Customer Reviews

Warfare in Antiquity: History of the Art of War, Volume I

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Hans Delbruck's "Warfare in Antiquity" is an amazing critical history. Amazing not only because of the startlingly original conclusions it draws, but also because, in the 100+ years since it was written, it still remains the best examination of the practice of ancient warfare.

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that Delbruck, being a Prussian military officer, can instantly sniff out absurdities in the sources that most other historians just credulously accept. The best example of this is Polybius' description of Roman pre-cohort battle formations. According to Polybius, a legion would be arranged in checkerboard fashion so that, during crucial moments in the battle, rear lines of fresh troops could advance and continue the fight while soldiers in the front would withdraw to recuperate. More conscientious historians (see Osprey's "Armies of the Carthaginian Wars") have at least tried to address the problem of why an enemy wouldn't just pour through the gaps in the front line and attack the Romans in the flanks. Only Delbruck has been brave enough, though, to abandon any attempt to reconcile this fanciful description with military reality and argue that, instead of a fighting formation, Polybius' checkerboard square instead describes a pre-battle MARCH formation.

This is only one example of how Delbruck persuasively challenges classical warfare's conventional wisdom. He also argues that Darius' invading Persian army was no larger than the allied Greek one that ultimately defeated it at Marathon, that Caesar's brilliant conquest of Gaul was mostly the result of superior maneuverability and logistics, and that, far from regularly destroying barbarian armies more than five times their size, Roman legions could only achieve tactical parity with barbarians whose harsh living conditions made them naturally brave and cohesive warriors.

One need not accept all these conclusions (I myself am somewhat skeptical about the last one) to find much of value in this book. At the very least it will make one a more critical and active reader, able to question both less-than-stellar primary sources and the historians who over time have just parroted them.

I have been reading both BH Liddel Hart's book on Strategy and JC Fuller's "Military History of the Western World" at the same time as Delbruck. While the first two books may be more valuable for someone searching a overview of ancient struggles, Delbruk's book shines in the description of ancient warfare.

Delbruk is brave enough to argue and discard many things that historians bypass or take as true, like the supposed numerical superiority of the Persians in their conflicts with the Greeks and Macedonians, the true use of elephants in battle or the way the ancient Roman maniples were an improvement to the phalanx. He practically rewrites many battles (Marathon, Salamis, Issus, Zama, Alesia), discarding absurd notions and finding a logical interpretation for the flow of the battle that would explain the outcome. I my opinion, he describes these battles much better than most other authors I've read (Including Herodotus himself).

As noted by other reviewers, you should have a general idea of the general history of the conflicts and their outcome, because Delbruk only discusses pure military aspects and not the background. This is not a book for beginers.

If you ever felt that the overwhelming numerical superiority of barbarian armies was a gross exaggeration or that Roman tactics seem absurd when explained by non-military historians, you MUST get this book.

If you are passionate about history or military history, and if you are keen to understand how the powerful Roman civilisation transitioned to a European feudal society, then this book is for you.

Hans Delbruck writes at the end of the 19th century and follows the steps of other excellent German historians such as Mommsen. The book, though, could well have been written yesterday. Delbruck's erudition is simply incredible, and the author's intimate knowledge of ancient languages, including old German, allowed him to systematically cross-check what little remains of manuscripts written between the 3rd and 6th century AD.

For the reader, the most enjoyable aspect of the narrative is perhaps that it goes right down to a level of details rarely seen in a history book. Following Delbruck's thread of reasoning you can well imagine how Roman legions lived and fought, and how German tribes were socially organised. You can also easily understand the process by which these formidable Roman legions slowly dissolved and how the German political, social and military systems progressively took over in the course of four centuries.

The topic itself is extremely complex, not least because of the scarcity of reliable contemporary testimonials. The legends and exagerated tales of huge German hordes crossing the Rhine to destroy a flourishing civilisation are nowadays so entrenched in our Western culture that it takes the patience and intelligence of someone like Delbruck to disentagle the facts.

Finally, be warned that this is no historical romance. Delbruck's style is as dry and precise as Germanic scientific litterature can be, and each section is followed by an Excursus in which the author argues around alternative theories.

Highly recommended.

I stumbled upon this book several years ago while doing research for a computer game concerning ancient warfare and was simply stunned by Delbruck's insights. He lays bare the truth behind the myths we've all grown up believing, and the result is something of an expose, providing such startling conclusions as the fact that the Greeks actually outnumbered the Persians at the battle of Marathon!

While much of Delbruck's writing seems to fly in the face of accepted convention, he does such a masterful job of backing up his conclusions with hard facts and indisputable logic that one is rapidly converted to his way of thinking. These books are a rarity in a society that still takes ancient history at face value: Delbruck digs deep to find the truth, and as a result these works (the entire series is fantastic) are vital reading for anyone interested in truly understanding the history of warfare. I can't reccommend these books highly enough.

I could practically exhaust every superlative in the english vocabulary in prescribing this set of books to anyone interested in understanding the shape of battles and the conflicts involved going back to the Greco-Persian Wars to the Napoleonic Wars. In each book, Delbrük, the consummate modern historian, laboriously constructs as accurate a mantle of the major battles of each conflict meticulously seperating propaganda and myth arriving at the available facts. Delbrück's history is definitely not the digest of novices, and his detached, pedantic scholarship can be overwhelming at times unless you have at least some familiarity with the subject matter. Nevertheless, his forensic masterpiece, really a very long treatise or series of treatise on the evolution of tactical bodies, are of an unparalleled stature, and his conclusions seem to still be in some contention today as they were a hundred years ago.

Or, at least, current textbooks have yet to catch up. Some histories still seem to follow Xenephon and Herodotus precisely, and I saw a documentary last year about Ceasar's campaign in Gaul that still portrayed the Romans at the siege of Alesia outnumbered 25 to 1 against the Celtic tribes.

Warfare in Antiquity, the first volume, is especially helpfull and stands next to my copies of Livy, Thucydides, Polybius, Herodotus, Arrian, etc. - all the classical histories.

Delbruck's four volume History of the Art of War is both the first modern approach to military history and one of the best. His work is not a simple list and description of battles, but the exploration -- over all four volumes -- of a particular theme.

The first volume, Warfare in Antiquity, is the greatest of the four. It is the only one that can be read by itself, and remains the most brilliant work on classical warfare ever written.

As an avid reader of Classical military history, I never could quite understand the traditional explanation of the battle tactics of the Legion of the Republican era. Gaps were fatal to a phalanx, but the maniples of the Legion supposedly had gaps by design. Why couldn't an enemy just infiltrate the gaps and smash the Legion as was so often done when the phalanx developed gaps? Delbruk gives an excellent explanation of the gaps and argues that the Romans closed the gaps before meeting with the enemy. His explanation flies in the face of most other scholarship, but it has the virtue of making sense where other explanations do not.

Delbruk doesn't merely parrot what he's read in other works. He engages in thoughtful study, and his conclusions, while often unconventional, are always well reasoned.

The debate over the accuracy of Delbruck's revisionist approach to historical battle accounts aside, Warfare in Antiquity is an impressive effort by a meticulous author.

First of all, it should be made clear that these volumes are not "History of War" or "the Art of War", but "History of the Art of War." That is, you must already have or be prepared to obtain a historical context for the subject matter - Delbruck spends virtually no time providing background or summaries of the subject matter. In addition, Dulbruck does not address (at least, in his initial volumes) how war ought to be waged (ala Clausewitz). Rather, the focus of his work in on the evolution of the art of war employed at key historic events.

These volumes are at their most engaging in the study of ancient warfare. The analysis of the evolution of tactics in response to weapons, fighting styles, population, and geography is fascinating.

I have two major gripes with these books (and yes, I realize the author is long dead and unable to satisfy my deficiencies): First is the serious need of editing and revision. So much information is crammed into the footnotes, addenda, and revised responses that it makes the read of each chapter something like transcendant deja-vu. It makes for a multi-tiered reading experience that is quite unique, and disconcerting. Secondly, a few diagrams, maps, or plots would have been extremely helpful. I'm afraid that I'm a product of an educational system that limits my ability to conceptually distinguish between knolls, hillocks, rises, and a plain-old hill.

As to Delbruck's penchant for demythologizing ancient battles, I can only say that he is fairly convincing, most notably with regard to Marathon.

Delbruk took a critical look at accepted accounts of battles, did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and showed how most of these accounts were simply implausible. This is an eye-opening read. However, readers are assumed to already be familiar with most of the battles covered. So, a second source giving those implausible accounts should be kept handy.

Delbruck's work is an excelent study of the art of war from an historical perspective. The four volumes of the book combine in an impressive way technical and sociopolitical aspects of the organization and conduct of war. I think the most important lesson to be drawn from Delbruck's work is that the way war is waged (not only war's objectives) depend as much of the sociopolitical context as the technical issues surrounding specific weapons. In all respects, it is an impressive work of knowledge. However, it would be better to have a general knowledge of the political, economic and war history (instead of a "History of the Art of War")of each period before reading it, otherwise the book may become too confusing. An important disadvange of the work is that the few maps included are really not helpful for understanding step by step Delbruck's arguments. Delbruck's work is more a book of arguments than a simple exposition, so it is important to read carefully every paragraph or one loses the chain of reasoning a few pages ahead. Certainly it is not the kind of book for someone who just wants to know "what happened". In the end, it is a really impressive analytical work of history that should fascinate everyone interested in a critical exposition of ancient warfare.