Innholdsfortegnelse for AW XVI.6 i Ancient Warfare Magazine

EDITORIAL - Alexander at last And that's seventeen volumes in the bag. I have to admit I take a perhaps perverse pride in spacing out the very obvious themes, attempting to offer something unexpected in between. But it seemed time to ring out the year properly: Alexander the Great, Q.E.D. There is a more practical reason as well. Over the years, AW has become a more attractive magazine. We've always had a lot of artwork, but since volume X, the number of images per page has increased. On the one hand, that's great. All those photos support the text and help bring it to life. On the other hand, those photos have to exist and we have to have access. Fortunately, that's becoming easier every day as photographers make their…

An arrowhead retrieved in Switzerland has been found to be made of iron from a meteor which landed on Earth 2000 km (1240 mi.) away in Estonia. The arrowhead was discovered in the nineteenth century at a lake dwelling in Mörigen, Switzerland. After examination it was found to have been forged in the late Bronze Age (900–800 BC). Researchers sought to identify the source of the meteoric iron. Using entirely non-destructive techniques to determine its chemical composition, the researchers deduced that the Mörigen arrowhead was not made of iron from the nearby Twannberg strewn field. Instead, they propose that the Kaalijarv meteorite, Estonia, was the likely source of the iron. The researchers write, “Metallic iron was available to humans in the form of rare meteoritic iron before the smelting of…

The Roman army is coming to the British Museum. The latest in the institution’s special exhibitions will focus on the lives of ordinary soldiers who followed the eagles. Legion: life in the Roman army will share the stories of real legionaries and challenge some of the modern perceptions about what it meant to be a Roman soldier. It will show that the army was as much an agent of social change as it was a force of professional fighters. This landmark exhibition will comprise over 200 objects, including loans from 28 lenders, from national and international institutions, and is supported by material from the British Museum’s own extensive collection. Many of the items will be on display in the UK for the very first time. One is the oldest –…

Although the situation is not exactly the same as what seems to have occurred at Sandby Borg, we do have evidence of an episode in the poem Beowulf and another poetic fragment which pertain to the warfare of the same period and which suggest the kind of intended complete destruction which was perpetrated at Sandby Borg. The poetic fragment is the 48-lines-long The Fight at Finnsburg (more properly Freswæl) which seems to relate to an episode in Beowulf (lines 1066–1159). The background of the Freswael fragment is that the king Hnæf, son of Hoc, conquered a part of Jutland and exiled its former rulers. Finn, king in Frisia (located around modern Friesland, the Netherlands), allowed the exiled Jutes to enter his service. However, before the start of the fragment, Hnæf…

Having mustered his levies at Babylon in the spring or early summer of 333 BC, Darius’ intention had been to face Alexander on the Amik plain (southern Turkey). There, he could fully deploy his 600,000 soldiers with space for his cavalry to manoeuvre. Arriving in the area sometime in September, Darius grew frustrated. Alexander, just to the west near Tarsus, wasn’t moving. Having come through the Cilician Gates, a swim in the river Cydnus at the end of a hot day’s march had left Alexander suffering cramps, severe chills, fever, and bouts of insomnia. In the hands of his court physician, he slowly recovered. When Alexander was back on his feet, he busied himself with imposing a garrison upon the city of Soli before ranging for seven days through the…

REVIEWS By Anthony Kaldellis and Marion Kruse ISBN: 978-1009296946 Cambridge UP (2023) - £85.00 www.cambridge.org Announced as “a new history of the leadership, organization, and disposition of the field armies of the east Roman empire between Julian (361–363) and Herakleios (610– 641)”, this work by Kaldellis and Kruse positions itself in opposition to earlier works which used the Notitia Dignitatum and then imposed whatever could be understood from that (important) document onto the Roman army of 395–630, even using it for the period before 395. This is certainly a flaw in many accounts of late Roman armies, and what the Notitia can tell us is up for debate. Applying that model uncritically to the Roman army over the next centuries is undoubtedly an error. Instead, Kaldellis and Kruse seek to…

In all of his famous battles, Alexander rode with his famous Hetairoi of Companion Cavalry. We find Alexander leading these men at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, when he was only eighteen, and he led them at the Granicus, the Issus, Gaugamela, and after. The Companions were used by Alexander as a spearhead, delivering charges into gaps in the enemy formations created by his battlefield manoeuvres. Despite their shock-tactics on the battlefield, however, they nor their horses were particularly heavily armoured. There were eight squadrons of Companions, each called an ile (plural ilai), and drawn from a different region of Macedonia, each of 200-300 men, and so only consisting of (only) 1800-2000 men; ‘only’ because the remarkable battlefield accomplishments of this force were achieved by so few men.…

TACITUS It seems as if more books are being published on ancient history and ancient warfare today than ever before and, sometimes, it is hard to keep up. It is good to be reminded, therefore, that sometimes ‘an oldie is a goodie’. Although written in 1958, Sir Ronald Syme’s magisterial two volume Tacitus (Oxford: Clarendon Press) has seldom been surpassed. Indeed, many subsequent works simply add to what Syme already started and in several cases Syme’s prescient speculations on what might be discovered in the future to prove him right, have indeed come to pass. Syme sought to place Tacitus in his social and political context – and although not the progenitor of such an approach, Syme’s results have influenced almost every work on an ancient author produced since. His…

It was rare for Roman commanders to execute their own men, whether individually or en masse, but there were occasions where it was clearly felt to be unavoidable. The sentence of decimation was rare – only eleven probable instances are documented in the historical record, and some of these are questionable in their reliability. Those reliable instances which there were, took place mainly in the Late Republican period. Use of decimation persisted into the early Imperial period, with the last documented incident coming during the brief reign of Galba in AD 69, except for a few possible incidents in the Late Roman period. Bastinado and fustuarium The most detailed description of decimation comes from the Graeco-Roman historian Polybius, who provides an insight into the process as it was conducted during…

Peter Green was apparently the first to suggest, in an appendix to his book Alexander of Macedon entitled ‘Propaganda at the Granicus’, appearing in 1974, that the battle was fought over two days. He proposed that the afternoon cavalry charge on the first day failed, that the army forded the river in a night march, and that the successful battle was fought on the next day. In the subsequent edition of his book, Green was forced to withdraw that appendix in the light of universal criticism. I should like to revive the argument put forward by Peter Green, not the least because there is extra evidence in the sources to support his idea which he did not cite.…

Much ink has been spilt determining whether Quintus Curtius or Arrian presents the more acceptable Persian deployment. What can be said is that when a gap developed between the two central taxeis of Ptolemaeus and Meleager, it was the Greek mercenaries who sought to exploit it. Yet a sentence or two later in Arrian’s account, he describes the right-most taxeis as overcoming the Persians opposite them. This might appear to support the deployment described by Quintus Curtius, especially when we consider that the six taxeis of the phalanx amounted to roughly 9000-10,000 men and so would most likely not permit a frontage which could simultaneously engage the Greek mercenaries and Persian Cardaces on either side. As we lack a description of the fighting that took place on the left of…

By John D. Grainger ISBN: 978-1399051224 Pen & Sword (2023) - £25.00 www.pen-and-sword.co.uk The author of this review was very excited to learn of Grainger’s book – my Master of Literature thesis was on Frontinus in 1998 and I have written about him several times in these pages (see AW II.2, XIV.6, XV.2, XV.6). I even once proposed my own biography of him (some years ago now), but the idea was rejected as too peripheral. I suppose I was ahead of my time! It is, therefore, wonderful to see that Frontinus is getting just such a treatment and is, presumably, no longer considered on the periphery of Roman history. Frontinus has long been considered the realm of serious academics – not military specialists, however, though there are a few who…

The discovery of an elephant bone fragment in Córdoba has been causing excitement among archaeologists. Some claim it might date to the time Hannibal of Carthage waged his war against Rome. Others are dubious of this proposed dating. The fragment, measuring fifteen by eight cm, was found in Córdoba in 2019 under the remains of collapsed ancient adobe walls. It was identified as the carpal bone of an elephant, and from its size, a large pachyderm. Additionally, seventeen projectiles – likely fired by catapults – and a spear tip were also recovered from the site. Identifying the species of elephant has proved difficult. Experts have not been able to perform a C-14 analysis to establish the exact date of the elephant’s death either, because the bone fragment is not fossilized,…

Two of the most famous examples of Roman military discipline involve not decimation, but fathers killing their sons for disobeying orders. Livy (4.29.5), reports the story of the Dictator Aulus Postumius Tubertus who, in 431 BC, led the struggle against the Volscians. His son left his post in order to attack the enemy and, despite achieving victory, Postumius beheaded his son for abandoning his post. Livy claims the story was put about to discredit Postumius’ memory and points out that the practice was not named after Postumius but after the next known example – when the consul Titus Manlius Torquatus put his son to death for attacking and killing an enemy Tusculan leader when he was on a reconnaissance in 340 BC (Livy, 8.6.7-8.7.22). The whole passage is on the…

THEME: Alexander attacks Persia Both Diodorus and Curtius narrate the story of Dioxippus and Coragus, soldiers in Alexander’s army. In 325 BC, while in the land of the Mallians, a Greek and a Macedonian agreed to fight (Diodorus, 17.100; Curtius, 9.7.16–26). The Macedonian Coragus appeared with sword, shield, spear (longche), and sarissa, but he was defeated by Dioxippus who was armed only with a club. Dioxippus dodged the spear, broke the pike, and threw Coragus to the ground before he could draw his sword. Often explained as a lesson that the pike was inappropriate for single combat, Coragus obviously also carried, and used, a javelin. In AD 216, the emperor Caracalla formed his own ‘Macedonian’ phalanx, whose weapons were a spear, a pike, a bronze shield, and a sword (Cassius…

THEME: Alexander attacks Persia At Gaugamela, we are told the taxeis were commanded and recruited kata ethne – "from the same region" (Arrian, 3.11.9– 10; Diodorus, 17.57.2). The command of the six taxeis of Alexander’s phalanx seems to have fallen to members of the aristocracy from the same region(s) in which the individual taxis was recruited. Perdiccas’s men, for instance, came from the region of Orestis and Lyncestis, Coenus from Elimiotis, and Polyperchon from the Stymphaeans. The exception is Amyntas, son of Andomenes, who may have been from a region whose taxis he did not command though he may have had family connections with another region. This regional basis was certainly the case for the lower officers within each taxis. The experience, loyalty, and reliability of the men who commanded…

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (2 VOLS.) By William W. Tarn Cambridge University Press, 1948 and 1979 ISBN: 978-0521295635, 978-0521531375 Tarn’s magisterial two volume work on Alexander contains much which has never been surpassed and much which has gone out and come back into fashion several times. His Alexander was both admired and derided. This is a work of supreme importance which still repays close reading. CONQUEST AND EMPIRE: THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT By A.B. Bosworth Cambridge University Press, 1988 ISBN: 978-0511518539 A survey of the military and administrative history of Alexander, Bosworth’s study offers some penetrative insights on his army and campaigns. Bosworth disapproved of many earlier works, but he too under or overemphasizes aspects he wishes to single out or ignore. He too has an agenda, but the…