Customer Reviews

The Gothic War

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I recently read this book, and I was very disappointed. The author has done a poor job of researching his material, and I would not recommend it to anyone.
First, the author is not a specialist in this time period. This is not, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing; people from outside the field often bring new insights and perspectives that can revitalize a stale field. That is not the case here. Primarily, the is a regurgitation of Ammianus, Procopius, and Agathias in a more modern form. His only addition is a good knowledge of the geography around Rome itself; not worthless, but not really new.
Second, his lack of knowledge means that he fails to understand much of what was going on. He fails to recognize, for example, that concepts of ethnicity were much more fluid then than they are now; Goths and Vandals are presented in a much more modern conception of what "nationality" means.
Third, he is rather credulous about his sources. He takes Procopius' figures for the Goths at face value (150,000 in the army that beseiged Rome); a ludicrous number, given that they simply lacked the capacity to feed such a large number of mouths, even for relatively short periods of time. He also assumes that Procopius was entirely honest in his history; something that seems rather unlikely, given that Procopius was definitely trying to inflate Belisarius' reputation (which he later seemed to regret when he wrote his Secret History). In other words, Procopius was unreliable! Yet the other swallows his fish tale, hook, line, and stinker.
That does not mean that this books is without merit. Unfortunately, other sources for this same information are much better; I would not really recommend it to anyone. Try Ian Hughes' Belisarius; not that it is perfect, but it is a much better rounded piece than this.

"The Gothic War" by Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen is an easy to read and excellent account of the Eastern Roman Empire's campaign to reclaim Italy from the Ostrogoths. Roman armies made up of barbarians under the leadership of Belisarius, one of the greatest Roman generals, and later Narses (the Eunuch), fought for over twenty years to conquer Italy and return it to Emperor Justinian in Constantinople.

The book starts off with Belisarius's successful campaign in North Africa against the Vandals, then his move to Sicily before his final invasion of Italy. We read of the many battles, skirmishes and sieges up and down the boot of Italy and of the numerous battles and sieges for Rome, the eternal City.

The book relies heavily on the five volumes of Procopius's "History of the Wars" but the telling of the tale is excellent and so easy to read that it drags you into the history with ease. The book provides a number of detailed maps and a small number of illustrations (too little really) and a detailed appendix on the `men, equipment and tactics' of the contending armies (Roman & Goth) which is well worth the effort to read.

Overall this book would make an excellent addition to any library of those readers who have an interest in this period of history.