Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction

An interesting treatment of the subject. A good read! Recommend to all students of ancient history and warfare in general!

Really focuses on Western Way of War, the chapters on actual tactics, etc are great. Would be nice to have ancient eastern views, I assume they also prided courage, etc.

This is a good book and was useful on background as to how ancients regarded warfare and its proper use, but I was more interested in how ancient armies conducted their tactics and techniques and in how the hoplite formation developed and was used, and there was not much on that.

Quick reference for ancient warfare.

The author presents his interesting viewpoint on ancient warfare & the concept of 'The Western Way of War'. Even if you don't always agree with him it's a good way to get you to think about concepts. This short book is small enough to fit in a jacket pocket & take with you to events & places where you might have some extra time on your hands.

If you are eager to learn all about the way the Greeks and Romans fought, this book is a quick and current aid to getting you up to speed. Sidebottom is an Oxford professor in the Classics but has also written several very gripping novels about the darkest moments of Roman history. Sidebottom has distilled the most recent thinking on warfare of the ancients and also goes some distance to dispel older ideas of Greek and Roman warfare that have come into question as well as informing the reader as to what current scholarly thinking is on such matters as the way hoplites, phalanxes, cohorts and legions were organized, moved, fought and conducted the ancient equivalent of command and control. He also explains why there have been changes in the understanding of the nature of ancient warfare, including a little bit of badmouthing of his own discipline, classical studies. Some key bits that really helped this reviewer include his analysis of how the ancients thought about war, the difference between the historic accounts of the Roman "Agrarian Crisis" of the late Second Century BC (the era also called the "Roman Revolution" by Syme- the time between the Gracchi and Augustus) and compares it to archaeological finds that have nothing to confirm what Plutarch and others have described. Another great section is his analysis of "the barbarization of the Roman army" a topic he clearly holds near to his heart given the novels he has written. There is also a very good section on leadership talking about the transition during the period covered of war leaders from exemplar warriors and frontline fighters (like Alexander) to "battle managers" of whom Julius Caesar is the paramount example- if only because we have his firsthand accounts of managing large, disjointed and sprawling operations like the defeat of his subordinates at Atatuaca (although the climax of the siege of Alesia might also have provided a good, if less brief, example). This reviewer has read a number of books on the topic of ancient warfare, but this is the most up-to-date. Plus its brevity is a blessing. There are very few illustrations in this small book, so if you want to see how a hoplite or legionary was equipped, this is not the book for you, but if you want a pithy distillation of the most current thinking on ancient warfare, this book is ideal.

The author lays out his points well, the primary one being a criticism of a unified, unchanging, Western way of war. He writes clearly and supports each point with quotes from literature or art from the period. Coherent, logical, and comprehensible.

Victor Davis Hanson has written several books, "The Western Way of War," "Carnage & Culture," "An Autumn of War," and others, positing a specific mindset and a historical tradition for a "Western Way of War." Sidebottom doesn't agree, and without ever mentioning Hanson's name, engages in an extended rebuttal of Hanson which both misses the point and spends a lot of time giving highly subjective "art critic" style descriptions of ancient artwork depicting warfare. Hanson sets forth a constellation of factors which he says makes up the "Western Way of War." Sidebottom deals only with the factors of heavy infantry and decisive battle. You can't refute a complex theory by rebutting only one or two components of that theory. You should at least try to deal with all of the components. Ever since reading about the Battle of Thermopylae as a child, I have had an interest in antiquity, and I bought this book to learn a little about ancient warfare. I learned a little about ancient warfare and a lot about the author's preconceptions. If you want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of ancient warfare, there are much better books out there (Hanson's "The Western Way of War," for example, or F.E. Adcock's "The Greek and Macedonian Art of War"). If you want a book with a theory-to-fact ration of 3 to 1, this is the book for your.

Let's get the one criticism I have of the book out of the way. It should probably have been titled "Classical (Western) Ancienmt Warfare:..." Otherwise it is an excellent little treatise to put classical thinking on war in context. In the process dealing with not a few misconceptions and highlighting most modern thinking on the subject. Just to deal with a few of the comments left by others. The discussion on the existence or not of a purely Western style of warfare does not take take up an innordinate amount of space. The complaint about actual military techniques not appearing till chapters 5 should have been prefaced by an admission that chapters 1 - 4 are pretty short. Chapter 5 starts at 38% on my kindle.... As for "A well researched book but unlesss you like factual accounts (with a dry delivery) you really should stick to fiction and factions."... It is a factual book....and certainly not delivered in the a dry scholarly tone. So if you are looking for historical faction this is not the book for you.

Very helpful

Petit ouvrage synthétique couvrant divers aspects de la guerre dans l'Antiquité. Très bonne introduction transdisciplinaire pour aborder la question, mais utile aussi pour les lecteurs plus familiarisés avec la question.

The one thing I didn’t like was the font size; a larger page size would have been preferred. That did not spoil the actual reading once I adjusted. I love my ancient Roman and Greek novels, alongside writings by the ancients themselves, such as Homer, Livy and Caesar. What Harry Sidebottom has written is a means of allowing me to better understand how the people of those times fought their wars, tactically as well as logistically, and why they felt they had a right to fight. At less than 50,000 words (my very rough estimate) there was never the chance of all the world’s warfare being studied, which was not an issue with me. For my specific interests, Harry’s experience as a historian and author ensured that I got all the information I needed.

Sidebottom reviews methods of warfare as conducted by the Romans and ancient Greeks. At the opening of the book, he disingenuously presents his interest in the "western way of war" as a neutral appraisal of its use as a social construct originating with Herodotus. At the end of the book, however, and by way of conclusion, he attempts to demonstrate the falsity of the "commonly accepted" picture of the Western way of war (Victor Davis Hanson's) by presenting evidence of intervention by the supernatural, taking of slaves, rape of women, and mass execution of captives by Roman soldiers, as depicted on the column of Marcus Aurelius. The problem is that even by Sidebottom's own description of the Western way of war (and certainly according to Hanson's), none of those things is inconsistent with the essential characteristics that distinguish western warfare from that of others: a tradition of civil militarism and fighting by non-conscripted soldiers, an emphasis on drill and collective manoeuvre rather than individual heroism, technological innovation, adaptability, civilian control and review of the military, and a preference for decisive conflict through direct mass assault rather than harassment and guerrilla tactics. Throughout, Sidebottom's analysis is limp and debalsified. He likes to put the word "reality" in quotation marks. His last paragraph seems to me to contain two admissions: "It is much better, and safer, to see the "Western Way of War" for what it is: a long-lived, highly adaptable, and powerful ideology. The 'Western Way of War' is constantly reinvented, as, of course, it has been for this book." In other words, he likes to play it safe and, when necessary, make things up. What he seems to mean by "safer" is that belief in the existence of a Western way of war might encourage mass violence. This is a), preposterous and b) a confession that he sees himself as a liberal propagandist more than a historian. Also, the choice of the word "ideology" is not explained. "Ideology" suggests national or cultural myths, propaganda, perhaps even delusion. If, on the other hand, the "Western way of war" is a way of referring to a set of best practices that Greek, Roman, and European warmaking societies have, in fact, consistently aspired to, then criticisms such as John Lynn's, as cited by Sidebottom with approval--that civic militarism almost entirely disappeared with the fall of the Roman Republic at the end of the 1st century BC and did not reappear until the French Revolution at the end of the 18th Century--have less traction. An ideal is not necessarily an ideology. That it is not consistently attained does not demonstrate that it is not legitimately held. Also, the fact that the best practices of the Greeks and Romans were compromised by the rise first of Roman imperialism and then by the rise of the Christian church, and then renewed by the Enlightenment and the Declaration of Independence, is not at all inconsistent with Hanson's narrative about the strengths of the West, its ways of warmaking being an intrinsic part thereof.