Review of “New Approaches to Greek and Roman warfare”
If you were interested in learning more about ancient battle in practice and aftermath, there’s a review of an interesting new book in Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews: Lee L. Brice, ed., New approaches to Greek and Roman warfare. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020. Pp. 216. ISBN 9781118273333. $69.95.
This collected volume offers “new approaches” to ancient warfare. So what’s new? The most prominent theme, linking four of the thirteen essays, is that of military psychology.
Roman siege expert Josh Levithan’s piece on “moral and morale” in sieges investigates why sacks of ancient cities were so merciless, pointing out that by closing their gates those within a city had refused a fair fight in the fields outside, denying the besiegers the contest in the virtus of all combatants that an open-field battle promised. When the city fell they were not, therefore, entitled to the ethical protections a fair fight granted the defeated, since they were themselves fighting in an immoral fashion. Levithan also points out that the taking of fortified places required not merely normal military courage, but—from those few first over the wall—exceptional, almost suicidal, courage, setting an “oddly epic stage” (145); the long fatigues of the siege, followed by such extreme heroism, also made the successful besiegers think that they were entitled to the greater satisfactions (in slaughter, rape, and plunder) of an unrestrained sack. This paper deserves praise too for its sensitive treatment of the relationship between actual ancient combat and literary depictions of ancient combat, a particular interest of this reviewer, but judging by other work recent and forthcoming, an expanding area of scholarly concern….
