Detail of an early reproduction of the Darius Mosaic in Pompeii. This is in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. I doubt I will return to Russia anytime soon!
Twice in The Western Way of War (1989, my copy Oxford University Press 1990) Victor Davis Hanson makes similar statements:
In the fifth and fourth centuries, battle broke out in the Greek world nearly two out of every three years, so the chances were good that a man would have to leave his farm, take up his arms, fight in repeated engagements, and fall wounded or die one summer’s day in battle. (p. 31)
For the citizen of the fifth-century Greek city-state who saw battle of some type on an average of two out of three years, the changes were good that he would not die a natural death: in one of those years of his long service he would likely become one of the dead or wounded (p. 89)
A moment’s thought shows that this is incorrect. Even during the Peloponnesian Wars Athens or Sparta only fought a battle every few years, and not all Athenian hoplites or Spartiates fought in every battle. Plato’s Socrates was proud to have fought in one battle, a siege, and an expedition and he was an adult during intensive warfare (Plato, Apology, 28e, Symposium 219-221).1 What could Hanson have meant by the passages above?
An embossed bronze helmet from Crete around 650-600 BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 1989.281.50
Bret Devereaux recently published a strong post in his series on the hoplite wars. This was an especially strong post because it drew on his research focus. His current book creates financial and demographic models of the Roman Republic, Carthage, and the Hellenistic kingdoms and argues that the Romans were able to get citizens and allies to contribute more military service, arms, and armour than their rivals, while some of their rivals had higher incomes in silver. Victor Davis Hanson and Hans van Wees also created detailed models of early Greek farms and how the men with panoplies (hoplites and horsemen) fit into ancient Greek societies: how many of them were there, how wealthy were they, and where did their incomes come from? Even in Athens the sources are not as good as Polybius and Livy on the Roman Republic, but Hans van Wees was able to believe in them because he came from Homeric studies where the evidence is even worse. van Wees has long suspected that there was no hoplite class, but a leisure class who could easily afford a panoply and a group of small farmers and shopkeepers who could afford it at the cost of suffering. This week I will go over some of the ideas in Devereaux’ post from a slightly different perspective and show where they lead me. This post has consumed two days of writing time and is not as polished as I wish it was.
The Bay Center, Victoria BC, December 2025. The building is misnamed because the Hudson’s Bay Company is bankrupt and seems unlikely to return.
While the cares of the world drew me away from my books, I had some time to read whole books in 2025.
Books vary widely in density and word count (and readers vary in how much attention they pay). I suspect that some people who claim to read very large numbers of books mostly skim them, and some definitely read novels and airport books which are designed for easy reading. Someone who reads a few things intensely is not necessarily reading less than someone with a novel-a-day habit. So I will not make a total, just a subtotal of each category. These posts are to help me remember the books of all sorts which I read in 2025, like Zotero helps me remember the academic articles I found.
I have noticed that in ancient world studies or arms and armour I read more chapters and articles, whereas I am more likely to read a whole book in something further from my areas of expertise.
A James Bay cat! Cats may be the one good thing about the Internet and I saw this one with my own eyes.
Another year is passing, the tenth which I have ended with a blog post. This was a year of transition and activities outside of the history and archaeology I talk about on this blog. So sit down with a mug of something warm (or a glass of something cool for readers in the Antipodes) while I talk about this past year.
A relief of captured arms and armour from the early Roman empire. Metropolitan Museum of Art, object number 2021.264.1
Over on his blog Bret Devereaux has followed up a chat in the comments with a post on the mechanics of Roman and Iberian combat. About ten years after historians of ancient Greece started to challenge the “rugby scrum” model, Roman Army Scholars started to think hard about what ancient writers said the Roman army and its Iberian opponents did in combat. These descriptions have significant differences from descriptions in earlier Greek writers like Tyrtaeus, Thucydides, and Xenophon (for example, Roman armies can be driven back hundreds of metres before turning the tide, whereas the first time Thucydides’ hoplites turn their backs (tropein) is so important that the other side erects a monument (trope) to it). The blog post is well worth reading. In lieu of a full response I have some comments below.
While I am limiting myself to one blog post per month, over on Bret Devereaux’ blog his fourth essay on the hoplite debates has comments by me and friends-of-the-blog like Richard Taylor, Paul Bardunias, and Heregrim. If you are jonesing for a bookandsword fix, check it out!
Contingent magazine in the USA seeks a list of (academic?) books and articles by historians without tenure-track jobs with a publication date in 2025. The online form is here. (scheduled 25 November 2025)
Bret Devereaux has published his second essay about the debate about early Greek warfare with some back and forth from Richard Taylor and Hergrim. This week I will follow up on one of the questions which newcomers to the debate often have, namely why until around 2015 researchers rarely obtained replica kit and tried it out. There are many reasons, but the biggest reason is that ancient kit is hard to make.
Fragment of an Attic Black Figure pot with a duel, painted around 550-545 BCE. Getty Museum, Malibu, object
86.AE.112 under a Creative Commons license.
Over on his website historian Bret Devereaux has started a series on debates about early Greek warfare. The first post in that series is well worth reading. It puts me in a dilemma because I see some things differently than he does, but I can’t spare the time for such a lengthy and carefully footnoted essay. So I will respond with four theses about those academic controversies, using vivid bloggy writing and linking to my earlier posts and academic publications. I will follow his lead by avoiding discussion of Victor Davis Hanson’s political project although I had to address it in my review of The Other Greeks. Hanson’s ideas about early Greek warfare were not original in 1989. His great achievement was expressing them in clear and contemporary language which spread outside the lecture hall and the seminar room.
