The rehabilitation of Livy as a historian has rested primarily on his substantial literary talent. A new line of enquiry is now beginning to emerge, initiated boldly by Miriam R. Pelikan Pettinger's recent volume on triumphs in Livy (2008), whereby scholars sift the Ab Vrbe Condita for insights which the text may provide on Roman history. In this book Sam Koon explores Livy's representation of infantry battle. K. suggests that Livy had some military experience (23). K.'s Livy may not be an expert military historian, but he merits acknowledgement as an ‘intelligent amateur’ (26). This is an important assertion which challenges the assumption that Livy had little knowledge of the practical matters about which he wrote in his history.

Ch. 1 serves as a brief introduction. Ch. 2 constitutes the traditional literature survey in the form of Roman infantry battle as K. delineates theoretical issues and surveys the vast literature on Roman warfare. Ch. 3 provides context through general analysis of Livy as military historian with an overview of his representation of battles. Chs 4–6 provide the bulk of the analysis through close scrutiny of Livy's use of combat vocabulary: currere (or rather its compounds), impetus, and inferre, respectively. In these chapters K. methodically catalogues (twelve appendices may be found in this book) and explicates the very large number of instances of these terms, noting the historian's multi-faceted usage of each. The thoroughness of these chapters and the accompanying appendices is to be commended, since they will prove a valuable resource for further study of the representation of infantry battle in Latin historical narrative.

Two other historians who feature prominently in this study are Polybius and Caesar, the subjects of comparative analyses with Livy in chs 7 and 8, respectively; these chapters expand nicely upon analysis provided in ch. 3. In these chapters K. demonstrates that Livy effectively synthesizes the Greek and Roman literary traditions of narrating battle. Ch. 9 constitutes the conclusion of the book, where K. uses Livy to extrapolate a (new) model of Roman infantry combat, or rather to refine slightly the existing model. It is perhaps surprising that this discussion is brief, with a footnote indicating fuller discussion in a forthcoming article (which has now appeared in D. Hoyos (ed.), A Companion to the Punic Wars (2011)).

A few minor points of concern ought to be raised. The first is that one cannot shake off the perception of this work as a lightly revised dissertation; chs 2 and 3 still read very much as the obligatory ‘survey’ chapters of a technical doctoral thesis, which in revision perhaps ought to have been integrated into the argument in the subsequent chapters. My second concern has to do with approach to the topic. K.'s focus on terminology seems to remove individual battles from the larger context of the war narratives in which they appear. It is also unfortunate that K. does not make a stronger effort to place his work in the context of, and therefore build upon, recent scholarship on Livy. Battles are, of course, the great narrative set-pieces of ancient historical texts, and, as the author observes, Livy wrote about more battles than any other historian. The theoretical result of the synthesis between the technical analysis and the increasing corpus of sophisticated and nuanced literary analysis (especially the works of Kraus, Jaeger and Levene) would have allowed for a more complex portrait of Livy as a replicator of the Roman past to emerge. K. reveals that he is acutely aware of the psychological aspect of battle, and Livy's apparent interest in the same. One more point: it is perhaps surprising that ancient military authors do not find a more prominent place in K.'s discussion, since at least some of them (e.g. Frontinus, Vegetius) no doubt used Livy as a source. The absence of an index locorum is a slight irritant.

These are minor criticisms which do not detract from the book's value and it will no doubt contribute to the persistently popular field of Roman warfare studies. K. has demonstrated that Livy is indeed a viable historical source, and this book provides a useful foundation for further investigation of the representation of battle in Roman historians.