BMCR 2009.07.07: Armstrong on Sage, The Republican Roman Army: A Sourcebook. Routledge Sourcebooks for the Ancient World

Michael M. Sage, The Republican Roman Army: A Sourcebook. Routledge
Sourcebooks for the Ancient World.  New York/London:  Routledge, 2008.
Pp. vii, 310.  ISBN 9780415178808.  $41.95.

Reviewed by Jeremy Armstrong, University of Auckland
([email protected])
Word count:  1306 words
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In recent years scholarship on Roman republican warfare has
increasingly worked to correct a long-standing bias towards the late
Republic and to present a chronologically balanced view of this
important subject. Michael Sage's (henceforth S.) The Republican Roman
army: a sourcebook is part of this trend. In this book, S. presents a
range of sources covering the entirety of Roman warfare during the
Republic, beginning in the sixth century BC with Rome's late regal
period and continuing down through the civil wars of the first century
BC. Although S.'s selection of sources is by no means comprehensive (an
impossible task), he has managed to bring together a number of
important passages, and touch on many key points, all in an
approachable manner. Coupled with very extensive commentary, this work
stands as an important addition to this burgeoning field, representing
the first major sourcebook on the topic and a useful snapshot of
scholarly opinion on various issues within the subject.

S. has divided his sources into three broadly chronological chapters:
the late regal/early republican period, the middle Republic, and the
late Republic. Each chapter is in turn subdivided with various thematic
subheadings. Overall this method creates a very accessible sourcebook,
with each piece of evidence seeming to fit within a larger narrative as
S. works to demonstrate a clear progression in Roman military
development. However, the transition from chronological to thematic
within each chapter is not entirely seamless and on several occasions
information seems to have been inserted somewhat anachronistically. For
instance, when discussing the practice of decimation in Chapter 3 (a
chapter devoted to the late Republic) S. includes a source which refers
to events in 471 BC. Conversely, it is not uncommon for passages from
Caesar's Gallic War to be used as evidence for practices in much
earlier periods. Additionally, the broad chronological groupings in
many ways disguise the fact that almost all of the evidence included in
the sourcebook, with the exception of a few inscriptions, dates to the
late Republic and imperial period. Indeed, given the extremely
problematic nature of many of the sources used in this book,
surprisingly little time is spent discussing the issues with the
sources themselves (covered briefly in the introduction and only
occasionally elaborated on in the commentary).

Chapter 1, entitled 'Rome's earliest armies: the archaic and Servian
period' deals with the origins of Rome's republican army in the late
regal period and with Rome's early relationship with her Latin and
Etruscan neighbours. In this chapter S. covers not only the traditional
tactical and equipment concerns but also spends a significant amount of
time on the social and political factors which helped shape the early
Roman army. Throughout S. does an admirable job of selecting and
bringing together a collection of the evidence which demonstrates the
variety of sources available for this period and includes not only the
important literary sources but also some of the more important
inscriptions, most notably the Lapis Satricanus.

Chapter 2, nominally devoted to 'The development of the manipular
army', actually covers the bulk of the middle republican period,
beginning at the start of the fourth century BC and continuing down to
the middle of the second century BC. This chapter is by far the longest
in the book, representing more than half the book's total length.
Perhaps because of its length and scope, the material included in this
chapter seems to lack the focus of the first chapter. Although
maintaining its position within S.'s larger sequence of military
development, this chapter acts in many ways as a 'catch-all' for
various aspects of Roman warfare which do not fit neatly into a
distinct time period.

Chapter 3 covers 'The army in the late Republic' and is probably the
strongest of the three chapters in terms of both depth and complexity.
Naturally, given the number of sources which deal with the period, the
material included in this chapter represents a very small portion of
the existing evidence. Still, combining material from a variety of
genres ranging from inscriptions to Livian speeches to Virgilian
poetry, from detailed tactical descriptions to poignant narratives, S.
is able, in less than 100 pages, to present a coherent, source-based
view of late republican warfare in the context of Rome's larger
military development.

The book ends with a reasonably comprehensive and extremely useful
selection of 'Suggested Readings' for further study on various topics.
These readings are divided up using the same three chronological
periods as the chapters, but are subdivided using a different, much
more detailed and elaborate set of thematic subheadings. The final
pages of the book contain the index.

Although generally an excellent work, this sourcebook does have a few
flaws the most notable of which is that at times it seemed to suffer
from something of an identity crisis: the sheer amount of commentary
within the sourcebook often threatens overwhelm the ancient sources
themselves (the ratio of commentary to ancient text in the sourcebook
is well above 1:1). Many of the passages, and particularly those
relating to the early and middle Republic, do require a certain amount
of introduction and interpretation if they are to be understood, but
the commentary often goes well beyond simply introducing passages. S.
regularly presents previous scholarly arguments in detail and
occasionally argues for new interpretations, all without the use of
citations or even indirect referencing which would allow the reader to
see where an argument was coming from, what other evidence was being
used, and where one might look to pursue this argument further.[[1]]
The selection of 'Suggested Readings' offered at the end of the book
does help to mitigate the effect of this lack of citation, but its
absence will impact how useful this volume will be for the serious
student and/or scholar. Also, on more than one occasion S. seems to
have relied on commentary to express what an ancient source might have.
For instance in his section on 'logistics' (p. 115-119) S. repeatedly
uses examples from Polybius in his lengthy introduction, but does not
actually provide the relevant passages from Polybius or even supply a
reference. Consequently, portions of the book represent an unhappy
compromise between a sourcebook and a history book, containing aspects
of both but ultimately not entirely successful at either.

In addition, S.'s commentary was occasionally slightly out of date. In
his analysis of the 'burdens of service' for Roman soldiers S. relied
heavily on the work of Brunt[[2]] without taking into account more
recent works on the subject like Rosenstein's 'Rome at War',[[3]] which
is included in the recommendations for further reading but whose
arguments are ignored in the commentary. Likewise, S. presented
Salmon's[[4]] arguments concerning colonization, now several decades
old, and ignored recent work by Bispham and Bradley[[5]] among others.
Finally, S.'s analysis of several troublesome issues was occasionally
lacking in depth. For instance, in his discussion of the possibility of
a Roman hoplite phalanx S. failed to take into account van Wees'
arguments concerning hoplite warfare in general[[6]] or recent
arguments against the existence of a Roman phalanx at all, for example
Rich.[[7]]

Despite these flaws, S.'s 'The Republican Roman army: a sourcebook'
represents a much needed addition to the corpus of material available
concerning the Roman army in the Republic and would be useful for both
students and enthusiasts alike. It is the first major sourcebook which
covers the entirety of Roman republican warfare and as such its
collection of standard literary passages, important inscriptions and
discussions a few key archaeological discoveries represents an
invaluable tool for anyone interested in the subject. The translations
in the book are also generally excellent, capturing both technical
nuance and dramatic flair with equal ability.

Overall the book was well presented with only a few mechanical errors,
the most frustrating of which was the irregular use of BC and AD.[[8]]
Typographical errors were hardly noticeable.[[9]]


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Notes:


1.   This absence of citations/references is a standard practice
throughout the Routledge 'Sourcebooks on the Ancient World' series,
although none of the others books in this series comes close to the
amount of commentary contained in this work.

2.   Brunt, P.A. Italian Manpower, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1985).

3.   Rosenstein, N. Rome at War: Farms, Families and Death in the
Middle Republic. (Chapel Hill, 2004).

4.   Salmon, E.T. Roman Colonization Under the Republic. (London,
1969).

5.   Gill, D., E. Bispham, G. Bradley (eds.). Greek and Roman
Colonization: Origins, Ideologies and Interactions. (Swansea, 2006).

6.   Van Wees, H. Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities. (London, 2004).

7.   Rich, J. 'Warfare and the Army in Early Rome' in Erdkamp, P. A
Companion to the Roman Army, Blackwell's Companions to the Ancient
World. (Oxford, 2007).

8.   Throughout most of the book BC was understandably omitted, given
the book's exclusive focus on the republican period. But on occasion AD
was needed, usually to distinguish authors writing in the imperial
period, but was absent (for instance p. 214). Conversely, in a few
sections BC inexplicably appeared (for instance p. 117, p. 215, p. 232,
etc.) when it was not needed.

9.   Typographical errors:
p. 31 (2:13): 'Ario' should be 'Anio'
p. 42 (1:1): 'fifth century' should be 'sixth century'
p. 42 (3:6): 'sixth century' should be 'fifth century'
p. 46 (4:5): 'description' should be plural
p. 120 (2:10): 'is military' should be deleted from the sentence "A
further factor is military in determining military status was age."
P122 (4:6): 'by' should replace the second 'on' in the sentence "The
levy is conducted on a tribal basis rather than on the centuries."
p. 256 (5:6): Should read '...that they should not come to grips...'
p. 257 (2:8): Missing quotation marks after 'die.'