial quarry; Volume 2 is especially rich in texts showing soldiers’ activities. Included are photographs of most ostraka. | |
| 184 | Find this resource: | |
| 185 | Bowman, Alan K., and J. D. Thomas, eds. Vindolanda: The Writing Tablets. 3 vols. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1983–2003. | |
| 186 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 187 | Among much else, these texts shed light on the social and economic lives of women and contractors attached to the fort. Originally published in traditional print format, the results of Bowman and Thomas’s labor are now online, in a model of web scholarship. | |
| 188 | Find this resource: | |
| 189 | Campbell, Brian. The Roman Army 31 BC–AD 337: A Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. | |
| 190 | DOI: 10.4324/9780203312339Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 191 | Campbell’s English translations of key sources, commentary, and illustrations are good enough to serve as a one-volume history of the Roman imperial army. Careful attention to different types of soldiers and units, the emperor, the army as a military and peacetime force, civil-military relations, law, and veterans. The final chapter addresses late antiquity. | |
| 192 | Find this resource: | |
| 193 | Fink, Robert O. Roman Military Records on Papyrus. Cleveland, OH: American Philological Association and Case Western Reserve University, 1971. | |
| 194 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 195 | Contains strength reports, daily rosters (pridiana), and other documents illustrating soldiers’ ranks, duties, pay, promotion, origins, etc. Fink provides translations for most of these documents (from Egypt and Dura Europos in Syria, mostly from the late 1st to mid-3rd century CE), with ample commentary for a scholarly audience. | |
| 196 | Find this resource: | |
| 197 | Keppie, Lawrence. Understanding Roman Inscriptions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. | |
| 198 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 199 | Introduction to epigraphy. Chapter 11 (pp. 80–90) is focused on the army and frontiers; other chapters of interest include chapter 9 on roads, chapter 10 on administration, and chapter 17 on the Late Empire. Copiously illustrated, with appendices to help the novice further. | |
| 200 | Find this resource: | |
| 201 | Lewis, Naphtali, and Meyer Reinhold, eds. Roman Civilization: Selected Readings. 3d ed. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. | |
| 202 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 203 | Despite poor indexing, this treasure trove remains unequaled among Roman history sourcebooks. Volume 1 covers through Augustus and begins with a lengthy and useful discussion of ancient sources. Chapter 7 of Volume 2 is titled “The Roman Army,” but one finds military issues throughout by flipping through the whole set. | |
| 204 | Find this resource: | |
| 205 | Marichal, Robert, ed. Les ostraca de Bu Njem. Suppléments de Libya antiqua 7. Tripoli, Libya: Grande Jamahira Arabe, Dépt. des Antiquitiés, 1992. | |
| 206 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 207 | Mid-3rd-century records and chance writings by a frontier garrison drawn from the Third Legion Augusta, comprising 145 Latin ostraka (each with accompanying photograph and commentary in French). Includes several letters and strength reports. | |
| 208 | Find this resource: | |
| 209 | Roxan, Margaret M., ed. Roman Military Diplomas 1954–1977. London: Institute of Archaeology, 1978. | |
| 210 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 211 | First of five volumes. Continued in Volume 2 (1985) and Volume 3 (1994). The Institute of Classical Studies in London published Volume 4 (Roxan and Holder, eds.) and Volume 5 (containing diplomas #323–476; Holder, ed.) in 2006. These discharge documents are some of our best sources for understanding the Roman imperial army. They grant veterans the right to form legitimate marriages (legal celibacy was required during the Early Empire). Later volumes offer more photographs. | |
| 212 | Find this resource: | |
| 213 | Historiography | |
| 214 | ||
| 215 | How has the Roman army been viewed by past scholars, and how do historians tend to approach it now? Hanson 1999 offers a far-ranging survey, while Dawson 2008 and Lendon 2004 are more selective. Phang 2011 digests specialist literature to ascertain current approaches to Roman military history of the Republic and Principate, which Lee 2011 follows (in the same volume) for the later Roman Empire. | |
| 216 | ||
| 217 | Dawson, Doyne. “The Return of Military History?” History and Theory 47.4 (2008): 597–606. | |
| 218 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2008.00478.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 219 | Review of Per la storia militare del mondo antico: Prospettive retrospettive by Luigi Loreto (Naples, Italy: Jovene, 2006). Dawson demonstrates that the study of ancient military history has undergone a reawakening of interest, if not a renaissance. More than just a review of Loreto’s book (which is worthy of attention in itself), Doyne considers the ramifications of the new field of “peace studies,” and the wide gap between academic history and popular interest. | |
| 220 | Find this resource: | |
| 221 | Hanson, Victor Davis. “The Status of Ancient Military History: Traditional Work, Recent Research, and On-going Controversies.” Journal of Military History 63.2 (1999): 379–413. | |
| 222 | DOI: 10.2307/120649Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 223 | One might expect this well-known Hellenophile to give the Romans short shrift, but fortunately this is not the case. Hanson’s overview provides a clear, concise, and helpful description of major works (in English, French, and German) on ancient armies. Available online from the author. | |
| 224 | Find this resource: | |
| 225 | Lee, A. Doug. “Military History in Late Antiquity: Changing Perspectives and Paradigms.” In Recent Directions in the Military History of the Ancient World. Edited by Lee L. Brice and Jennifer T. Roberts, 145–166. Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians 10. Claremont, CA: Regina, 2011. | |
| 226 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 227 | A brief but excellent overview of recent work, with attention to sources, organization, tactics, technology, recruitment, demographics, economic and social impact, and religious ideology. | |
| 228 | Find this resource: | |
| 229 | Lendon, J. E. “The Roman Army Now.” Classical Journal 99.4 (2004): 441–449. | |
| 230 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 231 | Nominally a book review (of Cohors2 [Spaul 2000, cited under Cavalry, Auxiliary, and Naval Forces]; The Roman Army as Community [Goldsworthy and Hayes 1999, cited under Socioeconomic Impact]; and The Cavalry of the Roman Republic by Jeremiah McCall [London and New York: Routledge, 2002]), Lendon thoughtfully addresses wider topics, starting with a historical survey of Roman army scholarship throughout the 20th century. He then engages current trends, including an assault on the supposed importance of unit cohesion and the followers of John Keegan who “treat the Roman army as essentially generic” (p. 449). | |
| 232 | Find this resource: | |
| 233 | Phang, Sarah E. “New Approaches to the Roman Army.” In Recent Directions in the Military History of the Ancient World. Edited by Lee L. Brice and Jennifer T. Roberts, 105–144. Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians 10. Claremont, CA: Regina, 2011. | |
| 234 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 235 | Valuable overview of recent scholarship, which includes sections on demography, ethnicity and religion, gender and sexuality, promotion and patronage, social status, law, and Rome’s enemies. Late Antiquity is covered separately in the following chapter of Brice and Robert’s volume (see Lee 2011). | |
| 236 | Find this resource: | |
| 237 | Command | |
| 238 | ||
| 239 | Broughton 1984–1986 is an indispensable tool for dating the military commands (or other magistracies) of any known public figure in the Roman Republic. Eckstein 1987 considers what we know of their scope of action in the early-mid Republic. Campbell 1984 is a magisterial treatment of the emperors’ role, with very good material on centurions besides. Kagan 2006 studies battle command. | |
| 240 | ||
| 241 | Broughton, T. Robert S. Magistrates of the Roman Republic. 3 vols. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984–1986. | |
| 242 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 243 | Prosopographic catalogue of all known magistrates; organized by year (down to 31 BCE) and indexed by individual and magistracy. Volume 1 covers all years before the 1st century, which is the exclusive focus of Volume 2. These were originally published in 1951–1952; Volume 3 is a more recent supplement. | |
| 244 | Find this resource: | |
| 245 | Campbell, J. Brian. The Emperor and the Roman Army 31 BC–AD 235. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. | |
| 246 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 247 | Exploring the relationship between the emperors and their “fellow soldiers,” this fine study established the author’s reputation as a leading historian of the Roman army. Important topics treated here include military oaths, centurions, propaganda, appointment of commanders, the cost of the army, and the challenges of leading it; also ample material on military law. | |
| 248 | Find this resource: | |
| 249 | Eckstein, Arthur M. Senate and General: Individual Decision-Making and Roman Foreign Relations, 264–194 B.C. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. | |
| 250 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 251 | How closely did the senate of the Roman Republic supervise the various military commanders it appointed to advance Rome’s interest throughout the Mediterranean world? Eckstein argues that Roman commanders outside of Italy enjoyed considerable freedom and diplomatic authority; in practice, they could and did create ad hoc state policy. Available online. | |
| 252 | Find this resource: | |
| 253 | Kagan, Kimberly. The Eye of Command. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. | |
| 254 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 255 | This book is influenced by Keegan’s Face of Battle (New York: Viking, 1976), but here Kagan returns the focus to the viewpoint of generals, drawing on the battle accounts of Julius Caesar and Ammianus Marcellinus. | |
| 256 | Find this resource: | |
| 257 | Battle | |
| 258 | ||
| 259 | Classical studies as a discipline is somewhat insulated from new theoretical and methodological trends in other fields. When classicists and ancient historians finally become aware of some new direction in scholarship, its impact tends to be uneven, querulously disputed, and late (e.g., when said trend sometimes has already become passé in the modern fields that gave birth to it). Case in point: John Keegan’s 1976 Face of Battle (New York: Viking), which showed the potential of viewing battle from the ground up by recapturing the experiences of men on the front lines rather than the sterile strategies of generals. Starting in the 1980s, Victor Davis Hanson led the way among ancient historians in applying Keegan’s methods by considering the lives and experiences of the hoplite infantrymen of classical Greece. It took Romanists a full twenty years before someone produced a full, Keeganesque study of Roman soldiers, Goldsworthy 1996. Hanson is also very significant for conceptualizing the so-called Western way of war, which developed from his expert work in classical Greek history. Hanson 2001 extends the concept to other phases of Western civilization, including Republican Rome. In the ensuing debate that Hanson’s work generated, there has been more heat among Hellenists than among Romanists, but both Sidebottom 2004 and Fagan 2005 critique Hanson in works that cover all Antiquity (and provide excellent introductions for neophytes, as does Goldsworthy 2000). Anglim, et al. 2002 surveys techniques of Roman warfare, and Bishop and Coulston 2006 studies the stuff of battle. Most formidable here is Lendon 2005, a compelling look at the intersection of culture, myth, and war, where the author argues that memory and honor play a greater role in men’s battles than technology or tactics. See also Siege Warfare and Defeat. | |
| 260 | ||
| 261 | Anglim, Simon, Phyllis G. Jestice, Rob S. Rice, Scott Rusch, and John Serrati. Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World, 3000 BC–AD 500: Equipment, Combat Skills, and Tactics. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002. | |
| 262 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 263 | With engaging color illustrations on nearly every page, this pleasant book will appeal to traditional military-history enthusiasts. Lack of notes and minimal bibliography will frustrate the specialist. Each of the five chapters (on infantry, cavalry, command, siege, and navies) covers all of Antiquity, with ample Roman material. | |
| 264 | Find this resource: | |
| 265 | Bishop, M. C., and Jon C. N. Coulston. Roman Military Equipment from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxbow, 2006. | |
| 266 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 267 | Excellent study of military artifacts; among its riches are military standards, musical instruments, and various forms of armor. Ample bibliography. | |
| 268 | Find this resource: | |
| 269 | Fagan, Garrett. Great Battles of the Ancient World. 2 DVDs (or audio CDs). Great Courses. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Co., 2005. | |
| 270 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 271 | Despite some production imperfections, these informative lectures by a first-rate historian are a relief from the “edutainment” dreck that populates cable television. The lengthy accompanying guide offers detailed outlines, timelines, glossaries, biographical notes, and suggestions for further reading. Roman battles are confined to disc 2, but no one should miss Fagan’s introductory lectures. | |
| 272 | Find this resource: | |
| 273 | Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Roman Army at War, 100 BC–AD 200. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. | |
| 274 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 275 | This Keegan-inspired study of Roman warfare describes the organization of Roman units in battle, the army on campaign, and battle from the perspective of generals, units, and individual soldiers. Goldsworthy shows the legions were more flexible than often supposed. Chapter 2 usefully describes what is known of Rome’s foreign opponents. | |
| 276 | Find this resource: | |
| 277 | Goldsworthy, Adrian. Roman Warfare. Smithsonian History of Warfare. London: Cassell, 2000. | |
| 278 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 279 | A small and nicely illustrated book, part of a series edited by John Keegan. Rome’s entire military history is covered in less than two hundred pages, with a chronology and helpful appendices. | |
| 280 | Find this resource: | |
| 281 | Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. New York: Doubleday, 2001. | |
| 282 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 283 | Chapter 4 (pp. 256–338) offers a simplistic account of Cannae and a selective exposition of the Romans as citizen soldiers. The real strength of this engaging, clearly written book is its ability to provoke debate about the nature of war and Western civilization. | |
| 284 | Find this resource: | |
| 285 | Lendon, J. E. Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. | |
| 286 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 287 | Looks at the culture of war, and how ancient societies tapped into their own heroic past and competitive spirit to win on the battlefield. Coverage evenly divided between the Greeks and Romans (with interesting material on single combat), down to Julian’s Persian campaign in the 360s. Superbly written and accessible to nonspecialists. | |
| 288 | Find this resource: | |
| 289 | Sidebottom, Harry. Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. | |
| 290 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 291 | Part of Oxford University Press’s handy Very Short Introductions series, this little book is somewhat unusual, offering critiques of the film Gladiator (2000), Victor Davis Hanson’s “Western way of war” concept, and Luttwak’s grand strategy (see Luttwak 1976, cited under Grand Strategy). Good material on Greece, but the Romans receive more coverage. It ends with a lengthy and lightly annotated bibliography. | |
| 292 | Find this resource: | |
| 293 | Siege Warfare | |
| 294 | ||
| 295 | Besieging fortified cities was a great challenge to premodern armies (e.g., see discussion of the Third Punic War in The Punic Wars and the siege of Numantia in The Middle Republic). Campbell 2006 is an overview of siege warfare for general readers. Once soldiers broke into a town, women and other civilians might inflict heavy casualties by pelting invaders with heavy tiles from the rooftop (Barry 1996). Ziolkowski 1993 weighs different accounts of how Romans conducted postsiege sacks. Whitehead 2010 makes a hitherto neglected author on siege craft (Apollodorus of Damascus, 2nd century CE) more available to a wide audience. | |
| 296 | ||
| 297 | Barry, William D. “Roof Tiles and Urban Violence in the Ancient World.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 37.1 (1996): 55–74. | |
| 298 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 299 | Fascinating article on a common element of urban warfare in antiquity. | |
| 300 | Find this resource: | |
| 301 | Campbell, Duncan B. Besieged: Siege Warfare in the Ancient World. Oxford: Osprey, 2006. | |
| 302 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 303 | Well illustrated with pictures, maps, and diagrams, this book combines and expands some of this author’s previous treatments of siege warfare published by Osprey. | |
| 304 | Find this resource: | |
| 305 | Whitehead, David, ed. and trans. Apollodorus Mechanicus, Siege-matters (Πολιορκη&tgr;ικά). Historia Einzelschriften 216. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010. | |
| 306 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 307 | Apollodorus’s treatise describes various ways to attack different types of walls and other obstacles. Here Whitehead does not offer a full historical analysis, but he usefully edits the Greek text, detects likely Byzantine interpolations, and provides an English translation on facing pages. | |
| 308 | Find this resource: | |
| 309 | Ziolkowski, Adam. “Urbs direpta, or How the Romans Sacked Cities.” In War and Society in the Roman World. Edited by John Rich and Graham Shipley, 69–91. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. | |
| 310 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 311 | Drawing especially on Livy and Tacitus, Ziolkowski brutally describes how postsiege sacks of cities tended to play out, and considers the “rules” governing such episodes. He argues that Polybius’s account of the sack of New Carthage (10.15–16) in 209 BCE is too orderly and unrealistic to be a model Roman sack. | |
| 312 | Find this resource: | |
| 313 | Defeat | |
| 314 | ||
| 315 | The Roman army did not win every battle, and often suffered heavy casualties even in victory. How did Rome persist despite such setbacks? Daly 2002 and Murdoch 2006 each study Roman warfare in the context of a particular defeat. Rosenstein 1990 and Turner 2010 broadly analyze Roman society to ascertain how it handled military defeat. | |
| 316 | ||
| 317 | Daly, G. Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. London: Routledge, 2002. | |
| 318 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 319 | Daly describes the lead-up to the infamous battle, traditional scholarly interpretations about the course of events, and the critical interpretation of our primary sources (especially Polybius). | |
| 320 | Find this resource: | |
| 321 | Murdoch, Adrian. Rome’s Greatest Defeat: Massacre in Teutoburg Forest. Stroud, UK: History Press, 2006. | |
| 322 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 323 | Well-written but inadequately illustrated analysis of the circumstances around Arminius’s defeat of the Romans at Kalkriese in 9 CE. | |
| 324 | Find this resource: | |
| 325 | Rosenstein, Nathan. Imperatores victi: Military Defeats and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. | |
| 326 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 327 | A penetrating analysis showing that statesmen suffered no political damage as a result of losing battles. This is because Romans thought that what decided the outcome of battles was not generalship, but Rome’s standing with the gods and the quality of her men in any given army. Available online. | |
| 328 | Find this resource: | |
| 329 | Turner, Brian D. “Military Defeats, Casualties of War and the Success of Rome.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 2010. | |
| 330 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 331 | Draws on the work of John Lynn to understand the Roman discourse of war from c. 150 BCE to 230 CE, with chapters on burial and treatment of the dead, the effect of casualties on morale, how bad news was received at Rome, and problems with casualty figures in the sources. Available online. | |
| 332 | Find this resource: | |
| 333 | Discipline and Cohesion | |
| 334 | ||
| 335 | Phang 2008 offers a thorough and systematic exposition of Roman military discipline and the ideology surrounding it. Brice 2003 and Ash 1999 study breakdowns of discipline. MacMullen 1984 considers the social bonds within a legion, while Lendon 1997 focuses on honor as a vital factor in the Roman army and in Roman society as a whole. | |
| 336 | ||
| 337 | Ash, Rhiannon. Ordering Anarchy: Armies and Leaders in Tacitus’ Histories. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. | |
| 338 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 339 | Those who want a more direct, straightforward accountant of the years 68–69 should keep to Gwyn Morgan’s or Kenneth Wellesley’s treatments. Ash’s study is very literary in nature, looking for echoes of other authors and reasons of art to explain Tacitus’s narrative of the messy transition between Nero and the Flavians. | |
| 340 | Find this resource: | |
| 341 | Brice, Lee L. “Holding a Wolf by the Ears: Mutiny and Unrest in the Roman Military, 44 BC–AD 68.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 2003. | |
| 342 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 343 | Shows that military unrest was more of a problem than is often supposed, and draws on military sociology and social psychology to classify and analyze different kinds of unrest and insubordination. Brice does not cover the disorders amid the civil wars of 68–69 CE, on which see Ash 1999. | |
| 344 | Find this resource: | |
| 345 | Lendon, J. E. Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. | |
| 346 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 347 | Brilliantly written study of honor as the currency of authority in the Roman Empire, especially among emperors and elites. But chapter 5 (pp. 237–266) on the Roman army shows the importance of honor in that institution, with material on loyalty, the army as community, honor and shame as motivating forces, and rivalries between soldiers. | |
| 348 | Find this resource: | |
| 349 | MacMullen, Ramsey. “The Legion as a Society.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 33.4 (1984): 440–456. | |
| 350 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 351 | An early and signal attempt to imagine the sort of bonds men formed in camp life and in battle. Reprinted in MacMullen’s Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 225–235. | |
| 352 | Find this resource: | |
| 353 | Phang, Sarah Elise. Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. | |
| 354 | DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511497872Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 355 | An intelligent, detailed, and far-ranging study of disciplina. | |
| 356 | Find this resource: | |
| 357 | Intelligence, Communications, and Transport | |
| 358 | ||
| 359 | Austin and Rankov 1995 and Sheldon 2005 both study intelligence over a lengthy time period and in the broad sense of espionage, military intelligence, and domestic surveillance. Under the emperors, Rome developed a state infrastructure to send messages, messengers, and later goods across the empire; this is the system that would eventually be called the cursus publicus. (This term is commonly applied today to the system through its entire history, despite the fact that this phrase was not used until Late Antiquity; cursus publicus is sometimes misleadingly translated as “public post.”) Kolb 2000 and Kolb 2001 describe official communications and the transport system in detail; Mitchell 1976 highlights instances of misuse of public transport resources on the part of soldiers. | |
| 360 | ||
| 361 | Austin, Norman J. E., and N. Boris Rankov. Exploratio: Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. | |
| 362 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 363 | A well-sourced study of intelligence (operational, strategic and tactical, foreign and domestic, political and military). The sources are unevenly distributed (in favor of the empire), but the authors should be commended for their ambitious scope. Careful attention here to seconded soldiers and governors’ staffs. | |
| 364 | Find this resource: | |
| 365 | Kolb, Anne. Transport und Nachrichtentransfer im römischen Reich. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. | |
| 366 | DOI: 10.1524/9783050048246Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 367 | Supersedes previous treatments of the so-called cursus publicus (state system of requisitioned transport). Kolb is attentive to the system’s use (and abuse) by officials and soldiers (of many different grades and designations). Kolb argues the cursus publicus was not identical to the army’s transport system (see also Kolb’s paper in Erdkamp 2002, cited under Socioeconomic Impact). | |
| 368 | Find this resource: | |
| 369 | Kolb, Anne. “Transport and Communication in the Roman State: The Cursus Publicus.” In Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire. Edited by Colin Adams and Ray Laurence, 95–105. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. | |
| 370 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 371 | Here Kolb describes (in English, and more briefly than in Kolb 2000, which is in German) some of the basic reasons behind Augustus’s creation of Rome’s state transport infrastructure (with military and intelligence relevance) and the way the system operated. | |
| 372 | Find this resource: | |
| 373 | Mitchell, Stephen. “Requisitioned Transport in the Roman Empire: A New Inscription from Pisidia.” Journal of Roman Studies 66 (1976): 106–131. | |
| 374 | DOI: 10.2307/299783Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 375 | Important material on soldiers’ abuse of the empire’s system of requisitioned transport. Soldiers traveling unsupervised, alone, or in small groups would often dishonestly “requisition” wagons, pack animals, fodder, hospitality, or local peasants as guides, claiming state business. | |
| 376 | Find this resource: | |
| 377 | Sheldon, Rose Mary. Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods, but Verify. London and New York: Frank Cass, 2005. | |
| 378 | DOI: 10.4324/9780203005569Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 379 | A trove of citations collecting evidence of intelligence gathering and of espionage; sometimes the author may overgeneralize or press the evidence too hard. On ancient espionage, Sheldon has also written Spies of the Bible (London: Greenhill, 2007), and Espionage in the Ancient World: An Annotated Bibliography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003). | |
| 380 | Find this resource: | |
| 381 | Logistics and Military Servants | |
| 382 | ||
| 383 | Erdkamp 1998 and Roth 1999 represent a valuable burst of interest in logistics. Thornburn 2003 studies camp followers, while Welwei 1988 studies slaves and the army. | |
| 384 | ||
| 385 | Erdkamp, Peter. Hunger and the Sword: Warfare and Food Supply in Roman Republican Wars (264–30 B.C.). Amsterdam: Gieben, 1998. | |
| 386 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 387 | An analysis of rationing and supply of Roman forces in the Republic. The book’s second part broadens the scope to the effect of war on civilian food supply. Subtopics include road building, taxes in kind, private trade, contractors (publicani), and requisitions. Lack of an index is a curious annoyance. | |
| 388 | Find this resource: | |
| 389 | Roth, Jonathan P. The Logistics of the Roman Army at War (264 B.C.–A.D. 235). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999. | |
| 390 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 391 | Written independently of Erdkamp 1998, the two works overlap to a considerable extent. Both see the First Punic War as the original impetus behind Rome’s learning to manage long supply lines. This book has the added advantage of covering the imperial era, which Roth handles well. | |
| 392 | Find this resource: | |
| 393 | Thornburn, John E. “Lixae and calones: Following the Roman Army.” Classical Bulletin 79.1 (2003): 47–61. | |
| 394 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 395 | Excellent article (replete with Latin jargon) on military servants (cooks, peddlers, foragers, baggage-train drivers, etc.) and the military advantages and disadvantages of having them around. Generals sometimes used them to make their armies appear bigger, thus deceiving enemies. Others contemned these camp followers and sought to maximize army mobility at their expense. | |
| 396 | Find this resource: | |
| 397 | Welwei, Karl-Wilhelm. Unfreie im antiken Kriegsdienst. Vol. 3, Rom. Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei 21. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1988. | |
| 398 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 399 | Final volume of a thorough treatment of ancient military service (broadly defined) on the part of “unfree” people. The first two volumes cover Athens and Sparta (Vol. 1) and the Hellenistic kingdoms (Vol. 2). | |
| 400 | Find this resource: | |
| 401 | The Army of the Roman Republic | |
| 402 | ||
| 403 | “The Roman Army” per se is a misnomer for the Republican period, because a standing, professional army did not take shape until the end of the 1st century BCE. Scholarship addressing the many changes Roman military service went through, from Rome’s earliest days to the collapse of the Republic, is divided into separate subsections: Italy, the Early Republic, and Manpower; The Middle Republic; The Punic Wars; Imperialism; and The Late Republic and Civil Wars. Readers are reminded to find more information on all these topics in the works cited under General Overviews, Reference Works, and Journals. | |
| 404 | ||
| 405 | Italy, the Early Republic, and Manpower | |
| 406 | ||
| 407 | Rome’s military domination of the Italian peninsula (south of the Po River) established it as a great power by the mid-3rd century BCE. Reconstructing Rome’s history before this point (the archaic monarchy, evolution of Rome’s military culture, development of the Republic, early expansion within Italy) is difficult in the extreme; one mainly has to sort through fairy-tale literary sources and archaeology’s mute stones. Forsythe 2005, a survey of early Rome, pays close attention to military matters, as does Cornell 1995. Salmon 1967 and Salmon 1970 cover two keys to Rome’s eventual mastery of Italy: its hard-fought and centuries-long suppression of the Samnites, and its establishment in Italy of several colonies (coloniae, strategically placed Roman agricultural communities, in no way comparable to modern European colonization). After war shifted outside of Italy during the Middle and Late Republic, the peninsula remained vital to Roman interests as a deep well of military manpower. At the same time, Rome’s overseas expansion and wars strained Roman society. Brunt 1971 is a classic analysis of how this pressure on Italian manpower played out; Rosenstein 2004 challenges the traditional consensus formed by works such as Arnold Toynbee’s Hannibal’s Legacy (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) and Brunt 1971. Sage 2008 digests and translates sources on Italy and the Roman Republic. | |
| 408 | ||
| 409 | Brunt, P. A. Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.–A.D. 14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. | |
| 410 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 411 | An exhaustive (and hardly readable) analysis of the population of Italy, its provision of soldiers for the armies, and the effects of war. From the preface: “The society and economy of ancient Italy were moulded by war, with its concomitants of conscription, confiscation, devastations, and endemic violence” (p. vii). | |
| 412 | Find this resource: | |
| 413 | Cornell, Tim J. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 B.C.). Routledge History of the Ancient World. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. | |
| 414 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 415 | Cornell is recognized as a leading scholar on early Rome, but some colleagues believe he is too trusting of the extant literary descriptions of early Rome. From a military perspective, the greatest strength of this volume is its narrative of Rome’s conquest of Italy. | |
| 416 | Find this resource: | |
| 417 | Forsythe, Gary. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. | |
| 418 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 419 | Shorter than Cornell 1995 and more critical of the early literary tradition. | |
| 420 | Find this resource: | |
| 421 | Rosenstein, Nathan. Rome at War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. | |
| 422 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 423 | Rosenstein analyzes military service, archaeological evidence, demography, and comparative data to challenge the canned scholarly consensus on developments leading to the Gracchan reforms (cycle of foreign wars, farmer impoverishment, growth of plantations, and slave labor in Italy). Rosenstein argues population growth outpaced the availability of good land. | |
| 424 | Find this resource: | |
| 425 | Sage, Michael M. The Republican Roman Army: A Sourcebook. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. | |
| 426 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 427 | On the Early Republic and Italy throughout the Republican era, see Sage’s first chapter, and selected parts of the other two. His selection of translated primary sources includes very ample commentary; minimal scholarly apparatus (e.g., only a list of suggested readings) is problematic for specialist readers. | |
| 428 | Find this resource: | |
| 429 | Salmon, Edward Togo. Samnium and the Samnites. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967. | |
| 430 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 431 | Extremely sympathetic to the Samnites, dismissive of Greek influence on them, and ignorant of recent archaeological finds, Salmon’s views have been revised by Emma Dench, Lukas Grossmann, and others. Nevertheless, this work remains a useful discussion of Rome’s great foes. | |
| 432 | Find this resource: | |
| 433 | Salmon, Edward Togo. Roman Colonization under the Republic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970. | |
| 434 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 435 | Salmon analyzes the military functions of Roman colonies in Italy, and their general impact on Roman military history. | |
| 436 | Find this resource: | |
| 437 | The Middle Republic | |
| 438 | ||
| 439 | In the wake of The Punic Wars, Rome’s overseas entanglements put Rome and her Italian allies under great stress. Sage 2008 offers a good miscellany of translated source excerpts and commentary. Richardson 1986 and Dobson 2008 describe one trouble zone in the Middle Republic, Spain, where Rome’s involvement reveals much about the military state of affairs in that era. Rome’s encounter with, and gradual conquest of, the Greek world is treated in Gruen 1984, Kallet-Marx 1995, and, more recently, Eckstein 2006 and Eckstein 2008. In response to Harris 1979 (cited under Imperialism), Eckstein argues that Rome was not more brutal or warlike than other societies, and was not exceptional in having to resort to war in a multipolar, anarchic world. Brennan 2000 is not only a magisterial study of one key office (the praetorship, which ranked below the consulship); within its nearly one thousand pages, one finds dozens of not so grandiose military challenges that called for the flexible appointment of lower-level military commands. | |
| 440 | ||
| 441 | Brennan, T. Corey. The Praetorship in the Roman Republic. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. | |
| 442 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 443 | Much more than military history, but large parts of this work read like a catalogue of Roman military needs in the Middle and Late Republic. What if Rome needed more than its two consuls and its few other officials to meet diverse, simultaneous challenges? Often, holders of praetorian power were the answer. | |
| 444 | Find this resource: | |
| 445 | Dobson, Michael J. The Army of the Roman Republic: The Second Century BC, Polybius and the Camps at Numantia, Spain. Oxford: Oxbow, 2008. | |
| 446 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 447 | Scrutinizes the archaeological excavations surrounding Roman military operations in Spain during the 130s BCE. Also provides an overview of the army as it was during the Middle Republic. | |
| 448 | Find this resource: | |
| 449 | Eckstein, Arthur M. Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. | |
| 450 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 451 | Makes sense of Roman foreign policy throughout the Early and Middle Republic in the context of wider Mediterranean history—especially classical and Hellenistic Greece. Eckstein draws on the modern realist school of international relations theory to restore agency to non-Romans in shaping Roman policy, arguing that Mediterranean anarchy drove Roman expansion. | |
| 452 | Find this resource: | |
| 453 | Eckstein, Arthur M. Rome Enters the Greek East: From Anarchy to Hierarchy in the Hellenistic Mediterranean, 230–170 BC. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. | |
| 454 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 455 | The title speaks for itself. Rome Enters the Greek East is a close, thorough analysis by one of the most insightful readers of Polybius. More chronologically and geographically focused than Eckstein 2006, but, like that work, modern “realist” geopolitical theory also informs this work, which also challenges Harris 1979 (see Imperialism). | |
| 456 | Find this resource: | |
| 457 | Gruen, Erich. The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. | |
| 458 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 459 | Analyzes the particular circumstances behind each of Rome’s major clashes with Greek states, down to the 140s BCE. In comparison with Harris 1979 (cited under Imperialism), Gruen highlights the relative lack of clearly understood and consistently aggressive imperialist policy on Rome’s part. Roman hegemony, meanwhile, did not wholly stifle Greek diplomatic and political traditions. | |
| 460 | Find this resource: | |
| 461 | Kallet-Marx, Robert Morstein. Hegemony to Empire: The Development of the Roman Imperium in the East from 148 to 62 B.C. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. | |
| 462 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 463 | Not a narrative history, but a detailed analysis (aimed at specialists) of Rome’s relationship with Greek states in the Aegean. Deriving from a dissertation supervised by Erich Gruen, Kallet-Marx’s book picks up chronologically where Gruen 1984 leaves off, but it lacks that work’s wider geographical scope. More diplomatic history than pure military history. Available as an e-book from UC Press. | |
| 464 | Find this resource: | |
| 465 | Richardson, John S. Hispaniae: Spain and the Development of Roman Imperialism, 218–82 BC. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986. | |
| 466 | DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511518591Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 467 | Careful study of Rome’s Spanish provinciae (with detail on that word’s use over time) and the several campaigns there; relevant to the Second Punic War, early Roman imperialism (where Richardson sees aggressive, defensive, and economic motives all at play), and Roman military history in general during the Middle Republic. | |
| 468 | Find this resource: | |
| 469 | Sage, Michael M. The Republican Roman Army: A Sourcebook. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. | |
| 470 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 471 | With a chapter each on the Early, Middle, and Late Republic, Sage laudably strives for a chronologically balanced collection of sources, i.e., Sage avoids letting a glut of selections on the Late Republic (where sources are fullest) dominate the book. The chapter on the Middle Republic is by far the longest. | |
| 472 | Find this resource: | |
| 473 | The Punic Wars | |
| 474 | ||
| 475 | Rome’s three wars against Carthage straddle the entire period of the Middle Republic, and form a crux in Roman military studies. They continue to attract the attention of nonspecialist readers, for whom new books—especially biographies of Hannibal—are frequently published. For reasons of space, books aimed at the popular market (e.g., recent works by Sir Nigel Bagnall, Robert Garland, and Adrian Goldsworthy) are reluctantly omitted from this section, and the selection attempts to highlight the publications that most advance specialist knowledge. Because of the lack of Carthaginian sources, it is hard to avoid a Rome-centric perspective, but Lancel 1995 and Hoyos 2003 focus on Carthage. For treatment of all three wars in one work, see Le Bohec 1996. Loreto 2007 studies the circumstances of the first war; Cornell 1996, Lazenby 1998, and Seibert 1993 focus on the second war. Astin 1967 is a detailed study of a key figure in the third war, who was also a transitional figure foreshadowing problems of the Late Republic. Rome’s momentous loss at Cannae continues to fascinate; see Battle. The Late Republic and Civil Wars has material pertinent to the third war, and the conflict with Carthage is certainly an important consideration in scholarship on Imperialism. The Punic Wars were an enormous challenge to the resources and supply systems of all the combatants; see also titles under Logistics and Military Servants. | |
| 476 | ||
| 477 | Astin, A. E. Scipio Aemilianus. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967. | |
| 478 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 479 | There is more of interest here than Scipio Aemilianus’s successful siege of Carthage in the Third Punic War; Astin also discusses Scipio’s Spanish campaigns, military recruitment, manpower, and Roman military thinking. | |
| 480 | Find this resource: | |
| 481 | Cornell, Tim J., N. Boris Rankov, and Philip Sabin, eds. The Second Punic War: A Reappraisal. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 67. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1996. | |
| 482 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 483 | A collection of strong papers: John Rich on the war’s origins, Louis Rawlings on warrior societies, Philip Sabin on the experience of battle and Hannibal’s tactical mastery, John Lazenby on Hannibal’s strategy, Boris Rankov on sea power, and Tim Cornell on the war’s impact on Italy. | |
| 484 | Find this resource: | |
| 485 | Hoyos, Dexter. Hannibal’s Dynasty: Power and Politics in the Western Mediterranean: 247–183 BC. London: Routledge, 2003. | |
| 486 | DOI: 10.4324/9780203417829Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 487 | Hoyos strives to understand the Carthaginian perspective, concentrating on Hannibal, eminent members of his family (the Barcids), and Carthage’s investments in Spain. Lack of maps is very regrettable. Hoyos is a major authority on the Punic Wars whose works include Unplanned Wars (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1998), on the causes of the first two wars. | |
| 488 | Find this resource: | |
| 489 | Lancel, Serge. Carthage: A History. Translated by Antonia Nevill. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. | |
| 490 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 491 | A well-illustrated history of Carthage from its foundation to its destruction in the Third Punic War. Originally published in French in 1992 (Paris: Fayard), Lancel’s work is informed by the author’s extensive archaeological knowledge. | |
| 492 | Find this resource: | |
| 493 | Lazenby, John F. Hannibal’s War: A Military History of the Second Punic War. Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1998. | |
| 494 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 495 | The Oklahoma paperback has a new preface (largely a judicious bibliographic overview), followed by Lazenby’s original (Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1978) straightforward account of the war. The same author has published a history of the First Punic War (London: UCL, 1996), written in a similar style. | |
| 496 | Find this resource: | |
| 497 | Le Bohec, Yann. Histoire militaire des guerres puniques. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1996. | |
| 498 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 499 | Detailed account of all three wars. | |
| 500 | Find this resource: | |
| 501 | Loreto, Luigi. La grande strategia di Roma nell’età della prima guerra punica (ca. 273–ca. 229a.C.): L’inizio di un paradosso. Naples, Italy: Jovene, 2007. | |
| 502 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 503 | This book, whose title translates as “the grand strategy of Rome in the era of the First Punic War (circa 273–229 BC): the beginning of a paradox” addresses macrostrategic forces surrounding that conflict, with material on naval power and application of modern strategic theorists (e.g., Mahan and Mackinder) to the 3rd century BCE. Lack of maps is most unfortunate. | |
| 504 | Find this resource: | |
| 505 | Seibert, Jakob. Hannibal. 2 vols. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993. | |
| 506 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 507 | In German. At more than a thousand pages, Seibert’s is the most thorough treatment of the subject, and more skeptical of Polybius than most. Volume 1 chronologically covers the Second Punic War (even aspects of it not directly related to Hannibal); Volume 2 (Forschungen zu Hannibal) is an immense bibliography. | |
| 508 | Find this resource: | |
| 509 | Imperialism | |
| 510 | ||
| 511 | What factors spurred Rome to expand when and where it did? Along with the related topic of grand strategy, this has been one of the most hotly debated elements of Rome’s military situation in recent decades. The matter of imperial expansion during the Republic, when there was no consistent or unified institutional leadership, is especially perplexing. Scholars have proffered fear of external threats as a factor behind so-called defensive imperialism (Badian 1968). Harris 1979, a critique of Badian’s position, perhaps reflects the progress of modern decolonization, focusing on evidence for Roman economic exploitation, as well as Rome’s culturally ingrained and aggressive militarism. Gruen 1984 critiques the notion that Roman greed for material benefit drove their imperial expansion. Rich 1993 aptly avoids monocausal explanations by weighing these factors together. Two recent collections gather evidence and varying interpretations to allow readers to form their own judgment: Erskine 2010 and the fuller Champion 2004. These two works have the added virtue of extending the discussion to include the imperial era (on which see Grand Strategy). | |
| 512 | ||
| 513 | Badian, Ernst. Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic. 2d ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968. | |
| 514 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 515 | Often assailed as too one-sided in attributing Roman expansion to defensive imperialism, this short book by a keen scholar can nevertheless be credited with setting the terms of the debate. Badian’s style is not always friendly to nonspecialists. | |
| 516 | Find this resource: | |
| 517 | Champion, Craige B. Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. | |
| 518 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 519 | Very valuable for the multiple perspectives it offers. Good material on the first few centuries CE, but overall coverage is weighted toward the Republican era. Includes an introductory overview by Champion and Arthur Eckstein, editorial introductions to selected readings by major scholars, and a selection of pertinent primary sources in translation. | |
| 520 | Find this resource: | |
| 521 | Erskine, Andrew. Roman Imperialism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. | |
| 522 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 523 | Part of Edinburgh’s handy Debates and Documents in Ancient History series, this rather short book is perhaps more approachable than Champion 2004. The first part of the book contains overview essays by Erskine, followed by seventy-plus pages of chronologically jumbled primary sources; also features a timeline, glossary, and list of further readings. | |
| 524 | Find this resource: | |
| 525 | Gruen, Erich. “Material Rewards and the Drive for Empire.” In Imperialism of Mid-Republican Rome. Edited by William V. Harris, 59–82. Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome 29. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984. | |
| 526 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 527 | Concise and well argued, Gruen shows that the sources do not support the assumption that Romans were primarily motivated by the prospect of material gain. This stance moves the discussion back toward the position taken in Badian 1968, following the vehement critique of Harris 1979. Reprinted in Champion 2004. | |
| 528 | Find this resource: | |
| 529 | Harris, William V. War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327–70 B.C. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979. | |
| 530 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 531 | Forceful rebuttal of defensive imperialism. Harris’s model describes Roman imperialism as fundamentally aggressive, in part because of Rome’s culturally ingrained militarism. Just as Badian 1968 set the terms of debate, this rather one-sided book has become a foil against which other scholars sharpen their ideas (see Eckstein 2006, Eckstein 2008, Gruen 1984, and Richardson 1986, all cited under The Middle Republic). | |
| 532 | Find this resource: | |
| 533 | Rich, John. “Fear, Greed and Glory: The Causes of Roman War-Making in the Middle Republic.” In War and Society in the Roman World. Edited by John Rich and Graham Shipley, 38–68. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. | |
| 534 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 535 | A balanced and judicious analysis, rightly showing that no single factor drove Roman expansion, which was, after all, a lengthy and inconsistent process. Reprinted in Champion 2004. | |
| 536 | Find this resource: | |
| 537 | The Late Republic and Civil Wars | |
| 538 | ||
| 539 | Among the many riches historians have offered to readers interested in this crucial period of Roman history, Brunt 1988, Gabba 1976, Gruen 1974, and Syme 1952 stand out for their compelling treatments of the era. The figure of Julius Caesar is inescapable in the study of the military history of the Late Republic; he continues to fascinate, and much ink is still spilled in his honor. Much of what is written about Julius Caesar is of little value, but Gelzer 1968 and Goldsworthy 2006 are exceptions. Finally, Osgood 2006 focuses on Octavian’s early career and the Second Triumvirate (44–30 BCE). These are not works of pure military history, rather they are broader studies of men (from destitute recruits to dictators) in an age shaped by war. | |
| 540 | ||
| 541 | Brunt, P. A. The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. | |
| 542 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 543 | Begins with a ninety-page overview of the Republic’s decline and fall; of particular note here is chapter 5, “The Army and the Land in the Roman Revolution,” with extra material on recruitment zones and settlements of veterans. Also offers essays on concepts such as liberty and political alliances. | |
| 544 | Find this resource: | |
| 545 | Gabba, Emilio. Republican Rome, the Army, and the Allies. Translated by P. J. Cuff. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. | |
| 546 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 547 | Translations of this Italian scholar’s most important articles. Significant here are Gabba’s thoughts on the increasing specialization and professionalism of the men serving in Rome’s legions, from Marius to Augustus, with good material on Marius’s enrollment of poor volunteers, challenges of veteran settlement, and career advancement of ordinary Italians through military service. | |
| 548 | Find this resource: | |
| 549 | Gelzer, Matthias. Caesar: Politician and Statesman. 6th ed. Translated by Peter Needham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968. | |
| 550 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 551 | This is perhaps the best single book on Julius Caesar, as judicious in its military analyses as in its astute political observations. The inclusion of footnotes makes Gelzer’s biography more valuable than Meier’s classic Caesar, which lacks scholarly apparatus. | |
| 552 | Find this resource: | |
| 553 | Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. | |
| 554 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 555 | Highly readable and thoroughly contextualized account of Caesar’s career. As one would expect from Goldsworthy, Caesar’s military career is excellently illuminated, with good maps and plans. Though the scholarly apparatus is somewhat minimal, endnote references point the reader to the relevant sources. | |
| 556 | Find this resource: | |
| 557 | Gruen, Erich. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. | |
| 558 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 559 | Gruen challenges the dominant paradigm of the Republic’s supposed doom. Much of this lengthy analysis concerns law and politics, but the breakdown of peace and security is the inescapable climax (chapters 9–11; note also Appendix III on irregular military commands). | |
| 560 | Find this resource: | |
| 561 | Osgood, Josiah. Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. | |
| 562 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 563 | A history of the second triumviral period (44–30 BCE), featuring the political and military machinations that brought Octavian sole power. Osgood weaves together an impressive array of sources (including art, coinage, and poetry) to communicate the spirit of the age that saw the civil wars that destroyed the Republic and forged the Empire. | |
| 564 | Find this resource: | |
| 565 | Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Corrected ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952. | |
| 566 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 567 | Classic, brilliant analysis of the transition between Republic and Empire, focusing on elites as the driving force. Although largely a political history, The Roman Revolution does contain good material on the nature of and control over the armies, as well as the problem of private armies. First published in 1939 (Oxford: Clarendon). | |
| 568 | Find this resource: | |
| 569 | The Imperial Roman Army | |
| 570 | ||
| 571 | Octavian Augustus’s establishment of the principate involved the development of a professional army; the ensuing age of Pax Romana also coincides with the proliferation of evidence about the Roman army. Various good overviews exist, such as Le Bohec 1994 and Webster 1998 (also see the works cited under General Overviews). Campbell 1994 assembles and translates a wide array of texts and documents in a model sourcebook. Dobson 1986 sketches the nature of the Roman army as an institution; war may have been its main purpose, but it certainly was not its main activity during these years. Inscriptions by and about Roman imperial soldiers have been the subject of exhaustive study, especially by British and German scholars from the late 20th century onward. In this vein, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of the Mavors Institute for Ancient Military History, which has been guided by the great Michael P. Speidel and his nephew Michael Alexander Speidel. Although the project nominally covers all ancient military history, at its heart is the study of the Roman army as an institution. The series Mavors Roman Army Researches usefully collects disparate papers by important European scholars of military history (J. F. Gilliam being the sole American). | |
| 572 | ||
| 573 | Campbell, J. Brian. The Roman Army, 31 BC–AD 337: A Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. | |
| 574 | DOI: 10.4324/9780203312339Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 575 | An excellent selection of sources illustrating recruitment, training, centurions and senior officers, the emperors’ dealings with soldiers, politics, the army in the field, life in and around the camps, construction work, religion, soldiers and civilians, and veterans. The later Roman army is spottily treated in the final chapter. | |
| 576 | Find this resource: | |
| 577 | Dobson, Brian. “The Roman Army: Wartime or Peacetime Army?” In Heer und Integrationspolitik: Die römischen Militärdiplome als historische Quelle. Edited by Werner Eck and Hartmut Wolff, 10–25. Cologne: Böhlau, 1986. | |
| 578 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 579 | To answer the question posed by the title, Dobson shows that most Roman soldiers of the principate never saw battle. The Roman army was a peacetime institution. Reprinted in D. J. Breeze and B. Dobson, Roman Officers and Frontiers(Mavors 10; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993), pp. 113–128. | |
| 580 | Find this resource: | |
| 581 | Le Bohec, Yann. The Imperial Roman Army. London: B. T. Batsford, 1994. | |
| 582 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 583 | A fairly traditional textbook. The author reviews the army’s organization and activity during the empire’s first three centuries. This is a translation of the 1989 French edition of Armée romaine sous le Haut-Empire, which was republished in a third augmented edition by Picard (Paris) in 2002. | |
| 584 | Find this resource: | |
| 585 | Mavors Roman Army Researches. 16 vols. Basel, Switzerland: Mavors Institute for Ancient Military History, 1984–2009. | |
| 586 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 587 | Most papers are in German or English. Featured authors include both Speidels, Géza Alföldy, Eric Birley, Giovanni Forni (Italian), Hubert Devijver, András Mócsy, David Breeze, Brian Dobson, Dietwulf Baatz, Lawrence Keppie, Oliver Stoll, and Yann Le Bohec (French). These volumes are a must for the serious study of the Roman army. Volumes 1–4 and 6 published by Gieben (Amsterdam), volumes 5 and 7–16 published by Franz Steiner (Stuttgart). | |
| 588 | Find this resource: | |
| 589 | Webster, Graham. The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries A.D. 3d ed. Introduction by Hugh Elton. Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1998. | |
| 590 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 591 | A good, if dated, (the first edition appeared in 1969) overview, with material on frontiers, camps, forts, tactics, signaling, and religion. No appendices, but well indexed. Elton’s new introduction is bibliographic in nature. | |
| 592 | Find this resource: | |
| 593 | Grand Strategy | |
| 594 | ||
| 595 | The publication of Luttwak 1976 generated a great deal of debate on the extent of strategic planning (grand or otherwise) on the part of the empire’s military leaders. Some scholars (e.g., Arther Ferrill and Everett Wheeler [see Wheeler 1993]) have supported many aspects of Luttwak’s views, and he has recently (Luttwak 2009) extended his analysis to the Byzantine Empire without backing down from his previous points. Scholarly opinion, however, has been mixed, and debate sometimes degenerates into semantics (especially “grand” strategy versus basic strategy; Whittaker 1996 is fairly balanced). Isaac 1992 subjects Luttwak’s views to a thorough regional study, while Mattern 1999 benefits from the author’s superior knowledge of Roman civilization and worldview in undermining some of Luttwak’s assumptions. On grand strategy (or lack thereof) during the Republic, see Imperialism. | |
| 596 | ||
| 597 | Isaac, Benjamin. Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. | |
| 598 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 599 | Enriched by knowledge of Israeli archaeology and Aramaic sources, Isaac argues that Rome’s eastern military frontiers were not primarily defensive, but instead designed to threaten Parthia and control the civilian population. This book is much more than a refutation of Luttwak 1976; it also contains material on policing, civil military relations, and comparative history. | |
| 600 | Find this resource: | |
| 601 | Luttwak, Edward. The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. to the Third. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. | |
| 602 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 603 | Studying the placement of Roman forces, Luttwak assumes that Roman leaders consciously planned where their frontiers should be, and rationally allocated resources to defend them. His perspective is not that of a professional classicist, but of a modern Cold War strategist, and his work continues to provoke discussion among ancient military specialists. | |
| 604 | Find this resource: | |
| 605 | Luttwak, Edward. The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. | |
| 606 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 607 | Although most of the material in this book falls outside of this article’s chronological focus, chapter 10 (“The Classical Inheritance,” pp. 239–255) returns to themes relevant to the earlier empire. | |
| 608 | Find this resource: | |
| 609 | Mattern, Susan P. Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. | |
| 610 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 611 | Mattern intelligently reconstructs the worldview of Rome’s decision-making elite—their values, knowledge base, and motivations. These considerations, the relatively small size of the army, and the nature of geographical knowledge at the time complicate simple assumptions about their supposed grand strategical thinking. (Important material also on the army’s cost: pp. 123–149.) | |
| 612 | Find this resource: | |
| 613 | Wheeler, Everett. “Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy.” Journal of Military History 57 (1993): 7–41, 215–240. | |
| 614 | DOI: 10.2307/2944221Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 615 | A forceful, detailed critique of the critique of Luttwak 1976 in Isaac 1992. | |
| 616 | Find this resource: | |
| 617 | Whittaker, C. R. “Where Are the Frontiers Now?” In The Roman Army in the East, Edited by David L. Kennedy, 25–41. JRA Supplementary Series 18. Ann Arbor, MI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1996. | |
| 618 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 619 | A critique of Wheeler 1993, which critiques Isaac 1992 (itself a critique of Luttwak 1976). Whittaker draws on his expert knowledge of Roman frontiers and strikes a moderate balance between the extremes of Luttwak, Arther Ferrill, and Everett Wheeler, on the one hand, and Isaac on the other. | |
| 620 | Find this resource: | |
| 621 | The Praetorian Guard and Related Forces | |
| 622 | ||
| 623 | More work on the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard is sorely needed (their commanders, the Praetorian prefects, have fared better). The best work on the guard’s origins and early history is Bingham 1997, but it only covers the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Durry 1938 is still the authoritative account on the imperial guard’s whole history. Rankov 1994 is addressed to popular audiences. (See also Campbell 1984, cited under Command; it is good on all aspects of the emperor’s relationship with his troops, certainly including Praetorians.) Fuhrmann 2011 has material on the policing duties of Praetorians and other Rome-based soldiers, and Bingham 1999 describes policing tasks at Rome’s spectacle entertainments. Two related institutions—the cavalry attached to the Praetorian Guard and the so-called German bodyguards—are treated in Speidel 1994 and Bellen 1981, respectively. | |
| 624 | ||
| 625 | Bellen, Heinz. Die germanische Leibwache der römischen Kaiser des julisch-claudischen Hauses. Wiesbaden, West Germany: Steiner, 1981. | |
| 626 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 627 | A study of the “German” bodyguards who were the group most directly responsible for the emperors’ personal safety. It seems the early emperors trusted outsiders for this task because it would be hard for conspirators to corrupt them. | |
| 628 | Find this resource: | |
| 629 | Bingham, Sandra. “The Praetorian Guard in the Political and Social Life of Julio-Claudian Rome.” PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 1997. | |
| 630 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 631 | An excellent dissertation written under the direction of Anthony A. Barrett, with a careful study of previous scholarship, the guards’ origins (including Republican-era antecedents), and their role in the early empire. It is more readable than some examples of this genre, and the increasing availability of dissertations online makes it widely accessible. | |
| 632 | Find this resource: | |
| 633 | Bingham, Sandra. “Security at the Games in the Early Imperial Period.” Échos du monde classique/Classical Views 18.3 (1999): 369–380. | |
| 634 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 635 | Explains the involvement of urban cohorts and Praetorians in security at Rome’s spectacle entertainments. | |
| 636 | Find this resource: | |
| 637 | Durry, Marcel. Les cohortes prétoriennes. Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 146. Paris: Boccard, 1938. | |
| 638 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 639 | Sadly, this is still the most comprehensive historical study of the guard, with material on recruitment, organization, service conditions, and issues of command; uneven coverage of their duties in Rome and Italy. | |
| 640 | Find this resource: | |
| 641 | Fuhrmann, Christopher J. Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. | |
| 642 | DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737840.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 643 | Gives examples of Praetorians safeguarding the emperor and his family, killing their rivals, and maintaining imperial stability in Rome. This book also shows that Praetorians were assigned important police duties outside of Rome, especially in Italy. | |
| 644 | Find this resource: | |
| 645 | Rankov, Boris. Guardians of the Roman Empire. Illustrated by Richard Hook. Oxford: Osprey, 1994. | |
| 646 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 647 | Brief and well-illustrated booklet by a very knowledgeable military historian. | |
| 648 | Find this resource: | |
| 649 | Speidel, Michael P. Riding for Caesar: The Roman Emperors’ Horse Guards. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. | |
| 650 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 651 | Readable, compelling, beautifully produced and illustrated, and written by a major authority in the field. The only problem is that Speidel may be wrong to conflate different groups (Batavi and Germani corporis custodes; equites singulares Augusti) into one institution. | |
| 652 | Find this resource: | |
| 653 | Cavalry, Auxiliary, and Naval Forces | |
| 654 | ||
| 655 | Citizen infantry dominate the Roman military tradition, and the study thereof. But other forces were important, too. During the Early Empire, noncitizen provincial auxilia provided almost as many infantry as the citizen legions. (Prag 2007 is included as a case study of auxiliary soldiers in the beginning of Rome’s imperial system.) Auxiliary forces came to dominate cavalry and naval service. Spaul 1994, Spaul 2000, and Spaul 2002 collect the epigraphic evidence for these various types of auxiliary units. On the navy, Reddé 1986 is exhaustive, while de Souza 1999 studies one facet of maritime combat. Cuvigny 2003 gives insight into the work performed by a small unit of auxilia posted in the Egyptian desert. | |
| 656 | ||
| 657 | Cuvigny, Hélène, ed. Praesidia du désert de Bérénice. Vol. 1, La Route de Myos Hormos: L’armée romaine dans le désert oriental d’Egypte. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2003. | |
| 658 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 659 | Continued in Volume 2: Ostraca de Krokodilô: La correspondance militaire et sa circulation, O. Krok. 1–151 (2005). Well-illustrated study of archaeological findings from forts on a road into Egypt’s eastern desert. Archaeological reports dominate Volume 1 (in which, note chapter 6 on intervisible watchtowers), while Volume 2 centers on the routine military documents and incidental letters (preserved on ostraka) concerning a small squad of auxilia. | |
| 660 | Find this resource: | |
| 661 | de Souza, Philip. Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. | |
| 662 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 663 | A good history of piracy, and of state efforts to suppress it. | |
| 664 | Find this resource: | |
| 665 | Prag, Jonathan R. W. “Auxilia and Gymnasia: A Sicilian Model of Roman Imperialism.” Journal of Roman Studies 97 (2007): 68–100. | |
| 666 | DOI: 10.3815/000000007784016061Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 667 | Following the Second Punic War, few Roman citizen soldiers served in Sicily. Prag studies the military activity of local auxiliary soldiers in Rome’s oldest province, and ties the abundance of gymnasia on the island to pre-Roman traditions of military culture. | |
| 668 | Find this resource: | |
| 669 | Reddé, Michel. Mare nostrum: Les infrastructures, le dispositif et l’histoire de la marine militaire sous l’Empire romain. Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 260. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1986. | |
| 670 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 671 | Unmatched for its deep coverage of naval affairs in the Roman Empire, this is a revision of the author’s Sorbonne doctoral thesis, with some of the faults that generally mar French thèses (namely length and excessive debate with previous scholarship). | |
| 672 | Find this resource: | |
| 673 | Spaul, John E. H. Ala2: The Auxiliary Cavalry Units of the Pre-Diocletianic Imperial Roman Army. Andover, UK: Nectoreca, 1994. | |
| 674 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 675 | An updated catalogue and study of auxiliary cavalry units, expanding upon Conrad Cichorius’s 1893 article “Ala” in the Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopädie; like Spaul 2000, this work is heavily epigraphic and addressed to specialists. | |
| 676 | Find this resource: | |
| 677 | Spaul, John E. H. Cohors2: The Evidence for and a Short History of the Auxiliary Infantry Units of the Imperial Roman Army. British Archaeological Reports, International Series, 841. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000. | |
| 678 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 679 | As in Spaul 1994, the conceit of the superscript “2” in the title is that this work is an updated, expanded edition of one of Conrad Cichorius’s Pauly-Wissowa articles (“Cohors,” 1900); it deserves a less modest title. Here too he provides a full, useful, and judiciously arranged catalogue of known auxiliary cohorts. | |
| 680 | Find this resource: | |
| 681 | Spaul, John E. H. Classes Imperii Romani: An Epigraphic Examination of the Men of the Imperial Roman Navy. Andover, UK: Nectoreca, 2002. | |
| 682 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 683 | Much briefer than Spaul’s other two catalogues (Spaul 2000 and Spaul 1994), but like Spaul 1994, rather hard to find. | |
| 684 | Find this resource: | |
| 685 | Socioeconomic Impact | |
| 686 | ||
| 687 | De Blois and Lo Cascio 2007, Erdkamp 2002, and Goldsworthy and Hayes 1999 all collect papers on several aspects of the Roman army, its economic ramifications, and its social impact. Campbell 2002 is a wide-ranging consideration of the army and Roman society. | |
| 688 | ||
| 689 | Campbell, Brian. War and Society in Imperial Rome, 31 BC–AD 284. Warfare and History. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. | |
| 690 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 691 | This book considers the nature of war in Roman times, and the place of war and soldiers in Roman society. Material on recruitment, social background, morale, tactics, wounds, casualties, politics, and public opinion. | |
| 692 | Find this resource: | |
| 693 | De Blois, Lukas, and Lo Cascio, Elio, eds. The Impact of the Roman Army (200 BC–AD 476): Economic, Social, Political, Religious, and Cultural Aspects. Impact of Empire 6. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007. | |
| 694 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 695 | Most of the articles are written in English. Offers regional studies (Rome/Italy, Britain, Germany, Judaea/Syria, Africa); examines the role of the emperor, economic impact, supply, and levying of soldiers; and finishes with a section of papers devoted to the 3rd century CE (one of de Blois’s top interests). | |
| 696 | Find this resource: | |
| 697 | Erdkamp, Paul, ed. The Roman Army and the Economy. Amsterdam: Gieben, 2002. | |
| 698 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 699 | Collection of (mostly English) papers on logistics, supply, and transport, some with a regional focus. Kolb’s brief paper, “Army and Transport” (pp. 161–169), describes the army’s own internal transport system, plus its use of private contractors and the state cursus publicus. | |
| 700 | Find this resource: | |
| 701 | Goldsworthy, Adrian, and Ian Hayes, eds. The Roman Army as a Community: Including Papers of a Conference Held at Birkbeck College, University of London on 11–12 January 1997. JRA Supplementary Series 34. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999. | |
| 702 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 703 | An interesting array of papers; highlights include Boris Rankov on governors’ military staffs, Mark Hassall on married quarters, Lindsay Allason-Jones on women and the army in Britain, Eberhard Sauer on a military spa, J. J. Wilkes on Danubian recruitment, M. C. Bishop on garrisons, Anthony King on military diet, Haynes on auxilia, and Goldsworthy on the siege of Jerusalem. | |
| 704 | Find this resource: | |
| 705 | Soldiers as Administrators and Police, and Civil-Military Relations | |
| 706 | ||
| 707 | Unlike ancient China, early imperial Rome lacked a large, trained civilian bureaucracy to administer its provinces. In the Roman Empire, the army was the only large institution consisting of trained, full-time professionals regularly paid by the state. As such, Roman soldiers found themselves performing numerous state functions (Eich 2010, Nelis-Clément 2000), such as building public works, administering mines (Hirt 2010), and policing civilian areas (Fuhrmann 2011, Peachin 2007). These administrative duties are also significant because they increased contact between soldiers and the civilian population, a dynamic that sometimes led to the former abusing the latter. Phang 2001 is a thorough, expert study of soldiers’ sex lives, especially addressing the awkward legal situation of soldiers who formed monogamous attachments and had children while in service, despite the early-imperial legal ban on soldiers marrying. See also Regional Studies. | |
| 708 | ||
| 709 | Eich, Armin, ed. Die Verwaltung der kaiserzeitlichen römischen Armee: Studien für Hartmut Wolff. Historia Einzelschriften 211. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010. | |
| 710 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 711 | Eich and his co-contributors discuss both the internal administration of the Roman army and the army’s role in administering the empire. All papers are in German. | |
| 712 | Find this resource: | |
| 713 | Fuhrmann, Christopher J. Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. | |
| 714 | DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737840.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 715 | Collects and analyzes evidence for soldiers conducting police duties among civilians; argues that the Roman authorities and their subjects frequently employed military police to achieve their aims, despite frequent problems with corruption and abuse of civilians (on which see especially pp. 228–237). | |
| 716 | Find this resource: | |
| 717 | Hirt, Alfred M. Imperial Mines and Quarries in the Roman World: Organizational Aspects, 27 BC–AD 235. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. | |
| 718 | DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572878.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 719 | Lengthy, detailed, but clear treatment of mine and quarry administration, in which soldiers were heavily involved. | |
| 720 | Find this resource: | |
| 721 | Nelis-Clément, Jocelyne. Les beneficiarii: Militaires et administrateurs au service de l’empire (Ier s. a.C.–VIe s. p.C.). Bordeaux, France: Ausonius, 2000. | |
| 722 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 723 | A beneficiarius was a skilled, middle-grade soldier. Epigraphic discoveries show they were stationed all over the empire—but why? Their primary function seems not to have been security, but bureaucratic: in some places, for instance, they helped administer the customs process, or mines and public works. | |
| 724 | Find this resource: | |
| 725 | Peachin, Michael. “Petition to a Centurion from the NYU Papyrus Collection and the Question of Informal Adjudication Performed by Soldiers.” In Papyri in Memory of P.J. Sijpesteijn. Edited by A. J. B. Sirks and K. A. Worp, 79–97. American Studies in Papyrology 40. Oakville, CT: American Society of Papyrologists, 2007. | |
| 726 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 727 | This gem is hidden in a specialist papyrological publication. It thoroughly collects and analyzes cases where civilian crime-victims petition outposted centurions, hoping for redress. Rome posted many soldiers as police or administrators in civilian areas, but probably did not intend them to act as a police judiciaire. | |
| 728 | Find this resource: | |
| 729 | Phang, Sara Elise. The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 B.C.–A.D. 235): Law and Family in the Imperial Army. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001. | |
| 730 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 731 | The book’s title sells its contents a bit short, because it offers fascinating material on homosexual liaisons and rape. There is also material pertinent to civil-military relations in Phang 2008 (cited under Discipline and Cohesion). | |
| 732 | Find this resource: | |
| 733 | Regional Studies | |
| 734 | ||
| 735 | For reasons of space, the works in this section represent an extremely selective sample, with Mattingly 2006 on Britain, Nicolay 2007 on the Rhine frontier, Le Roux 1982 on Spain, Coulston 2000 on the city of Rome, Le Bohec 1989 on Africa, Brélaz 2005 on Asia Minor, Pollard 2000 on Syria, and Alston 1995 on Egypt. Also note Isaac 1992 (cited under Grand Strategy). | |
| 736 | ||
| 737 | Alston, Richard. Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. | |
| 738 | DOI: 10.4324/9780203272633Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 739 | Uses rich details available from papyri to untangle the status and impact of soldiers in the Roman province of Egypt, shedding light on recruitment and nonbattle operations (especially policing and administration; the extent of such activities in other areas remains murky). Appendices track known military units in Roman Egypt and their archaeological remains. | |
| 740 | Find this resource: | |
| 741 | Brélaz, Cédric. La sécurité publique en Asie Mineure sous le Principat (Ier–IIIème s. ap. J.-C.): Institutions municipales et institutions impériales dans l’Orient romain. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe, 2005. | |
| 742 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 743 | As a regional study of Roman maintenance of security by a first-rate epigrapher, this is the best book of its kind. Ample details on and judicious conjectures about the activities of outposted soldiers and the attitudes of governors and emperors, followed by thorough appendices for specialists. | |
| 744 | Find this resource: | |
| 745 | Coulston, Jon. “‘Armed and Belted Men’: The Soldiery in Imperial Rome.” In Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City. Edited by Jon Coulston and Hazel Dodge, 76–118. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2000. | |
| 746 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 747 | A paper of rare high quality, which conveys the great number and variety of soldiers stationed in Rome, what they did, where they worked and slept, the art they inspired, and what it was like to deal with them on the street. Most accessible to specialists who have a good knowledge of the city’s topography. | |
| 748 | Find this resource: | |
| 749 | Le Bohec, Yann. La troisième légion Auguste. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique, 1989. | |
| 750 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 751 | Comprehensive study of the Third Augustan Legion in North Africa; Le Bohec has published separate studies of the region’s auxiliary units. See also the multiauthor Mavors Roman Army Researches (cited under The Imperial Roman Army); Volume 14 contains Bohec’s papers on the army in Gaul and Africa. | |
| 752 | Find this resource: | |
| 753 | Le Roux, Patrick. L’armée romaine et l’organisation des provinces ibériques d’Auguste à l’invasion de 409. Paris: Boccard, 1982. | |
| 754 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 755 | An exhaustive analysis of the imperial Roman army in Spain. | |
| 756 | Find this resource: | |
| 757 | Mattingly, David J. An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC–AD 409. London: Allan Lane, 2006. | |
| 758 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 759 | Somewhat hostile analysis of Rome’s domination (or exploitation) of Britain, marshaling archaeological evidence to reveal the interplay among military, rural, and urban communities. Lacks photographs, notes, and full bibliography (offering instead a bibliographic essay). Those interested in the Roman army in Britain should also consult the journal Britannia and the British Archaeological Reports series. | |
| 760 | Find this resource: | |
| 761 | Nicolay, Johan. Armed Batavians: Use and Significance of Weaponry and Horse Gear from Non-Military Contexts in the Rhine Delta (50 BC to AD 450). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. | |
| 762 | DOI: 10.5117/9789053562536Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 763 | Investigates surviving military items (amply illustrated) that Batavians brought back to their homeland, thus elucidating the social weight of veteran status on the Rhine frontier. On the Batavians, also note Nico Roymans’s Ethnic Identity and Imperial Power: The Batavians in the Early Roman Empire (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004). | |
| 764 | Find this resource: | |
| 765 | Pollard, Nigel. Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. | |
| 766 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 767 | A study grounded in archaeological evidence, with valuable material on ethnicity and the economic impact of the army. | |
| 768 | Find this resource: | |
| 769 | The Later Roman Army | |
| 770 | ||
| 771 | The few selections in this section unfortunately cannot do justice to major recent work by scholars such as Hugh Elton, A. D. Lee, and Michael Whitby (all of whom are fairly well represented in the various collections, series, and journals cited elsewhere in this article. Readers should also consult Éric Rebillard’s Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article “Roman History: Late Antiquity,” and M. C. Bishop’s Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article “Roman Military” for more suggested readings; however, these may require a separate subscription). Jones 1964 is a seminal work covering several aspects of the whole period, while Lenski 2006 focuses on the Constantinian era. Maas 2010 collects and translates an array of primary-source excerpts. Lee 2007 is a general military history. Burns 1994 and Heather 2006 address “barbarian” challenges, while Dodgeon and Lieu 1991 digests and translates difficult sources on Roman-Persian relations. Ward-Perkins 2005 stresses that the fall of the Roman Empire in the west was a painful, miserable experience for those who lived through it. The need for such a book might surprise nonspecialists who take it as a given that Rome’s collapse was bad, but this has not been the prevalent view among academics in recent decades. | |
| 772 | ||
| 773 | Burns, Thomas S. Barbarians within the Gates of Rome: A Study of Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, ca. 375–425 A.D. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. | |
| 774 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 775 | A clear, insightful narrative and analysis of Rome’s challenges with foreign peoples during this difficult period. Copiously documented with endnotes. On Roman construction of the barbarians, note also Burns’s Rome and the Barbarians (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). | |
| 776 | Find this resource: | |
| 777 | Dodgeon, Michael H., and Samuel N. C. Lieu, eds. The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars (AD 226–363): A Documentary History. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. | |
| 778 | DOI: 10.4324/9780203425343Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 779 | A clunky but valuable book, best used with a master teacher. Includes extensive excerpts of difficult, obscure source material (mainly an impressive range of literary sources). Especially valuable here is the translation of texts from ancient languages other than Greek and Latin (e.g., Arabic, Persian, Armenian.) | |
| 780 | Find this resource: | |
| 781 | Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. | |
| 782 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 783 | This big book (the main text fills 450-plus pages) argues that centuries of Roman contact with the “barbarians” gradually strengthened the latter, to the point where they were able to dismantle the Roman Empire. Heather’s expertise on the Goths and Huns shines. Lightly documented, written to be readable by nonspecialists. | |
| 784 | Find this resource: | |
| 785 | Jones, A. H. M. Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey. 2 vols. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. | |
| 786 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 787 | Pre-cultural-turn marshaling of evidence at its most positivistic—no theory here from a scholar famous for his knowledge of the primary sources. Jones’s interpretations are certainly open to challenge, but he lays out the narrative history and workings of a previously neglected era. On the army, see chapter 17 in Volume 1. | |
| 788 | Find this resource: | |
| 789 | Lee, A. D. War in Late Antiquity: A Social History. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell 2007. | |
| 790 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 791 | Carefully organized overview with brief timeline and glossary; well documented. | |
| 792 | Find this resource: | |
| 793 | Lenski, Noel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006. | |
| 794 | DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521818389Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 795 | Within this strong volume, note especially Lenski on Constantine’s battles and Christian triumphalism (esp. pp. 70–81); Hugh Elton’s chapter, “Warfare and the Military” (pp. 325–346); Michael Kulikowski on the northern “barbarians” (pp. 347–376); and Elizabeth Fowden on the eastern frontier (pp. 377–398). | |
| 796 | Find this resource: | |
| 797 | Maas, Michael. Readings in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook. 2d ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. | |
| 798 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 799 | A good general sourcebook on the period; for items of interest to military history, see especially chapter 3 (pp. 78–109). | |
| 800 | Find this resource: | |
| 801 | Ward-Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. | |
| 802 | Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation » | |
| 803 | Ward-Perkins writes in reaction to Peter Brown’s cultural studies school, which for decades now has focused on the spiritual and intellectual ferment of this fascinating period, yet tends to ignore military history altogether. The book’s first part provides an engaging, spirited narrative overview; its second part offers interpretation of archaeological findings. | |
| 804 | Find this resource: |
