Focus on the Literature of War: Sunzi’s The Art of War

The most influential military theorist in East Asian history is Sunzi (more commonly Sun Tzu in the Wade-Giles transliteration), author of The Art of War, a title translated as bingfa in Chinese literature. Chinese history records numerous bingshi or “art of war” treatises written by different authors across the ages. Tradition maintains Sunzi lived between 544-496 BCE during the long-lived Zhou Dynasty’s (1046-256 BCE) Spring and Autumn period (c.770-475 BCE), a historical era described by…

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Focus on the Literature of War: Julius Caesar’s Gallic War

Focus on the Literature of War: Julius Caesar’s Gallic WarThe Hellenistic era (323-31 BCE) was a dynamic era of military history, an era which inspired and influenced Hellenistic Greek and later Roman historians, whose chronicles of these centuries have shaped our modern understanding of Hellenistic and Roman warfare. Most of the important chroniclers of Philip II and Alexander the Great’s conquests, as well as those of the Hellenistic Successor States and the rise of Rome as a Mediterranean…

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Focus on Military Organization: Rome’s “Polybian” Legion

Focus on Military Organization: Rome’s “Polybian” Legion When Rome first appeared as a city-state in the Tiber Valley sometime in the middle of the eighth century BCE, its first army differed little from those of other small communities in Latium. It is believed Rome’s first military organization was based on the tribal system, reflecting the three original Roman tribes (the Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres). Each tribe provided 1,000 infantry towards the army, made up of ten centuries…

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Focus on Tactics: “Achaemenid Persian Military Archery at the Battle of Thymbra, 547 BCE”

The classical Near East was shaped by successive empire building. Beginning with the Neo-Assyrians in the tenth century BCE, new Iron Age empires expanded across Mesopotamia and the Levant, swallowing smaller kingdoms to form larger states. The most successful of these early Iron Age empires was the Achaemenid Persian empire (559-330 BCE) initiated by Great King Cyrus II (r. 559-529 BCE), known to history as Cyrus “the Great.”  Despite having a wealth of pictorial evidence of Assyrian warfare,…

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Focus on the “Art” of War: “Trajan’s Column as War Memorial and Primary Source”

Focus on the “Art” of War: “Trajan’s Column as War Memorial and Primary Source” In 106 CE the Roman Emperor Trajan (r.98-117) crossed the Danube River heading south at the head of the victorious army, returning from a campaign in what is now Romania and Moldova. The region, incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Dacia, proved difficult to subdue. Trajan had bridged the wide river twice and campaigned there in what history remembers as the First and Second Dacian Wars (101-102 and…

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Focus on Elite Forces: “Guardsmen and Emperor-makers: Rome’s Praetorians”

Rome’s first emperor Caesar Augustus (r.31 BCE-14 CE) created a personal bodyguard called the cohors praetoria or Praetorian Guard in 27 BCE consisting of nine double-strength cohorts to protect himself and ensure domestic tranquility after a century of Roman civil wars. The guardsmen were organized, trained, and armed like the regular legionaries, but were hand-picked veterans initially of Italian origin who were paid much more than normal Roman soldiers and received benefits after only…

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Focus on Siegecraft: “The Roman Siege and Storm of Carthage during the Third Punic War, 149-146 BCE”

In 149 BCE the Roman Republic initiated a third and final Punic war against its long-time rival, Carthage, culminating in an event rare in history: the eradication of an entire civilization.  Unlike the First Punic War (264-241 BCE) and Second Punic War (218-201 BCE) between Rome and Carthage which lasted twenty-three years and seventeen years respectively and involved campaigns throughout the Western Mediterranean, the Third Punic War (149-146 BCE) lasted only four years and was fought…

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Focus on Fortifications: “The Walls of Carthage and Its Double Harbor”

Like its mortal enemy Rome, Carthage was both a city and an empire, famous throughout the Mediterranean for its material wealth, strong thalassocracy, and the strength of the walls protecting its capital and namesake located in the center of the coast of the Gulf of Tunis in what is today a seaside suburb of modern Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. The site chosen for Carthage (Kart-hadasht in Phoenician, Karchedon in Greek, and Carthago in Latin) was on a triangular peninsula covered with low…

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Focus on Wounds in War: “Alexander the Great and His Many Battle Injuries”

The primary sources emphasize Alexander III of Macedon’s (“the Great” r.336-323 BCE) bravery in combat, and we know from the descriptions of these engagements, mostly from his best biographers, the Greek historian Arrian (c.86-c.160) and the Roman historians Diodorus Siculus (first century BCE), Quintus Curtius Rufus (first century CE), that the Macedonian king preferred active command over remote (or removed) command. In active command, the commanding general participates in battle, leading…

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Focus on Naval Warfare: “Greek Triremes at War in the Hellenic Era”

The “Age of the Trireme” parallels Greece’s Hellenic era (c.500-c.338 BCE), and its use as the primary capital ship of both Greece and the major naval powers of the Mediterranean corresponds to this roughly 170 year time span.  Although most closely associated with Athens, nearly all Greek city states or poleis with access to the sea constructed triremes to defend local waters and to participate in allied naval engagements, first against the invading Persians during the Persian Wars (499-449…

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