David Breeze provides a succinct overview of the Roman military in this short book for the general reader. There are plenty of images, and B. ranges widely; despite the brevity, B. manages to combine a chronological approach to the Roman military with a thematic one. Although one might quibble with select aspects and viewpoints, B. has written a solid introduction to a complex subject — and one that should attract an audience even in the comparatively crowded ancient military history category.

The book has eight chapters, some chronological, some thematic, excluding the introduction and conclusion. Ch. 1 (‘The Republican Army’) includes topics such as Polybius, Marius and the late Republican warlords and Caesar. In the second chapter (‘The Army of Augustus and his Successors’) B. discusses the legions, their deployment and organization, as well as the auxiliaries, imperial bodyguards and the navy, amongst other things. Ch. 3 (‘The Army on Campaign’) delves into logistics as its name implies, though it touches on intelligence gathering and marching camps too. This thematic chapter, like its counterparts (chs 4, 5, 6 and 7), includes material about the topic from across the period under review. In this particular case, that means ranging between some of Vegetius’ comments on the importance of supply, the civil war campaigns of Pompey and Caesar, Julian's invasion of Persia and Polybius’ marching camp. The fourth chapter (‘The Fighting Tactics of the Roman Army’) discusses communications, aspects of strategy and some of Rome's varied foes, while presenting a broadly accurate picture of Roman combat. Select battles are treated too, like the massacre in the Teutoberg Forest and the Battle of Strasbourg. In ch. 5 (‘The Peacetime Army’), B. discusses important issues like recruitment, pay and training as well as family life, health and the military hierarchy. ‘Arms and Armour’, the short sixth chapter, surveys the weaponry and equipment used by legionaries and auxiliaries, and their provisioning. Ch. 7 (‘The Army as Builders’) allows B. to discuss material he has looked at for much of his career, including Hadrian's Wall, Rome's fortifications and its frontiers. The final chapter (‘The Late Roman Army’), like the seventh a short one, focuses on the third through fifth centuries, and goes from some historical background for the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine to changes in fortification and the importance of the Notitia Dignitatum.

There are occasionally spots where B. misleads. For instance, B. claims that the lower Danube was peaceful during the reign of Augustus and that the region had no legionary garrison (28). And yet, the Romans engaged the Dacians as early as 29 b.c., the Scodisci and Dentheleti caused problems in Macedonia and Thrace in 16 b.c., and Lentulus engaged King Cotiso in the Bellum Dacicum between 6 b.c. and a.d. 4. In addition, at least two legions (IIII Scythica and V Macedonica) were based in Macedonia, the governor of which was responsible for security on much of the lower Danube. When B. turns to the military in combat, his discussion of Rome's various foes seems a bit outdated, for B. talks about the sophistication of types of enemy, and select comments read as if they were lifted from ancient ethnographies. The sub-section on strategy in that same chapter has rather more to do with grand tactics, operations and political rivalries than strategy itself. The brevity of the book overall also means that there is no room for citations, and that important, or at least relevant, details, like the identity of an unnamed, and mysterious (to this reviewer), Byzantine writer who recommended not camping for longer than three nights in one spot (43), are left out.

On the other hand, B. makes plenty of interesting points, which, in a longer book would have allowed for interesting discussion. So, in the first chapter we find that war, whether it is traumatic or otherwise, always brings about change, and that in the case of Republican Rome it was their fighting style that led to conquest. With respect to the military's famed professionalization, B. asserts that it was the amount of fighting the Romans participated in that led directly to this. There are some evocative comments too, like B.’s notice of the length of Julian's Persian expeditionary army in a.d. 363, which would have ranged, depending on the time of day, between 6.5 and 16 km. In the chapter on tactics, B. rightfully highlights the audio landscape, and stresses the rôle of visual communications combined with auditory ones, in this case the standards and the trumpets. Staying with the sensory, there is even evidence of an interest in the olfactory on the basis of B.’s comments on latrines. While commenting on the recruitment of soldiers, B. makes some stimulating suggestions about paperwork, particularly the notion that a file would be created for each newly enlisted young man. One final example: B. has a short sub-section on the health of the soldiers, a topic that, while important, often does not find its way into broad overviews of the Roman military.

I am not the intended audience for this work, and so what reservations I have are perhaps superfluous. This short book is easy to read, informative, and occasionally funny. B.’s takeaway from a passage in Apuleius’ Golden Ass is that as a civilian you ought to cross the road at the first sight of an approaching Roman soldier. Ultimately, B. manages to cover a wide range of topics in a compact book, while discussing some at times complex and technical issues in an accessible way.