36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very Good and Iconoclastic, April 17, 2000
This review is from: The Roman Army at War 100 BC - AD 200 (Oxford Classical Monographs) (Paperback)
There is a large literature on the Roman Army. As Goldsworthy points out, much of it is flawed by an idealized view of Roman soldiery and anachronistic interpretations. Inspired somewhat by Keegan's pioneering "The Face of Battle", Goldsworthy sets out to review the evidence critically in an effort to reconstruct how the Roman Army was organized and was the experience of service for both commanders and rankers. His use of sources is excellent and he is very careful not to over interpret the data. This work is based clearly on an excellent knowledge of Roman history. Interested readers should be aware that this is specialist monograph, written with an audience of scholars in mind. To understand the text fully you need a good basic knowledge of Roman history. Acquaintance with prior works on the Roman army is very helpful.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
50 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unsound Analysis, January 16, 2002
This review is from: The Roman Army at War 100 BC - AD 200 (Oxford Classical Monographs) (Paperback)
Adrian Goldsworthy, a classical scholar, initially wrote this book as a thesis at Oxford University. Goldsworthy felt that, "both the popular and scholarly view of the Roman army is at best highly misleading, and in most cases utterly false." By employing the method introduced by John Keegan in the Face of Battle, Goldsworthy seeks to use classical literary sources to demonstrate how the Roman army actually fought on campaign. The author relies heavily on the standard ancient sources - Caesar, Tacitus, Polybius, Plutarch, Josephus - and synthesizes them in an effort to pain a collective portrait of the Roman army in action. As a scholarly revisionist work, this book does provide an interesting synthesis of material from diverse sources. Yet a sober analysis of this book reveals that it does not merit universal acclaim because it neither breaks significant new ground nor possesses sound analysis.
Readers familiar with the classics of ancient history may be dismayed by the manner in which the author weaves together disparate anecdotes from more than 300 years of Roman military history in an attempt to validate his theories. Examples from different centuries, different theaters of war and different types of war are thrown together into a bouillabaisse that is confusing and misleading. Using examples so disparate in space or time - and with significant gaps in sources - to develop a general theory is intellectually dangerous. Imagine attempting to develop a general theory on how the French army fought between 1640 and 1940 based upon a sprinkling of memoirs from the early 18th Century, the Napoleonic era, and the First World War and the problem should be apparent. It is also noteworthy that the author criticizes other author's for using anachronistic sources in analyzing the Roman army, and then proceeds to do exactly that himself. The author's choice of odd post-classical military references, such as out-dated Victorian military manuals, is particularly odd.
Unfortunately, the author fails to provide much that is really new, and the little that is new is overly generalized and dubious. Goldsworthy concludes that, "the army's organization was not characterized by its rigidness, but, quite the contrary, by its great flexibility. Its units adapted to the local situation." And, "the strategy adopted by many Roman armies on campaign was anything but methodical." The author's main intent is to discredit the monolithic, automaton perception of the Roman army and replace it with a more complex view that encompasses innovation and human motivations. Certainly taken against eighty-year old assessments such as J F C Fuller's, Goldsworthy's text appears more modern. While using outdated ideas as fodder for a revisionist graduate school thesis makes sense, it does not make sense to re-cast this effort as a crusade to correct all other interpretations of Roman military methods.
As in Keegan's Face of Battle, the author attempts to dissect the mechanics of Roman battle. Critical to Goldsworthy's analysis is his unquestioned faith in S L A Marshall's assertion that only 25% of soldiers actively participate in combat. Never mind that Marshall fudged much of his research or that US troops in Korea did not fight in close-order lines as the Romans did, Goldsworthy believes that this 25% figure was germane to the Roman army as well. According to Goldsworthy, Roman infantry tactics were geared toward achieving a penetration in the enemy "line" and thereby collapse their morale, but if this did not immediately occur, the battle could ebb and flow until one side broke. This is nonsense on many levels. First, any subaltern knows that you cannot achieve a tactical penetration without local superiority, and a thin Roman double-line formation could not hope to achieve this against the typical dense-pack formations of most of its opponents. Even if a small penetration were achieved, the Roman soldiers would be quickly enveloped and annihilated once outside the protection of their own battle line. Goldsworthy does raise three important issues, but fails to exploit them: the Roman preference for large reserves, the Roman knowledge that troops in close combat became exhausted after about 15 minutes and the stabbing tactics of the gladius sword.
Modern armies typically maintain 1/9th of their forces in reserve to meet unexpected situations in battle, but the Romans kept a much higher percentage - about one-third. There is no reason to believe that the Romans relied on the unpredictability of winning battles by the extra-aggressive behavior of only 25% of their infantry, but rather, far more plausible theories suggest that the Romans won by well-timed use of reserves. It is likely that against Barbarians, the Romans expected their first two lines merely to hold off and exhaust the enemy for about 15 minutes. At the decisive moment, the Roman general would commit his reserve and this third line would literally massacre the front-rank of the exhausted enemy, who usually lacked the discipline or command and control to employ a tactical reserve properly. As Goldsworthy notes, the Barbarian "wedge" formations usually resulted in the tribal leadership out front and these were the men killed by the Roman reserves; without leadership, the rest of the enemy usually broke and ran. The key question here, is how exactly did the Romans deploy their reserve through the first two lines. However it was done, it required a high degree of training and discipline - both Roman strong points. As for the gladius, Goldsworthy fails to note that stabbing tactics were essentially defensive and far less tiring than the wild, offensive slashing tactics employed by Rome's enemies. Thus, Goldsworthy's depiction of Roman battle tactics is fundamentally flawed, although he does make some interesting observations.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best available book on the roman army, February 17, 1999
This review is from: The Roman Army at War 100 BC - AD 200 (Oxford Classical Monographs) (Paperback)
I have many books on the roman army but this one is by far the best. As the other reader pointed out this book has a completely different approach from the illustrated uniform and equipment guide which is very common. It examines the army from a much more humane perspective, exploring how the roman soldiers acted under the enormous strain of the bloody hand-to-hand combat. I could not praise this work enough. I only hope Mr.Goldsworthy would write onother book on the subject.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
