Customer Reviews

The Greek and Persian Wars 500-323 BC (Men-at-Arms)

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The book covers two peoples (the persians and greeks)and a period (almost 200 years) where the changes in warfare, not to say in batlle dress, are very extensive. So it is highly superficial on both.
There are much better color plates and information in other Men-at-Arms titles. Look for them, this one is barelly a start.
Finally, there is no evidences, as has been written in books of this same series, that Spartans have ever used the composit body armour as showed in the book.

I was quite excited to read this book, as the illustration of the Persian Cavalry on the cover impressed me greatly. The author seems to have a great knowledge and grasp of the Persian wars, he just doesn't use it to his potential extent.

For one thing, the reconstructions of the Greek soldiers are absolutely ridiculous. I've studied Greek armour for much of my life, and I couldn't even identify many of his hoplite illustrations as even being Greek. To make matters worse, there are zero images of vase paintings or statues within the pages of the book that even suggest the armour he illustrates ever existed, which made me think twice about purchasing this book.

His Persians, while an improvement, still seem a little awkward. A good example is that the Immortals are shown without scaled armour, whereas Herodotus confirmed that they wore it in battle. The art isn't all disappointing though, there are some rather good images of Greek and Persian light infantry, as well as excellent representations of Arabian camelry and a Phrygian axeman.

The text, while certainly easy reading, does never go indepth on the armour and arms it should be about, and instead directly concentrates on the events of Persian and Greek conflict - something that the buyer should presumably already know much about. Certainly, the writing would be all fine and well for someone new on the topic, but with the accompanying illustrations of Cassin-Scott's unbelievably strange soldiers, it just isn't worth it.

This book had good information on the Greek and Persian wars. You can find plenty of books on Greeks or Persia, but not ones devoted to the wars between the two. They have pretty good pictures for the Greeks army, but the Persian pictures are not very good, I've seen better uniforms for them that arn't in the book. All the pictures are just not too great. So all in all, if you are some what interested in the book, get it.