Customer Reviews

Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World (3000 B.C. to 500 A.D.): Equipment, Combat Skills, and Tactics

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first thing I have to say is that evidently the authors and I understand the term "fighting techniques" differently. Doing a quick search for books with "fighting techniques" in the title will show that the term is generally held to refer to specific techniques and skills used in hand-to-hand combat. I was hoping to find some exploration of this, but it rated hardly a mention.

Having said that, the book was a good solid overview of Ancient warfare, equipment, tactics, command and control, siegecraft. Nothing dramatically new (including many of the pictures) but if you want a sound book on ancient equipment and tactics, then I can recommend this one.

There were a few strange assertions, like the claim that a particular bow had an effective range of 600m, over twice the length of the longest recorded bowshot! While I'm on bows, when will people realise that 'firing' a bow is an act of arson, not one of war! Firearms are fired, bows are shot. And the multitude of authors resulted in some strange inconsistency in terminology, like mail being referred to by about three different names, none historically correct. The text also contained more than a reasonable number of typos and grammatical errors. The whole work felt rushed.

Despite my misgivings, if you're after a good general work on ancient warfare, this is a fine book. Just don't expect to see any specific fighting techniques described.

Stephen Hand
Author of Medieval Sword and Shield:
The Combat System of Royal Armouries MS I.33

Pro: Good survey of ancient warfare from Ancient Egypt and Sumeria through the Roman Empire. Physical quality is excellent. The authors are knowledgeable and competent. Extensive use of drawings, maps and art work is useful and effective.
Con: Nothing really new here - much of the excellent art work is borrowed from older works. The authors cover the topics well but do not offer more insight into ancient warfare then previously offerred by earlier out-of-print works by authors such as John Wharry, Sir John Hackett, and Peter Connolly.
Bottom Line: If you need just one general purpose book on the subject, this does the job well. If you need more than a survey of ancient warfare, take a pass on this book and go after the works listed in the bibliography.

I must admit this book was a slight disappointment. After reading previous reviews and poring over the book's sample pages I had counted on this being an exhaustive work on Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World. Instead, it's more of a history lesson chronicling ancient cultures and their socio-economic along with politico-militaristic reasons for adopting certain types of equipment. Very little attention is actually given to "fighting techniques".
There is quite a bit of information on weapons and armor and a moderate amount of information about how these were used in battles, but for the most part you read about the "hows" and "whys" of nations adopting certain weapons, armor, auxillary elements and not a concentrated explanation of their various roles and advantages in battles. This information IS in there, it's just a bit less substantial than I had anticipated and hoped for. But the book does offer an overwhelming myriad of pictures, sculptures, drawings, paintings, etchings, carvings, and diagrams to help illustrate their various topical points. This is supplimented by the best feature of the book: The battle layouts.
There are roughly 18-20 full color, bird's eye view templates regarding major battles from Marathon to Mylae. These are wonderfully done and show each major step in the individual battle's progression. These are the real gems of the book.
As a whole this book is worth checking out, the extensive in-depth analysis of naval, siege, mounted, and infantry warfare equipment and tactics are astounding. Every page has at least one picture or diagram, and quite a few have scetches and layouts of various army formations, strategies, and planned progressive maneuvers. The only thing that is irksome is that you have to trudge through the history lessons and the campaign chronologies to get to the good stuff.
In the end it's worth the money, but for God's sake go Used! And expect to spend as much time reading about the history and events leading UP TO a military tactic or piece of equipment as you would on the tactic or equipment itself.

This book is very good at describing ancient warfare and tactics. It gives a description of various famous historical battles and the reasons why the battle ended in the manner it did. While I enjoyed that aspect of the book I was hoping for a few other things. I wanted to see more actual pictures or re-creations of the instruments of war. They use too many line drawings I think. I'd also like to see more discussion on the evolution of thought behind the war machines themselves. The writings on battle strategies is good, though.

I approached this book less interested in warfare specifically as much as I was interested in the technology and development of that technology in the instruments of war. If you're looking for that perspective you may not find it totally satisfying. However, the book is still an interesting read and you'll learn a lot and just how oversimplified the teaching in schools has become on ancient wars.

This is an extremely well written and illustrated book on Ancient Warfare. Since it covers such a broad period of time it is not as detailed as some might prefer but, in my opinion, that is what makes it such a good book. Not only can you easily visualize the soldiers, generals, and their equipment, you will easily understand the use of the different types of equipment, tactics, and the dynamics of battle without already having an in depth knowledge of the subject. I guess I am just a sucker for any well written and illustrated book on the Greeks and Romans but I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves and is knowledgeable of this period of history or knows very little and wants to learn for the first time.

Lavishly illustrated, well-written (a few typos, but let's not nit-pick), and extensive for its size, this book is full of information for the wargamer, miniatures painter, and military history enthusiast. Well worth the Amazon price. If you plan on building a library covering the military practices of the ancient world, this book is an excellent place to start.

I returned to Ancient History reading last year after many years studying other periods. This book may not be as comprehensive as some would like, but it is a fair appraisal of what is a very broad subject covering many centuries. As such I found it informative and even if not completely thorough, it certainly set me on track for where I should look for greater detail and helped me set the parameters for that. Roman & Greek warfare is covered more fully than most but I believe this is only fitting as their impact on the Ancient world was so profound.
I would highly recommend this book for wargamers and those interested in a basic understanding of what made the Military mind tick over in Ancient times.

My edition claims to have "new battle maps", referring to the large bird's-eye views of some important battles. These views give a general idea of the battlefield, but the representation of troop types and movements is crude at best. It is instructive to compare, for example, the siege of Alesia as shown here with the suspiciously similar view in Goldsworthy's earlier The Roman Army at War. Goldsworthy labels key features, whereas Fighting Techniques just provides a few points about the campaign in numbered callouts that are scattered more or less randomly around the page. The actual information conveyed by the image could have been given in a quarter-page line drawing rather than a two-page spread.

This is a decent survey, but not to be preferred to Goldsworthy's book, to the equally useful Warfare in the Classical World by John Warry, or to Peter Connolly's Greece and Rome at War.

It was quite pleasant while reading this book. A lot of vivid artworks, illustrations and it's also easy to read. As a lover of ancient history and warfares, this was a good choice to start with, at least I think so. Not too much details but stories about how arms were evolved and used, also how they affected key historical events.
I'm now considering of more serious books, anyway this one was a good starting point.

This is an excellent general work for those interested in ancient warfare in the western world (Ancient Egypt and Fertile Crescent, and Greece, Macedonia, Rome and Carthage). It is organized thematically, with chapters on Infantry, Cavalry, Siege, Naval and (one of my favorites) Command & Control (including communications and troop organization in the field); each chapter then proceeds chronologically, with detailed treatment (including illustrations and strategic maps) of specific battles which the author feels illustrate important military developments and/or concepts.

What stands out about this book is actually the strength of its quasi-anecdotal approach to military history. The book is very specific about particular engagements and sticks close to the sources when possible, leaving out a lot of the history in between. Despite this, there are some unique insights and details to be found here that I haven't found in other military-historical reading for this period. A thematic chapter I would've loved to have seen, however, would've been one on developments in military levies (the organization and training of the military at home).

This is a book that I leave accessible in my living room for browsing and looking up facts my brain has mislaid. If you want a thorough account of strategic and political history, you'll have to go elsewhere: Warry's _Warfare in the Classical World_ , which fills in a lot of the history between emblematic and important confrontations in the field, for instance, makes an excellent companion piece to this volume.