As an introduction to warfare in the ancient Mediterranean, P. Connolly's venerable Greece and Rome at War (1981) has held a distinguished place since its publication. Now four decades later, with Ancient Greeks at War (along with Romans at War [2020], also published by Casemate) E. seems to seek to fill that same function, providing a well-illustrated primer on Greek warfare for the lay reader. Unfortunately, the present volume fails to match either the late Connolly's mastery of the subject or his clarity of delivery.
The work is divided into six chapters, along with a brief introduction and a conclusion. The first five chapters proceed chronologically, each providing a mix of political development, campaign history and battle narratives. The first chapter, ‘Minoans, Mycenaeans and the Sea Peoples’, treats the Bronze Age, while the Archaic and the Classical periods (along with a brief discussion of the Greek Dark Ages) are fused together in the second chapter, ‘Classical Greece’. Philip II and Alexander both enjoy a chapter to themselves, before the fifth chapter covering ‘The Hellenistic Age and the Rise of Rome’, which runs to the end of the Achaean War in 146 bce. Each of these chapters save the first is studded with short inserts narrating particular famous battles.
The final chapter, ‘The Military Systems of Classical and Hellenistic Greece’, covers the equipment, organisation, command structure and fighting style of the Greek and Macedonian armies. This organisational structure may befuddle lay readers, who will only learn what a phalanx is or how a hoplite was armed many pages after the narratives of battles in which the hoplite phalanx played a crucial part. This organisation also leaves little space to discuss warfare beyond land battles; the development of siege and naval warfare from the Archaic to the end of the Hellenistic period together receive a bit less than three pages of coverage.
More concerning are the apparent errors and misrepresentations; a few examples may suffice. The Iliad is presented as an authoritative source on late Mycenaean tactics (p. 41), though the communis opinio is that a workable account of Bronze Age warfare cannot be salvaged from Homer. E. gives the Athenian contingent at Marathon as numbering 10,000 (p. 81), but most sources (Plut. Mor. 305b; Paus. 10.20.2; Nep. Milt. 5.1; cf. Just. Epit. 2.9) agree on a figure of 9,000. E. presents a baffling etymology of the word Argead as ‘deriving via the Latin Argīvus from the Greek Ἀργεῖος’ (p. 107) rather than from the Greek Ἀργεάδαι. The traditional view of the hoplite othismos is presented without comment (p. 250) along with the ‘orthodox’ date for emergence (p. 242); more recent work by H. van Wees (Greek Warfare [2004]), P. Krentz (AHB 8 [1994]; ‘Hoplite Hell’, in: Men of Bronze [2013]) and R. Konijnendijk (Classical Greek Tactics [2017]) do not appear either in the text or in the select bibliography.
Problems also extend to discussions of equipment. The Macedonian sarisa is described (p. 256) according to M. Andronikos's initial reconstruction (BCH 94 [1970]), now rejected by scholars (P. Connolly, JRMES 11 [2000]; N. Sekunda, Acta Universitatis Lodziensis 23 [2001]). The phalangite's shield is presented as being universally described as a pelte and around 66cm in diameter, ignoring the considerable evidence that a somewhat larger aspis, also with a shoulder-strap, remained in common use (K. Liampi, Der makedonische Schild [1998]).
The book is lavishly illustrated with many large colour images. These vary in quality and usefulness. Photographs of period weapons, armour and artwork are welcome, as are a number of Connolly's artistic reconstructions reproduced from Greece and Rome at War and new artwork by J. Shumate. The volume's eight large maps, each stretching over two pages, are clear and readable, as are the many smaller battle maps, although these sometimes show less detail in terms of army composition than one might expect. Some of the other image choices seem questionable; a set of frescos from the House of the Vettii in Pompeii are reproduced several times (pp. 11, 87, 125) to represent Greek triremes, despite both dating much later and also clearly showing only two banks of oars. Likewise, images of tabletop wargaming figurines are used to illustrate some panoplies, though these are at best difficult for readers to see, on account of their small size, and lack the detail of the artistic reconstructions.
After four decades an update to Greece and Rome at War is surely a desideratum, yet it is difficult to recommend this effort. E. does little to incorporate new research or archaeological finds, nor does he break new ground with his arguments. At the same time, the book's organisation and frequent digressions are likely to confuse lay readers, while the book's errors risk misleading them.
