Ancient
Posts on events before the middle of the first millennium CE
Roman Engineers Didn’t Read Their Vitruvius
Anyone who has looked at fortifications built by the Roman army of the early empire knows that they were stupid about towers. These forts are often generously provided with towers, but those towers don’t stick far enough out from the walls to provide flanking fire against anyone trying to climb them. They provide extra height for fighting and observing, and protection from the weather on cold wet nights, but they don’t let people shoot and throw things at anyone trying to get over the walls between the towers (or sitting at the base of the wall trying to dig into it and pry things out ). The basic idea of how to use projecting towers had been known since the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, and although the Greeks were slow learners by the time of Alexander the Great some of them had understood these principles and even written textbooks. Roman forts became more sophisticated in the fourth century CE as Roman urban society was struggling. I just realized that Vitruvius explained how to use towers tool in his first book on architecture!
Read moreWhy Do Armies March through Gaza?
On another site, someone asked why armies have been marching through Gaza for thousands of years. I don’t have anything useful to say about Hamas’ torture, murder, and kidnapping of about a thousand unsuspecting elders, civilians, children, and tourists, or the Israeli government’s blockade of water, food, and medicine to the several million civilians in Gaza in response to the murders and kidnappings, but I can talk about geography and ancient warfare.
My regularly scheduled post (about Vitruvius and the design of forts during the Roman Principate) will come out next week instead! When commenting, keep in mind that my site is not the place for people to share angry opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I will moderate accordingly. Because I will not have time to moderate or respond to comments until Tuesday 31 October, comments on this post will not be enabled until then.
Read moreCross-Post: Panel on Polybius at Celtic Classics Conference, Cardiff UK, 9-12 July 2024
Many Faces of War 2024 Call for Papers, and Why I Won’t Attend
The International Ancient Warfare Conference Many Faces of War conference will take place in roughly June or July 2024 at Brookings, South Dakota. I attach the Call for Papers then my reply to the organizers why I do not expect to attend this one as I did in 2022 and 2023.
Ancient Greek Armies Were Part of Ancient Greek Society
Responses at the International Ancient Warfare Conference 2023 made me wonder whether something I take for granted is obvious to other people interested in ancient Greece.
Today our armies are parallel societies or total institutions. They take in individual recruits, separate them from their prior friends and relations, and teach them everything they will need while they are isolated from their civilian associates. They re-organize these recruits into a new hierarchy of units for both everyday and tactical purposes (people in the same platoon both live and fight together, at least in the field). Armies like the army of Classical Athens were nothing like this and yet they fought.
Read moreHow Did Ancient People Carry Letters on Papyrus?
When we think of people moving writing on papyrus, we probably think of one of the ‘bucket’ shaped cases from ancient statues of orators and paintings at Pompeii. These had a handle or straps so they could be carried like a lunchbox or worn like a backpack. A whole treatise could fill dozens of books (ie. scrolls), which could last for a century or two if they were treated carefully, so someone who wished to transport a lengthy work needed a case or capsa (logeion). This is probably not how people transported everyday letters and correspondence!
Read moreW.G. Lambert on Theological Imperialism
How Heavy Was the Shield from the Fayum?
In May a well-known ancient historian told the Internet that the style of shield from Harit in the Fayum in Egypt weighed 10 kg. He probably got this from Mike Bishop and John Coulston’s classic handbook Roman Military Equipment (second edition p. 62) which cites reconstructions by Peter Connolly and Marcus Junkelmann. He was writing a general lecture so could not spend too much time questioning his sources. But I think this estimate is too high for four reasons.
Read moreJohn of Garland on Satraps and Satrapies
I got a blog post (and a sentence in a scholarly encyclopedia) out of what Niccolo Machiavelli thought about the fall of the Persian empire. I found another comment by the medieval scholar John of Garland who was active from c. 1220 to 1252.
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