Innholdsfortegnelse for AW XV.3 i Ancient Warfare Magazine

When I was little, we had at least one volume of Greek myths for children in which some of the Homeric epics were included. There was undoubtedly the story of the Trojan horse and probably some of the Odyssey as well. It’s just an example, but I imagine I’m far from the only one who has ‘known’ about the Trojan War from a very young age, either via such introductions or by being exposed to Homer in school, as this has long been part of a classical education. It’s easy to get bits and snippets from a whole host of sources that give some kind of idea about the Trojan War. Unfortunately, that’s an idea that probably has little to do with the actual Iliad, nor any actual historical context…

Perhaps even more significantly, the Social War marks the first murders by mutinous troops of consular commanders in Roman history. More than marching legions on the city of Rome, the ability of proconsular commanders to incite troops personally loyal to themselves to turn swords upon other consulares opened possibilities that would prove detrimental to the longevity of the Republic. Their model would eventually be copied by Julius Caesar and Octavian, who also manipulated the loyalty of their troops and supporters. Killing a consul According to Velleius Paterculus (2.20.1), the death of consul Quintus Pompeius Rufus in 88 BC at the hands of the proconsular forces that he commanded was the first time a serving Roman consul had been killed by his own troops. This ignominious event came in the aftermath…

A large amount of this Sardinian material survives from the Bronze Age. It depicts various figures in society as well as animals, objects and monuments. These bronzetti date to a time following the construction of Sardinian nuraghi (the dry-stone towers that give the civilization its name), between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The Nuragic culture flourished in Sardinia at the end of the Early Bronze age (the Ancient Bronze Age in Sardinia), and the towers are thought to have been erected during the middle of the Bronze Age (approximately 1700-1400 BC). Nuraghi reached heights of 22-25 metres, and some still reach a considerable height – Santu Antine in Torralba survives to 17.55 metres. For a long time, the towers were considered fortresses, like the Scottish broch,…

THE CAPSTONE OF A TEN-YEAR EXPEDITION The Trojan War is best known from its earliest source in Greek literature, Homer’s Iliad (ca.800 BC). Subsequent literary, documentary, and material sources provide evidence of the importance of the war for the Greek sense of mythology, history, and panhellenism in antiquity. Herodotus (ca.485-425 BC) famously states that the Trojan War took place “roughly 800 years” before his own time, thus dating the war as a historical event around 1250-1225 BC. Throughout antiquity, the war and its heroes became the lodestone that everything was measured against. The beginning of history The Trojan War not only starts off Greek ‘history’, but it stands at the beginning of its archaeology as well. The excavation of Troy by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s, and of Orchomenus, Mycenae,…

In the summer of AD 70, as the Roman siege of Jerusalem entered its final phase, the rebel leaders requested a parley with their conqueror, the future emperor Titus. “Titus ordered his soldiers to keep control of their temper and their missiles,” writes Josephus, “and stationed an interpreter beside him” (Jewish War 6.327). As advisor to the Roman high command, Josephus had previously been sent “to address (the rebels) in their native tongue” (5.361), and only days earlier, he himself had performed the task of interpreter when “he proclaimed Caesar’s message in Hebrew” (6.97) to the Jewish multitude. (He may have meant Aramaic.) Of course, it was all in vain. It is interesting, however, to see a Roman general making the effort to engage with the enemy in their native…

HENCHMEN OF ARES By Josho Brouwers Karwansaray Publishers, 2017 ISBN: 978-9490258078 An overview of Greek warfare from the Mycenaean Bronze Age down to the Persian Wars, this volume covers (and acts as an introduction to) the period of Homeric warfare (including the period before it and those immediately after). In Karwansaray style, it contains more than 100 photographs and illustrations. IN SEARCH OF THE TROJAN WAR By Michael Wood BBC Books, 1997 ISBN: 978-0520215993 A tie-in to the acclaimed TV series, this lavishly illustrated book inspired a whole new generation of scholars and enthusiasts regarding the Trojan War. Although some topics are skimmed over lightly, it still offers a great jumping-off point for further investigation into Homeric warfare. SHIPS AND SEAMANSHIP IN THE ANCIENT WORLD By Lionel Casson Johns Hopkins…

Author Whately asks if we can understand the experience of ancient battle through a new approach of ‘Sensory History’, exploring the sights, sounds, smells, feel and tastes a soldier may have experienced in kind of a ‘face of battle plus’ approach. This is an extension of works exploring sensory experiences of the ancient world more widely. To examine this aspect of ancient military history, Whately has taken six battles – two from ancient Greece (Cunaxa (401 BC) and Issus (331BC)), two from Rome (Cannae (216 BC) and the sieges of Jerusalem and Masada (AD 70-74)), and two from Late Antiquity (Strasbourg (AD 357) and the siege of Edessa (AD 544)). Such a wide spread obviously has many gaps but Whately admits he’s not aiming for an authoritative coverage but rather…

During the Social War, the Oscan-speaking population of Pompeii naturally took the side of the Samnites. Thus, the town was targeted by the proconsular forces of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The siege of the town, which possibly included a young Marcus Tullius Cicero, lasted for some time, leaving lasting physical evidence of Sulla’s siege engines bombarding the town in the form of impact damage to the town walls. As a consequence of the fall of the town and the subsequent outcome of the Social War, Pompeii’s status changed to that of a colonia. A couple of thousand Sullan veterans were settled in the town and its name was changed to Colonia Cornelia Verenia Pompeianorum. These veteran settlers proceeded to dominate local politics over the succeeding generations with locals possibly being excluded…

The strategy underpinning Homeric warfare, that of the period of the Trojan War, finds its basis in the Hittite records regarding Wilusa (Troy), Western Anatolia, and the Mycenaean Greek-speaking Kingdom of Ahhiyawa (Achaea). The records suggest that the Ahhiyawan mode of warfare was not based around a brute force assault against Troy. Instead, it methodically isolated Troy from its allies, destroyed its economy, and strained its supplies. This strategy also ensured that Troy’s Hittite allies, who politically dominated Anatolia, did not intervene. Thus, Homeric warfare was a sophisticated, multi-faceted affair, which looked not only to destroy a rival’s force, but also his very ability to fight and defend himself. The actual siege of Troy was simply the final act of this ten-year-long conflict. The Hittite angle Relative to the Hittite…

Leuctra 371 BC By Murray Dahm ISBN: 978-1472843517 Osprey Publishing (2021) – £15.99 www.ospreypublishing.com (Full disclosure: Dahm is a friend and uses several of the photographs I took of the battlefield in the book.) Osprey’s newest addition to its Campaign series – Murray Dahm’s Leuctra 371 BC: The Destruction of Spartan Dominance – is long overdue. The book dives deep on the climactic battle between Sparta and Thebes that saw the final breaking of Sparta’s power and set the stage, along with the Second Battle of Mantinea less than a decade later, for Macedonian hegemony over Greece. Thermopylae, a battle that changed absolutely nothing, is practically a household word. Leuctra, a battle that permanently shifted the balance of power in the Mediterranean, remains almost entirely unknown outside scholarly circles. There…

Found during his excavations at Mycenae in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann, the Warrior Vase (p.20) is a krater, used for mixing wine with water, and dated to the 12th century BC (although the precise dating is still debated). It may therefore be contemporary to the period of the Trojan War. Schliemann named the vase and it is obvious why. The decorated frieze shows a line of warriors in what must have been typical of some of the arms and armour of the time. Other evidence suggests there were different styles in use at the same time (seen in the tower and figure-eight shields behind our warrior, whose bearers also wear the common ‘boar-tusk’ helmet). Our central warrior is based on one of Mycenae’s finest. He wears a short tunic…