Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity

כריכה קדמית
Yale University Press, 1 בינו׳ 2005 - 468 עמודים

A major new history of battle in the ancient world, from the age of Homer through the decline of the Roman empire

What set the successful armies of Sparta, Macedon, and Rome apart from those they defeated? In this major new history of battle from the age of Homer through the decline of the Roman empire, J. E. Lendon surveys a millennium of warfare to discover how militaries change--and don't change--and how an army's greatness depends on its use of the past.

Noting this was an age that witnessed few technological advances, J. E. Lendon shows us that the most successful armies were those that made the most effective use of cultural tradition. Ancient combat moved forward by looking backward for inspiration--the Greeks, to Homer; the Romans, to the Greeks and to their own heroic past. The best ancient armies recruited soldiers from societies with strong competitive traditions; and the best ancient leaders, from Alexander to Julius Caesar, called upon those traditions to encourage ferocious competition at every rank.

Ranging from the Battle of Champions between Sparta and Argos in 550 B.C. through Julian's invasion of Persia in A.D. 363, Soldiers and Ghosts brings to life the most decisive military contests of ancient Greece and Rome. Lendon places these battles, and the methods by which they were fought, in a sweeping narrative of ancient military history. On every battlefield, living soldiers fought alongside the ghosts of tradition--ghosts that would inspire greatness for almost a millennium before ultimately coming to stifle it.

 

תוכן

Fighting in the Iliad
20
The Last Hoplite
39
Two Stubborn Spartans in the Persian War
58
The Guile of Delium
78
The Arts of War in the Early Fourth Century BC
91
Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus
115
Hellenistic Warfare 32331 BC
140
The Greeks Conclusion
156
Scenes from the Jewish War AD 6770
233
Shield Wall and Mask
261
Julian in Persia AD 363
290
The Romans Conclusion
310
Authors Note and Acknowledgments
317
Chronology of Greek and Roman Warfare
321
Life of Abbreviations
331
Notes
335

THE ROMANS
163
Early Roman Warfare
172
The Wrath of Pydna
193
Caesars Centurions and the Legion of Cohorts
212
Glossary
389
Bibliographical Notes
393
Index
441
זכויות יוצרים

מהדורות אחרות - הצג הכל

מונחים וביטויים נפוצים

מידע על המחבר (2005)

J. E. Lendon teaches history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World.

מידע ביבליוגרפי