Innholdsfortegnelse for AW XVI.1 i Ancient Warfare Magazine

EDITORIAL - Seaborne robbers When I first started to read about the Roman imperial navy for my MA thesis, I ran into claims about how Augustus' new fleets at Misenum and Ravenna made the Mediterranean safe for shipping. After all, pirates had almost entirely disappeared in the early Imperial period, not resurfacing until the chaos during the years of the Soldier Emperors in the third century. One can easily imagine galleys escorting lumbering merchantmen from Alexandria to Rome. Or perhaps they patrolled the Mediterranean, scanning for pirates? The trouble is, we're all heavily influenced by the images of the Golden Age of piracy. Jean-Bart at Dunkerque, Blackbeard in the Caribbean, or perhaps a Disney movie on a lazy Christmas day. As we've argued in previous issues of Ancient Warfare, ancient…

An extremely rare part of a musical instrument used by a Roman hornblower has been recovered from the silty mud during excavations at the fort ofVindolanda in Northern Britain. The artefact was found buried deep below the remains of a schola (officers' club house) and left with the debris over a Hadrianic-period workshop floor. Dated to AD 120-128, it measures approximately 17cm (7 in) long and was cast as a single piece. It has been identified as the mouthpiece of a Roman horn. MORE ONLINE See (and hear) a cornu being played: https://bit.ly/3EELxEb The horn (cornu) was a wind instrument some 3m (10 ft) long made of copper alloy, which was curled into the shape of a letter 'G'. It was commonly supported by a wooden pole across its diameter…

THE PERDICCAS YEARS Perdiccas was one of Alexander the Great's most reliable commanders, fighting in all his battles. Initially a commander of a taxis of the phalanx, in 324 BC he took over command of the Companion cavalry after the death of Hephaestion. When Alexander died in June 323 BC, it was to Perdiccas that Alexander gave his ring. His power was immediately challenged. Perdiccas proposed that the successors of Alexander await the birth of Roxanne's child and, if a boy, he should be chosen king. Meleager (another equally experienced commander) proposed, however, that Alexander's half-brother Philip Arridaios be made king. Thus began the dissention and wars of the Diadochi, the successors of Alexander. In this volume, Hughes explore the first three years of this era. It is a complex…

So too in the early archaic period - the period reflected in the Homeric poems - we find small, pre-state societies dominated by wealthy galley-owners, who take their companions (hetairoi) with them on summer plundering voyages; these raiders sometimes settled in distant lands too. We have seen (see Owain William's article) that the first mention of Greeks in cuneiform sources aligns very much with this model. The ships used by these raiders were literally 'longboats' (ploia makra in Greek), though they differed in numerous respects from Viking longboats. Early Greek raiders typically used ships such as penteconters ('fifty-oared' galleys) and triaconters ('thirty-oared' galleys). As time went by, most Greek communities grew into states, with all that this term implies - public finances, written laws, and so on. The informal position…

SPECIAL When Alexander the Great's army had conquered Bactria in Central Asia, his army swept through the Gandhara and the Punjab, in the area of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most famously, he faced a Punjabi king named Porus at the Battle of Hydaspes in 326, in a hard-fought and costly victory that tempered the appetite of the Macedonian army for further conquest. The battle was especially hard-fought because Porus' forces fought with markedly different tactics than their Macedonian counterparts. The Indian king used trained war elephants as shock troops to break enemy lines and reinforce the army's infantry backbone, while cavalry and chariots harassed the enemy's flanks. Because elephants were so widespread in ancient Indian warfare, infantry formations tended to be less compact than those employed by Greek armies; this…

Roman Warriors: The Paintings of Graham Sumner bBy Graham Sumner, text by Simon Elliott ISBN: 978-1784387198 Greenhill Books (2022) - £40.00 www.greenhillbooks.com Many of us have seen Graham Sumner's paintings before, in the pages of this magazine and Ancient History, and in his titles on Roman military clothing and the Imperial navy for Osprey, and Roman Military Dress, Roman Army: Wars of the Empire, and other titles. Well, here they are, all in one place. This lavishly produced volume from Greenhill Books features Sumner's art (including some never-seenbefore pieces) with a historical text to accompany each plate by Elliott. Adrian Goldsworthy, in the Foreword, points to Sumner's long experience with the Ermine Street Guard as a contributing factor to his art - especially research into fabric and clothing and the…

Piracy was a consistent, not to say constant, part of life in the Mediterranean, Black, and North Seas. From the Bronze age through to the Vandal pirates in the sixth century AD and beyond, we find piracy as a problem for every civilization. How to deal with pirates or the accounts of their privations are a consistent factor in our sources over several millennia. Here we see a ship of 'typical' pirates, the Sea People, raiders who plagued the eastern Mediterranean, especially during the 19th Dynasty of Egypt, 1292-1182 BC. The reliefs of Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II are some of the best depictions we have of them with their striking and distinctive headgear, bronze-gilt headbands with crests. Clothing seems to have mainly consisted of a kilt. They had their own…

Based on the extant sources, it has been assumed that non-Greeks did not fight in large numbers in Greek armies in the fifth century BC. Evidence for their active participation has now come from a detailed study of ancient genomes. Mass war graves containing neatly-laid rows of skeletons of adult males and horses had been unearthed in 2007 and 2008 in the west necropolis of Himera on the north coast of Sicily. They are believed to be the remains of soldiers who died in two battles fought between Greeks and Carthaginians. According to ancient accounts, Himera was victorious in the battle of 480 BC, in part owing to relief forces sent by its Greek allies in Syracuse and Agrigento; seven of the mass graves are associated with this battle. It…

In a series of articles, my colleague Aren Maeir and I sought to develop an explanation of what it meant to be a pirate in the Late Bronze Age. We did this by constructing an anthropological model of what a culture of piracy might consist of through examination of our sources from the classical era through to the eighteenth century (AD!) to see which features remained constant through time, while excluding features that were culturally and temporally specific. The model we developed was also constrained by the evidence: fragmentary textual accounts or references (pirates tended not to write their own histories), weapons, depictions of their panoply and ships, Mediterranean geography, feasting remains, and what we know of the consumption habits of the era. Textual references Our earliest textual information that…

THENE: Ancient pirates In 80 BC, C. Julius Caesar (b. 12/13 July 101/100 BC) was a young man rising up the cursus hono rum, the career ladder of official civil and military positions for which politically ambitious Romans competed. He was then serving on the staff of M. Minucius Thermus, praetor of Asia Minor, who sent Caesar to the court of Nicomedes IV Philopator of Bithynia (r. 94-74 BC) on a diplomatic mission to bring back a fleet of ships owned by the king. Spending so much time at court, however, rumours circulated that the 20-year-old Roman had had a sexual affair with the much older ruler- M. Calpurnius Bibulus later joked that his consular colleague for 59 BC was the queen of Bithynia. It may have been just a…

The archaeological site at Kalkriese, near Osnabrück in Germany, was clearly the site of a battle between Roman and Germanic soldiers in the first years of the first century AD. Whether that was the site of the defeat of Varus' legions or a battle belonging to the campaigns of Germanicus afterwards, has long been debated. New research strengthens the case of those who claim it is the site of Varus' last stand. Research in the United Kingdom had already proven that the constant recycling of brass and bronze in the repairs of arms and equipment of Roman soldiers led to the inclusion of particles in the environment that are unique in their composition for a single site: they are added in by the cycles of reworking the metal, changing and…

MORE ONLINE View a detailed report on RIB 3275: https://bit.ly/3gg2KKS Two inscribed Roman building slabs have been taken out of storage and put on display for the public to enjoy at the University of Leeds, England. One of them bears possibly the longest Roman inscription found in Britain. The two blocks record the Roman army's construction of buildings at Virosidum, the fort on Brough Hill in Bainbridge. They were built by men of Cohors VI Nerviorum, an auxiliary unit originally recruited from Belgium, at the beginning of the third century AD. Catalogued as RIB 3215 (AD 205), the inscription is a dedication to Septimius Severus, Caracalla, and Geta. It reads: For the Emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pius Pertinax Augustus, and for the Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius Felix…

THEME: Ancient pirates During the late ninth and early eighth centuries, the territorial expansion of the Assyrian Empire stalled, with powerful magnates increasing their own power at the expense of the king. One such magnate was Šamši-ilu, field marshal of king Adad-nirari III, who increasingly portrayed himself as acting independently of the office of the king. Šamši-ilu's power may have even been a motivation for the revolt of several Assyrian cities in the mid-eighth century. Moreover, during this period of stagnation, Assyria faced external threats, most notably from Urartu, Assyria's northern neighbour, who won a number of significant victories against Assyria in the mid-eighth century. The accession ofTiglath-Pileser III marked a reversal of Assyrian fortunes. He reduced the power of the magnates, dividing the territories they controlled into smaller individual…

PECIAL Ancient Greek and Roman sources record how the Getae and Dacians - the precise distinction was unclear to Roman authors - used to cross the Danube and plunder south all the way into Greece, from where they returned rich with loot. They were also hired as mercenaries, especially by the Romans, to fight against other barbarians, or in Roman civil wars. Their attacks were usually swift and bloody, and they managed to instil fear even into the hearts and minds of the people living in Rome. Unfortunately, many relevant ancient sources have been lost, so we have only a few hints regarding these raids, but no detailed accounts. The raiding lifestyle Plunder was the main reason for these attacks. The Greek cities on the Black Sea, in the case…

Deploying a Roman Army the Ektaxis kat' Alanon of Arrian By Duncan B Campbell ISBN: 979-8803868620 Quirinus Editions (2022) - £15.99 Available from Amazon only The Array Against the Alans has been dealt with in these pages before (see AW 13.4). It is one of the most important written sources for the deployment of a Roman army in the second century AD. Previously, all we had to study it are editions (nearly a century old), a translation or two, and a few academic articles. Here, for the first time, we have a full introduction, new text, translation and indepth commentary in print. It is very welcome and will be sought out and referred to by all students, and not a few scholars, of imperial Roman military history. Following on from…

PIRACY IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD By Philip de Souza Cambridge University Press, 1999 ISBN: 978-0521012409 The meticulous scholarship makes this the go-to volume on ancient piracy; A historical study examining its origins and growth, impact on trade, and the relationship between warfare and piracy. It evaluates attempts to suppress piracy by the states and rulers of the ancient world and discusses the way pirates are portrayed. SHIPS AND SEAMANSHIP IN THE ANCIENT WORLD By Lionel Casson Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 ISBN: 978-0801851308 Originally published in 1971, this encyclopaedic study was the first to use underwater archaeological data to refine an area of scholarship that had, up to that point, relied on ancient texts and graphic representations. Casson describes the ships, crews, weaponry, cargo stowage, navigation, harbor facilities, and ship…