Anna on War

The term's over and we're well into exam season.  More importantly, I'll be on leave soon, which means I hope to get back to posting blog posts regularly after a prolonged silence.  It's been another helluva year.  But the teaching has gone better than last, I think, as I've adjusted to life with two wee, wonderful children.

Not only is it exam season:  it's also rejection season.  I invested lots of effort in a big grant (SSHRC Insight) back in the late summer.  But to no avail.  After getting the bad news, I considered abandoning my proposed research project (the follow-up to all this stuff I'm working on now).  With the size of these grants and the lag time between proposal, application, success, and funding, you gotta think long term - or plan for things way down the road. 

Anyway, I considered shifting to Agathias.  It's definitely something I plan to do someday, and I thought this might be the time.  I also considered turning to the impact of war in the age of Justinian project, which I paused with the publication of Heather's book.  In the end, however, I've decided to stick with a big, long-term project on Ammianus Marcellinus.  I've already got some revisions already, which I think will make it a much better proposal when I reapply in the fall.

So what does all this have to do with Anna (and by Anna I mean Anna Komnene)?  Well, I also contemplated the merits of jumping to the middle Byzantine period, something else I've contemplated.  In the end, it seemed to me that too much work would be required of me to get it ready in time to reapply in October:  while I wouldn't entirely be starting from scratch, it wouldn't be far off.

One thing that has struck me, however, while thinking about this Ammianus project and thinking vaguely about later Byzantine historiography has been some of the points made by Nadeja Williams in this excellent article in Eidolon:  https://eidolon.pub/there-are-more-women-military-historians-than-ever-before-why-hasnt-the-field-noticed-1c26f62f2d4.  In that article, Williams says,

"women are socialized differently, their scholarship on military history is often different from the scholarship traditionally done by men. Put simply, women tend to ask different research questions about the nature of war than men have done, and tend to be more interested in the human experience and the reality of suffering in war for all who experience military conflicts."

One of the angles to my Ammianus project is a consideration of his interest in the human experience of war, which seems much more pronounced than Procopius', though which might be comparable to Agathias'.  While all three are men, of course, we do have one later female historian, namely Anna Komnene.  Can we find a different approach to combat in Anna, one that differs from the typical male approach we find in other classicizing historians, whether early or middle Byzantine? 

Unfortunately, my only frame of reference is the earlier historians, so I can't compare her account with her contemporaries and near contemporaries (something for another day?).  But, I thought I'd take a look at one battle, and one that jumped out was the Battle of Kalavrye fought in 1078 between the the forces of Bryennios and those of Alexios.  A civil war battle, yes, that comes early in the Alexiad, but one that she describes in some detail.  And, although she can make no claims to being there, she obviously had good access to one of the principal participants (her father), if not both (if Bryennios was her father-in-law).  Before I raise a few points, I should say that some have disparaged her accounts of battle:  the translators of the revised Penguin version called her descriptions of battle "the least impressive passages in the history" in the midst of an otherwise glowing assessment.

In this one case, is Anna more interested in the human experience of war, at least in this one battle (described at 1.4.1ff)?  Well, at the start she includes some expected elements, like relative deployment and composition of the two forces, and a comment or two about the fortune of war.  Not surprisingly, she does tend to single in on individual soldiers, and officers, and her father at that (the heroic lead of her Alexiad, and by her reckoning an equal to Scipio Aemilianus or even Hannibal (1.1.3)).  It's not surprising, however, because this is what "good" Byzantine historians had been doing for centuries, as tradition dictated.  That said, Anna includes some remarkable descriptions of the human experience of combat. 

In the midst of the catalogue of forces, for instance, Byrennios, "circling round in their midst like some Ares or a Giant standing out head and shoulders above all others, taller by a cubit, was in truth an object of wonder and dread to those who saw him" (1.4. - all translations from the updated Penguin edition). A little later, while the battle is well and truly under way, we get this:  "Seeing all this Alexius covered his face, drawing down the vizor fastened to the rim of his helmet, and with the six men I spoke of before rushed violently against them" (1.5).  Alexios single-handedly emboldens his side by snatching the the emperor's horse and leading it back to his men.  Then,

"Wherever they happened to be they stood motionless, looking back to the rear and amazed beyond all belief by what they saw. It was indeed an extra-ordinary sight: the horses on which they rode were gazing to the front, but the faces of the riders turned backwards; they neither advanced nor had they any intention of wheeling about, but just stopped, dumbfounded and utterly unable to understand what had happened. The Scyths thought of home and were already on their way; they had no further interest in pursuit, but far off from both armies wandered around at random with their booty."

Anna doesn't fly around from general to general, but zooms in on smaller groups with their officers and focuses on their experiences - physical, emotional, and pyschological.  She has any eye for the vivid detail too.  A bit later, having switched to Bryennios, we find this episode:

"He himself, the deviser of the whole stratagem, followed immediately behind them with as many soldiers collected from his scattered forces as the circumstances demanded. At this point one of the ‘Immortals’ serving under him, a hot-headed, reckless fellow, spurred on his horse in front of the rest and slackening rein charged straight for Bryennius. He thrust his spear very hard at Bryennius’ chest, but he, drawing his sword quickly, before the spear could be driven home cut it off above the point, struck his attacker by the collar-bone, and as he bore down with all his might severed his whole arm, cutting right through his breastplate. Meanwhile the Turks riding up one after the other covered the enemy with showers of arrows. Bryennius’ men were overwhelmed by the unexpectedness of this onslaught; nevertheless they recovered and re-formed ranks. Calling upon one another to endure like men they bore the shock of the attack."

Things get worse for the general a bit later:

"But when his [Bryennios'] horse grew weary, unable either to flee or even pursue (for it was almost at its last gasp through constant chargings) Bryennius reined it in, and like some noble athlete stood ready for combat, challenging two high-born Turks to fight. One struck at him with his spear, but was not fast enough to give a heavy blow; instead he received a heavier one from Bryennius’s right arm, which, too quick for him, cut off his hand with his sword, and hand and spear rolled to the ground. The other Turk leapt down from his horse and panther-like jumped on to Bryennius’ mount, fastening himself on its flank, and there he clung desperately, trying to climb on its back. Bryennius like a wild beast kept twisting round and tried to stab him off with his sword, but without success, for the Turk behind him kept swaying to avoid the blows. Eventually his right arm tired of striking at empty air and himself worn out with fighting, Bryennius surrendered to the main body of the enemy. They seized him and like men who have won great glory took him off to Alexius. The latter was standing not far away from the place where Bryennius was taken and was at the time marshalling the Turks and his own men, encouraging them to fight."




This is remarkable stuff.  There's nothing quite like this in Ammianus, Procopius, and Agathias, so far as I can remember.  I'll have to look closer at Anna and her contemporaries' and near-contemporaries' accounts, but Williams' comments might not only apply to modern scholarship, but to medieval authors too.  More to come...eventually...

Justinian's Guide to Ruling an Empire

I just finished reading Peter Heather's (PH) Rome Resurgent, which I now have to write a review for.  When I first heard about the book, I was both excited and horribly disappointed: excited because I love the topic and have read some of Heather's other work, disappointed because it looked like he had done what I had done.  The good news, for me, is that he doesn't quite seem to have done what I had intended:  write a detailed study of the impact of Justinian's wars on the fate of the empire.  Yes, this is what the book purports to do - and to some degree it does just that, but not quite in the way that I would. 

I'm not going to get into all the nitty-gritty here; most of that will have to wait for the review.  That being said, there is one issue I want to raise, which PH got to, or at least underlined, at the end:  how do you rule for a really long time?  As PH makes clear, Justinian (J) did a lot of things while he was emperor, some of which are quite significant, with four items the accomplishments that usually get most of the attention:  wars of conquest, legal reforms, building of Hagia Sophia, and the closing of the Academy in Athens.  Besides those accomplishments, PH illustrates well J's determination in a number of other capacities, including the religious sphere, for J, like many before and after, strove to bring unity to the Christian church, though with mixed results.

As PH sees J, a great deal of his accomplishments should be ascribed to his attempts to prove his credentials (for rule) and, in the aftermath of the Nika revolt, restore order and his lost prestige (or something to that effect).  J didn't have a clear plan with the west.  Rather, with real challenges to his rule all around, J needed to find some means of consolidating his power, and military success in far-flung places, as the opportunities arose, seemed the best bet.  Yes, there was some strategic thinking on J's and his empire's part, but little of it was long term, and PH argues there's not much in the way of concern for the wellbeing of that empire.  Ultimately, then, while J doesn't deserve the blame for the later ills of the empire, which were largely the result of the world war (as PH calls it) of the later sixth century, most of his success would seem to be a combination of opportunism and - as I take PH's underlying message - dumb luck.

Like others, PH sees J as an emperor only out for number one, with little regard for his people and what impact his policies had on them.  He was quite happy to plunder and pillage if it got him what he wanted, and that was control of the empire.  So, the many thousands who died in Constantinople itself, or the wider parts of the empire at large (Antioch, North Africa, Italy), mattered little.  Many have seen J as a particularly harsh ruler, and PH would seem to fall on this side of the spectrum, if not quite at the far end.

This is where I come in.  I don't want to make a judgement on J's cruelty here, but I do wonder if the absence of long term strategic planning fits well with what we know about J's reign.  Few emperors lived and reigned as long as J.  While many of PH's explanations are perfectly reasonable, is it really possible to rule for nearly 40 years on dumb luck, or something a little more sophisticated than that?  Augustus' long reign is undoubtedly due to his careful networking, planning, and plotting - and like J, he was a master propagandist.  Even if J didn't have any real long term version at the start of his reign, the near disastrous Nika riot would, to my mind, seem to have provided just such an opportunity, after the dust settled, for J to carefully, with Theodora's help, work out how to rule for a long time without the same kinds of crises.  Rather importantly, it seems to have worked, despite all the challenges that he later faced, from the death of his wife and the onset of the plague, which might have afflicted J himself, to the Persian invasions of 540 and the 559 Kutrigur attack of Constantinople.

This doesn't necessarily mean that J had a long term plan to conquer the west and rebuild the ancient pan-Mediterranean empire.  A good part of J's initiatives on that front truly could have been the result of circumstances, and I don't doubt that J did many of the same things that many if not all pre-modern rules have done to ensure rule, including prove their religious and military mettle.  I think the absence of detail - and insufficient evidence - are the cause of some of my dissatisfaction with the explanation PH offers.  I guess then too that what I'd also like to know more about is how exactly an emperor like J went about carrying out his foreign policy objectives - and even how he created them in the first place.  To what degree were there sets of instructions, or guidelines, left from previous rulers that laid out some of this stuff?  Anyway, what the book proves to me, at least for the moment, that my 'great' "impact of war under Justinian" project isn't dead yet, and in fact might be in better shape than I'd feared.  Now if only I hadn't just sent in a proposal for a big research project on Ammianus.  Oh well, maybe it'll get rejected in April? :)

Procopius Revisited

Time for some more reflection.  First, I love the fact that Cameron's and Kaldellis' chapters bookend the book.  I also confess a great love - too strong? - for reading about how scholars came to their chosen topics/views.  Reading Cameron's discussion of how she came to Procopius were fascinating.  At the same time, I like Kaldellis' idea that more of us (those writing about Procopius) ought to say why we like reading him.  I admit in my own case I was influenced by three things.  I knew little about late antiquity (why did we cut off there?), but I started doing some background reading to bring myself up to speed.  One particularly influential book for me was Cameron's first edition of the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity. In that book, this fellow Procopius kept popping up.  While I don't remember what stood out, I do remember the sense that he seemed an intriguing figure who deserved closer attention.  I seem to recall too that some of the formative thinking about this took place on a stationary bike at the McMaster University athletic centre (circa 2001, 2002).

Second, I love these sorts of chapters/papers:  ones that highlight key aspects of a topic, some gaps in the scholarship, and avenues for future work.  More often than not, these are the ones that have the most scribbles in my copies.  Given my love for Roman military things, historiography things, and late antique things, it's no surprise that these chapters here really float my boat.

Third, I want to go back to a couple of points that both Cameron and Kaldellis have made (separate ones, more or less), which have given me much to think about.  One is Cameron's emphasis on narrative and storytelling, that I mentioned in my woe-is-me post (which also has me thinking:  what sorts of efforts should we make to publicize our books, and how can I make my work reach more people?).  Cameron notes that his narrative approach relates to writers of sixth century history as well as other types of Byzantine prose writing, like hagiography.  That's a fascinating idea, and I'm sure not wrong.  I remember coming across all sorts of useful discussion vaguely related to these comments in Clark's 2004 book, History, Theory, Text.  Maybe this is one avenue that deserves more exploration:  Procopius and hagiography.  After all, Procopius spends a lot of time characterizing a few individuals in his Wars, to say nothing of his Secret History.  In crafting his portraits of Belisarius, has Procopius adopted and adapted some of the techniques employed by hagiographers? 

Cameron also draws attention to Procopius' writing practices, especially with respect to what he chose to include and exclude.  I talked about this a bit, but I'll be touching on it even more in the sequel.  It seems to me that one of the hardest things to grasp (and it's almost certainly impossible) is why Procopius left things out, and one particular topic I'll be looking at in the book is recruitment.  I suspect that as work continues on this sequel, I might have to address quite regularly why things were left out:  did it suit his literary objectives somehow, is it a desire to make his work more palatable to his audience?  There's so much he likely did know, even the regularly military stuff I'm interested, that he doesn't discuss. 

Yeah, I seem to be trailing off so I'll move on to the next topic.  Cameron stresses that all three of Procopius' works are anchored in material life, while Kaldellis (following Turquois) highlights the materiality of Procopius' writing.  This is how he "structures, textures, surfaces, and fleshes out a world for us" (Kaldellis 2017:  265).  His point is that Procopius has produced a literary simulacrum of sixth-century experience, and he draws attention to a number of topics for which this might be true including weapons, wounds, and forts.  What I need to do, clearly, is read Turquois' thesis in its entirety and bear her conclusions in mind when looking at all the war stuff.  One current project, stemming from the grant, is on battle narrative in late antique classicizing historiography. It might be worthwhile to consider all this as I examine (or continue - it's well on its way) my intended subjects, Ammianus, Jordanes, Procopius, Agathias, and Theophylact.   As it happens, when it comes to open or pitched battle, Procopius might well be one of the weaker ones of the group.  I think, if anything, Agathias and Ammianus might be the strongest in this regard, though only time will tell (and more reading). 

Unfortunately now Cameron and Kaldellis have me wanting to write a third and fourth sequel of my Procopius book, the third on narrative techniques in the Wars as a whole (maybe narrative and character), the fourth on the materiality of warfare in Procopius.  But then I'll never do any of these other things.  Maybe I could combine the two into my eventual study of Agathias?  If nothing else, this book has so far reminded me why Procopius might still be one of my favourite topics.  It's also been a very challenging year or three professionally, and it's stimulating discussions like these that keep me going.

The Monograph Do-over

I've been reading some of the chapters, particularly the opening and closing sections, in Lillington-Martin and Turquois' new edited volume on Procopius, and a few things have jumped out at me, much as I suspected they would.  For one, it's a bit disappointing my book came out as late as it did, as the gestation period of the edited volume meant that no one really had the chance to digest what I had to say.  On the other hand, had the edited volume come out before the book, there's every chance I might have seriously considered tweaking (to put it mildly) some of the book to respond to the interesting points that have been made.  One other, general observation:  some of the avenues for future research proclaimed in this book I have already embarked upon.

Let's begin with the first point.  A couple of contributors (Whitby and Kaldellis) draw attention (or at least refer in passing) to the heroic, even Homeric, character of the Gothic War narrative, especially as it applies to the siege of Rome (537/538).  I discuss all this in detail in the book (chapter 4).  Somewhat frustratingly, I'd initially stumbled across this character to the narrative back at the start of the PhD in 2006.  But things being what they are, Hornblower managed to comment on it before I did, at least in print, owing to the publication of his contribution to the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare.  Still my chapter, a revised version of what was in the original PhD, discusses this in detail. 

Indeed, Kaldellis (2017:  261) notes that Procopius' "coverage has breadth and detail in the right proportions as a military historian".  That, in a nutshell, summarizes what I argue on the book, though my focus is more narrowly on battle.  To complicate things, the follow-up, or sequel (which I've discussed regularly in this blog) as I'm thinking about it, will look at this more broadly, though more on this a bit later.

Another point that Cameron, Van Nuffelen, and Kaldellis draw attention to (to some degree or other) is the relationship between author and text.  On the one hand, there's caution about how much we can take an author at his word (Cameron, Kaldellis).  On the other, Van Nuffelen notes scholars have hardly ever heeded the advice of literary scholars that author and text are two different things.  I did - and had planned to do more of this in the monograph.  My desire to do so, however, was regularly tempered (by others) at the various submission/revision stage, such that I ended up including a background chapter (one that I'd planned to add to the end - after the reader had seen what I had to say about the text). 

The narrative structure of Procopius' works features too, unsurprisingly.  There's a sense that more could be done on this.  Cameron (2017:  15) identifies this as an approach that "seeks to analyse the techniques by which narrative is constructed" and highlights his techniques of narrative and storytelling , while Kaldellis (2017:  261) says that Procopius' "ontology of action" remains to be studied.  Although my focus was narrower (combat), this, again, is precisely what my book does.  I ask (or answer), how does Procopius tell the story of battle, and what sort of narrative techniques does he employ?  See, for instance, the second sections of my second, third, and fourth chapters.  It involves bringing some narrative theory into the discussion, though also hints of rhetoric and classicism, among other things. 

On the other hand, doubt is cast on the value of genre in understanding a text.  Admittedly, I stressed the importance of genre in understanding how Procopius describes and explains combat.  I even went so far as to claim that Procopius was constrained by his chosen genre (classicizing history).  I think my point, however, was that this explained why he didn't include all those little details that military historians are often so keen on.  Indeed, I also tried to show that for all this influence of genre, he was able to craft some truly remarkable accounts of battle, and that his latent classicism didn't necessarily mean that he couldn't represent reality truthfully (Van Nuffelen 2017:  40 - the prologue, section four in my introduction, and chapter six).  Additionally, I spent a good part of the time showing what makes his accounts of combat in the Wars such dramatic narratives (section three in chapter two, and sections 2a, though maybe 2b and 2c too, in chapter four).

Then there are the avenues for future research (they are many), some of which I've started to take up (or will do soon).  Cameron (2017:  18) says it's inadequate to evaluate Procopius' three works in terms of reliability and truth-telling.  This had been my intention with the follow-up, under the preconception that people would rather read that sort of thing than what I had done in Battles and Generals.  Some months ago that approach seemed better left for something else (a commentary, maybe), and some sort of unifying theme would make for a much better project.  Well, lo and behold, that's when I stumbled across the emphasis on fear, raiding, booty, and defence that unifies all three texts, at least if your focus (like mine) is on military issues.  Along the way I plan to situate Procopius' writing on war in the real-world context.  This means, to follow Kaldellis (2017:  269) to some degree, to look at the sixth century empire's military institutions through an analysis of the papyrological, legal, and narrative evidence, though I too will be using, where warranted, the epigraphic evidence.  Increasingly, it seems, scholars are seeking to understand the relationship between Procopius and Justinian's laws (Kaldellis 2017:  268), and I plan to do this, where possible, and where it pertains to military issues, in the sequel.

So there's me responding to what I've read so far.  There's more, and there will be more, but my bicycle's busted and I think my youngest daughter (all of 1.5 months) may soon crack.

Hannibal Eras Course - What I got from the Roman Military Studies Panel at CCC 2017

As I mentioned in the previous post, more than half of the presentations at the Montreal Celtic Conference in Classics 2017.  Additionally, as I might also have suggested, many of the papers gave me lots to think about for the new 3rd/4th year course I'm teaching in the fall, Hannibal.  Though  Hannibal dominates the title, it's less, specifically, about the man, and more about the three wars between Roman and Carthage.  Hannibal is merely meant to suck people in (though it's not yet clear if that's happening).  The point of putting this here is that it forces me to go over the notes I made, and it allows for something like an outline to come together.

In essence, a number of questions in the papers gave me some questions that might be worth tackling in the course including, in no particular order, and from the specific to the general:

1)  How was the army of the mid-republic organized and how did it fight?  (brings to mind Daly's books - how much face of battle business ought I get in to?  And there's the maniple/phalanx business, discussed by Polybius and Koon)

2)  Why did they (the Romans - it's a Romanocentric course for any number of reasons) go to war at all in each of the three cases (first through third)?  (brings to mind the imperialism discussions - the Romans were excessively bellicose a la Harris, maybe they weren't a al Eckstein)

3)  What were the costs associated for all those involved (the Roman government/state, its people, and more)?  (farms were deserted in the aftermath, maybe they weren't, and what role do slaves play in all of this)

4)  What does it mean for our understanding of things if we're so reliant on later (save, to some degree, Polybius) information (Livy, Appian, etc.)?  How do they colour how the war was initially received?  And they need not be histories alone, for the story of Aeneas and Dido from Vergil's Aeneid provides an interesting case.

5)  Is it at all possible to provide balance to a discussion that will be dominated by pro-Roman sources?

6)  What role did the war play in the expansion of the Roman state and its development?

There are some basic questions, which I jotted down at the conference, though which I'd thought about before, like:

7)  What are the sources for the war/s?

8)  What shape was the Roman state in when they started?  In between?  At the end?

9)  What was the course of events in the war?  This is perhaps the most obvious of questions, and it will undoubtedly make up a big chunk of our discussion.  But I'd like quite a lot of our time spent discussing the big issues.

Then there are some additional notes that I made, relevant, though less questions, per se:

10)  Worth discussing whether there was a religious component to the wars, and what it was.  This could range everywhere from the rituals performed before battles (the sacred chickens) to the opening/closing of the doors of the Temple of Janus.

11)  Evidently, both Livy and Polybius note deserters in the war:  if/when I find the references, it would be worth bringing up and connecting it to how Roman soldiers (regular ones) might have experienced the wars.

Finally, some interesting comments.  One is an interesting characterization of the second Punic war  from Michael Fronda - or at least it's jotted down on his handout. 

12)  The 2nd Punic War could be seen as the "big die off".  

13)  The period after that second war was described as one of innovation.  Along those lines, many people (invariably men) come up and become prominent who have no established background.

14)  There's a big boom in Hellenization after the war, though what kind of Hellenization that might have been wasn't clear to me.  Presumably the bringing of all the art to Rome (conquered Greece quote from Horace), though also the (continued) use of Greek as the language of choice for Roman writers, to a point, and the increasing number of Romans educated by/in Greeks/Greek.

And that's that.  I also made a reading list (which might be too ambitious in the time I have, but it includes books by Eckstein, Rosentein, Hoyos, Lazenby, Fronda, Drogula, and maybe too Boronowski, Levene (how much Livy versus Polybius discussion ought I have?), and the various entries in the Wiley companion).  Here's to hoping these points help make for an interesting course, which proves useful not only for the students, but me too.

New Directions in the Roman Military and the Celtic Conference in Classics

When I signed up for this conference (i.e., sent in an abstract in the hopes of sharing the fruits of my SSHRC labours, pre-acceptance), I only had 1 daughter and wasn't sure I'd be going (been turned down before).  The abstract was accepted, and I now have two wonderful daughters.

The call papers stated they (the organizers) were looking for work that presented new research and covered any point between about 500 BC and AD 500.  Fortunately I had new work, and my subject matter wasn't too late.  What neither I, nor the organizers, expected, however, was that the topics would land so heavily on the republican (and earlier) side of things.  Once the dust had settled, perhaps just two papers could be classified as expressly imperial (my own included), with at least three that dabbled in the republican and imperial eras. 

On the one hand, this left me with little meaningful to contribute in the first two days' worth or so.  I taught a full-year history of Rome class back in 2009-2010.  Before that, my last serious dabbling in republican matters came in 2003, in my "Roman Constitution" graduate seminar.  So, not a lot, though I've done some reading here and there (and I'm teaching a course on Hannibal in the fall).  On other hand, getting to listen to all this new work on vaguely similar, though still different, subject matter has proved a boon.  I'm still working on the textbook, which will begin with the late republic, so I've been provided with some new ammunition.  Plus, there's that Hannibal class - and I now have a big list of big issues I want to raise with those few students who take the class (and right now it's only a few, sadly).  One last note:  I just saw Dunkirk in 70mm (not showing that way in Winnipeg), and it's a powerful movie.  So I have that side of war floating around my head too.  In sum:  a very fruitful full days.  A number of threads ran through the papers, and I want to get some of them down before they're lost forever.  I hope to return to these again in the next few days, especially as I continue plugging away on other projects.

In early Rome warfare seems to have been dominated by warlords with private bands, and most of it consisted of raids, and little of it consisted of set-piece battles.  This was, then, a stark echo of what I've discussed before (and am building towards) in this project on Procopius.  It's not all entirely new (the late antique stuff), but it does deserve stressing.  In fact, in private discussion (on the Metro no less), Jeremy Armstrong (the organizer) noted that in some (many?) ways the big wars and battles of the mid-to-late republic with their large armies and pitched battles were the exception to the norm of pre-modern combat.  In some ways, then, warfare in early Rome was very much a reflection of wider practices around the Mediterranean (and beyond?), and warfare at the end of antiquity represented a return to this. 

As someone with surface knowledge of the republic only, it was intriguing to hear about the stress upon the Punic War and the Social War.  I knew about some of the important things that happened in the Punic War and their role in later events, but not all of them - or I'd long since forgotten.  And here's where Dunkirk (and the major war that preceded that war) comes into it.  There was general acceptance that the elites of mid-republican Rome, to say nothing of the regular folk, suffered serious losses during the war, and to such a degree that we can speak of a "lost generation" or two.  What's also interesting about this, however, is the impact that this might have had on the usual pattern of republican political offices, or at least the pattern at the time.  There were so many losses (here consuls and praetors - from the senatorial families) that there was a return to repeated terms of office (checks had been put in place for this some 100 or more years earlier.  Once the war was over, there is even evidence for a strong dissatisfaction amongst the regular troops for all the fighting.  In these matters, then, the republican soldiers and their officers are perhaps not so different from their 20th century Anglo-saxon ones.

To touch briefly on the Social War:  it was this that had a significant impact on the transformation of the Roman army near the end of the republic, not the sole efforts of Martial, though they would have played some part.  People who had been allies were now fighting with each other, and it wasn't only Romans versus Italians, for there was a great deal of mingling.  But also too - and I hadn't considered this - Rome found itself with an economic-military problem at the end of the war.  Evidently, it had long been cheaper for Rome to supplement its military with allied forces.  They paid for themselves, both in terms of salary and equipment and arms.  When the number of Romans jumped at the end of the war, suddenly the Romans had to find a way to pay for a huge number of troops (much more than before).

One final point for now:  after this point I'll have to consult my notes (and that requires additional effort).  It's remarkable how evidence contributes to the kinds of questions that scholars pose.  This gaggle of republican scholars were asking the sorts of questions that are vaguely relevant (or more so) to late antique scholars - it's a shame more late antique scholars don't draw on the comparative material of the republican era (but don't worry, I will).  After all, both groups are generally left with lots of texts to work with (the assorted classical, classicizing, and other texts).  But the imperial scholars can't look at those same sorts of issues:  there's very little evidence about the details of the practice of warfare, but quite a lot on organization and social matters, among other things.  In fact, I guess that's where being a late antique person you get to draw on a bit of both (there are some inscriptions, some more papyri, and lots of legal evidence). 

Anyway, as I say, that's enough for now (going on too long - need to finish this cider and head to the hotel to catch a taxi to head to the airport to head home).  Montreal is beautiful.  I had planned a post on it, but it'll have to wait (if it comes at all).

This Revolution Wasn't Televised, or Horses, Huns, and Romans, Oh My!

I continue to chug away, working on this conference paper, which is connected to the grant and its attendant research.  This means more thinking about the steppes, and today the Huns in particular and their role in all of this.  It also means going back to some earlier work for a Roman army textbook, which I think I've mentioned before.  Anyway, about a year ago, when my energy was focused on the army textbook and this grant was an unimaginable miracle (not yet a reality), I spent some time looking at what people had googled about the Roman army, as this seemed a good (or reasonable) way to approach writing something for those coming to something cold (or coldish).  One question that google identified was something to the effect of, "how effective was the Roman army?"  Considering that question led me to work on military revolutions, military effectiveness, decisive battles, and more.  There was much of interest and much that wasn't - or simply concerned with eras I know little about.  
 
While I plan to touch on these sorts of questions (revolutions, effectiveness, etc) at various points in that textbook, it's looking like it will have some bearing on this other work too, including the conference paper, which looks more closely at the Eurasian influence.  I will, in part, be talking about where the warfare that Procopius describes (and the sixth century Romans waged) fits into the greater scheme of things.  Is it representative of Rome's new way of fighting, an age of hippotoxotai?  Is it still largely connected to what came before, the infantry armies of centuries past?  Or is it some sort of hybrid, between these two worlds?  Regardless of where it is (and at present I lean to the middle, a transitional age), attendant issues include when and how all these changes came into being and their impact. 

As I consider all this, one thing that's been most useful is the work that I've done on the Roman military in the Moesias, as it's allowed me to look more closely at organizational changes over an important area over a significant period of time.  It's also put me in an excellent position to understand some of the later changes that came, especially when were are less well informed about how they came about.  It's clear, for instance, that the Romans were constantly and gradually changing their military and everything about it.  In the Moesias they go from a few units of perhaps 1000s of soldiers and maybe a handful of known military bases, predominantly filled with infantry, to dozens, if not hundreds, of units in even more bases, from wee fortlets to larger legionary bases, and still, predominantly, infantry - but with growing numbers of cavalry too.  We can also see in some cases changes both in response to significant military challenges (soldiers shifted to the east from the Moesias, so new troops brought in from parts west and north) and in advance of major military operations (the number of auxiliary units in the Moesias spike in the run-up to Trajan's wars against Dacia). 

We can't observe organizational changes in this same level of detail for any other period of Roman history, so far as I know (thank you diplomata).  This makes for much more guesswork later.  Nevertheless, the general pattern seems to be that many emperors made changes on some level, some more than others.  These might be in regard to specific issues, or more general ones.  Admittedly, the specific motivations of the emperors are hardly ever immediately clear, so a great deal of guesswork, though of the educated sort, is involved.  Generally, though, I get the sense that big, significant, changes didn't come about all that often, if ever, in the Roman world, at least in the military sphere.  Certainly none of them, to my mind, could be called revolutionary to any degree.  In fact, for many of the "big" changes that we can discern, you can usually find a counter-argument to claims about their usefulness.  I'll come back to this momentarily.

The next set of questions surround why they come about.  The sort of changes I alluded to above with respect to troop movements perhaps have more to do with short term issues and so are perhaps less useful for dealing with this sort of question.  But there are plenty of other changes in the Roman military that attract attention, from changes in equipment to changes in tactics, changes in dress, and even changes in soldierly origins.  As I see it, the sort of changes I'm alluding to here - adoption of the weapons and/or techniques of a different people - are usually explained in one of several ways:  technological breakthroughs; cultural change (the move to the Spanish sword in the republican era came down to a so-called sword culture); military necessity (the Huns caused lots of problems and so the Romans responded by introducing the cavalry to match); financial considerations (money issues, like the deteriorating value of pay, led to the implementation of payment in kind to soldiers in the third century before things stabilized); and practical considerations.  To get back to counter-arguments, then, too much emphasis on any one issue, and not enough awareness of the broader context can obscure some things.  For instance, Alofs has shown that the stirrup, which was introduced in the sixth-century in the Mediterranean, did not transform mounted combat despite the claims of some (his bugaboo is Hugh Kennedy).  Although I don't think he mentioned them, the mounted archers of earlier imperial Rome (i.e., not late antique/early medieval era), like the Ala Gallorum et Thracum Antiana sagittaria were stirrup free.  In fact, this is where I think Simon James' book Rome and the Sword hits the mark in any number of ways, for he tends to bring in quite a lot of evidence and perspectives.

So, to get back to the steppes and its peoples' impact on sixth-century Roman warfare, it seems to me that to see their system as offering some sort of revolutionary approach which came about because of the marked inferiority of the Roman military machine (this is the view of Hyun Jin Kim) is an overstatement.  The Romans had mounted warriors for centuries before the Huns came along even if they were fewer in number before the sixth century.  Any increase, which would be hard to illustrate with the same level of detail, might be down to any number of factors.  And if it came about before our earliest confirmed Hunnic contact (the end of the fourth century), it's difficult to attribute this to their influence.  Along those lines, to see Adrianople as proof of the limitations of the Roman military, especially when faced with a nomadic threat, is to adopt a far too liberal reading of our primary source, Ammianus, and to ignore too much of the work that has been undertaken on that battle.  While it certainly seems to have left its mark on some contemporaries (as Lenski's article from 1997 shows), its impact on the organization and tactics of the eastern army, which suffered so greatly in the battle, was not of the sort adduced (a completely new approach adopted), as the Notitia Dignitatum makes clear (the organization of the eastern and western halves, while not coterminous, still have a great deal in common, organizationally speaking).  This isn't to deny an impact from the steppes, it's only to hold off from putting too much weight on the role of the Huns in particular in all of this.

Plundering the Sixth Century Mediterranean

I've been a bit overwhelmed, for lots of reasons.  But, as I trudge on, I think I am making progress.  In fact, the principal offshoot of my grant (SSHRC Insight Development Grant), one part of what was once conceived as one large book-length project and now three, is starting to take shape.  In fact, I think I've found the ties that should bind it all together in a meaningful way.  Given that I expect to start typing before too long, this seemed a good time to pause and write my thoughts/intentions down.

The overarching plan for the grant and now this book was to look at all three of Procopius' works in tandem with a focus on military matters, but more than the battles that occupied book one (and the thesis).  The plan was to make my approach as holistic as possible, with Procopius serving as the foundation for all matters pertaining to war, from organization and strategy to logistics and tactics.  As I plugged away, however, it started to seem that it was going to become something I'd rather it wasn't:  a psuedo-commentary in which I went through all the key topics usually associated with military matters found in Procopius and evaluated them systematically.  While that's important, it has the danger of forcing modern concepts or ideas on Procopius.  And, it might be a bit dry:  I'd rather there be some sort of thread underlining such an approach.

A number of years have passed since I started working on this, and a few things have influenced my thinking including my continued interest in the cultural approach to warfare, which I will likely address in some capacity or other in this book, world history, and in particular the sixth-century Roman state's place in the wider Eurasian world and how it was impacted by people to its west, north, east, and south, and its evidently evolving approach to warfare. Some significant publications have helped too, particularly Justinian's Codex, but also aspects of some of Anastasius' imperial edicts (a bit earlier, yes, but part of the same broader context).

What I've found is that the two central themes that tie the three works together, at least from the perspective I'm interested in, are defence and plunder.  In the Secret History (SH) Procopius lambastes Justinian for, among other things, his greed and desire for money, his inability to protect the empire from plundering raids carried out by myriad peoples in the Balkans and the Near East, and the damage he wrought on newly conquered lands like North Africa and Italy, as well as those of the very people he's trying to protect the empire from, the assorted barbarians.  In the Buildings (B), Procopius is obviously obsessed with Justinian's (alleged in parts) building programme, and much of it is connected with defence.  Indeed, as Procopius sees it in the B, Justinian's job is to protect the empire, and this is done by means of both men and materiel.  The B is, of course, filled with forts and fortified settlements, which Procopius alleges Justinian either built himself or repaired.  While good questions have been raised about how much of this he actually effected, there's good reason to think that he did devote considerable attention to fortification work, as a host of studies have shown.  As I suggested, however, he also regularly mentions the garrisons of these forts in the B, and he even implies that it's not enough to build fortifications, for they need men to man them.  Then there's the Wars (W), and Procopius focuses on either defence or plunder depending on the context of a particular war.  So, there's much more on defence in the PW than there is in the VW and GW.  In fact, defensive-issues tend to surface in those latter two wars after Rome has managed to win, at least initially.  The VW is rife with plundering Roman (or allied) soldiers.  While it is not quite as prevalent in Italy, it remains a problem, as the actions of Bessas, for instance, illustrate. 

I've only just given you the briefest of summaries:  the final version will flesh out the details.  Suffice to say, what we seem to have is a world rife with armies, Roman, Persian, and otherwise, eager for plunder, in which no one entity is greedier than another.  Procopius' works, when read collectively, seem to agree, in some way or another, on this.  Indeed, his perspective is understandably pro-Roman, but even he touches on the impact of Rome's actions in this regard on other places in both the W and SH.  It's also become clear to me that Procopius' emphasis on the importance of a strong defensive outlook is reflected in much of our additional evidence, from inscriptions and papyri to the law and some of our other literary sources.  There is, for instance, a strong undercurrent of fear that seems to pervade life (I've found), and Procopius, and Justinian, really, seems keen on countering this by means of defensive measures that provide safety and security.  It's possible that that this climate of fear was constructed by Justinian, and I think that many feel that this was the case.  What's less clear (and so new to me), I think, is that this extended to foreign affairs too, i.e. not only natural disasters and the social unrest that often plagued Constantinople. 

Anyway, so that's it, or what I'm running with.  The final version, obviously, will be much longer.  Should add that once all this is finished a few years from now (that's all three parts), I'll be delighted to be free from Procopius.  Not sure what I'd do next (I had something I now think I need a prolonged break, if not a clean break, from that former resident of Caesarea), but that's a few years away yet.

Agathias, a Herodotus for the Age of Justinian

I've been slowly working my way through Agathias, reading the text, in translation I admit (though with the accompanying Greek text), much closer than I ever have before.  Some of it I'd already gone through before, but this time I'm trying to soak it all in, so to speak, partially keeping my open for certain things, like evidence of combat motivation (for a paper) and military communities (again for a paper), but while also keeping my eyes open to interesting features.  I've found more than a few, and as I near the end there are a few things stand out.  I'd planned to discuss a few of them here, but the others, the careful crafting of his historian persona, his abundant (in comparison to Procopius) methodological statements, his interest in the personal or intimate anecdotes, and his interest in the sensory and the emotional will have to wait for another day, because I'm tired.  So here, a couple of observations on his Herodotean proclivities.

For one, Agathias is, in many respects, far more Herodotean than I had appreciated before.  Some time ago Averil Cameron went carefully through a set of supposed correspondences identified by Franke and highlighted some of the glaring problems.  Much of what she said all that time ago makes a lot of sense.  Some years later, Whitby (nb - former supervisor) highlighted, if briefly, Agathias' love of digressions.  While I take Cameron's point, it's worth highlighting those digressions.  While they might seem weird and unnecessary - Agathias has been criticized for spending too much time on things that matter too little - I think they do offer him a means of engaging more fully with his audience.  He wants to show us what he knows, though more on that personal aspect in a second.  It also gives him a chance to display his learning, while also adhering to the grand classical historical tradition.  Digressions were important, and this was one of their distinctive features that he chose to pay attention to, in part because he knew what his strengths were. 

Now the very fact that his longest of digressions concerns the Persians should be a red flag:  he has Herodotus on his mind.  Yes, it's also relevant.  The most recent Persian war was drawing to a close, and the historian who professed to be succeeding, Procopius, had devoted considerable attention to them.  But the most obvious ancient historian, for any late antique or Byzantine historian to my eyes, when Persians are the subject is Herodotus.  That doesn't necessarily mean that he needed to flood his Persian-themed discussions with Herodotean-borrowings.  In fact, it would be difficult, given Herodotus wrote in Ionian Greek and Agathias favoured the Atticizing Greek of Procopius and their predecessors.  While there likely are a host of particular episodes in Herodotus that are paralleled in Agathias, I'm not so sure it has to be so exact. 

There's one last Herodotean characteristic, a smaller one, admittedly, that I want to draw attention to.  Agathias regularly presents two explanations or theories in his digressions.  So, something along the lines of, some think this is the case, others think this is the case.  Quite often, and possibly in the latter half in particular - though I'd have to check, it might just be my memory - Agathias will also finish a digression or extended discussion with something along the lines of, let the reader decide for him or herself how she feels.  To me, that screams of Herodotus, more so than anything else.  It'll do with some fleshing out, however.

So, his Herodotean-leanings deserve additional attention.  Plus, it has me rethinking what I said about his Thucydidean-borrowings in a chapter that'll be out next year.  Basically, I said he was less successful, by some margin, at the Thucydidean-style history than Procopius.  While this hasn't changed my mind, I would, on further thought, have made greater emphasis on the possibility - lo likelihood - that this was ok, because that wasn't what he had in mind:  Agathias didn't want to be a modern-day Thucydides, for Procopius had already done that.  Indeed, he spends lots of time commending Procopius for what he's already done, and stressing what he'll do differently.  Rather, Agathias, I'm starting to think, was much more interested in being a modern-day Herodotus.  

Procopius, War, and the Law

One of the biggest surprises of the summer was receiving a grant for a research project on more sixth-century things.  I’ve applied for all sorts of grants over the years, and generally been unsuccessful.  I’d all but dismissed my chances of getting this one until I received the shocking notice. 

The grant is, effectively, for a book that will be the follow-up to Procopius book one, and it will look more at the history side than the historiographical one.  That means Procopius is still important, but he’s one part of a whole, with the other part/s occupied by the archaeological, epigraphic, legal, and papyrological evidence.  It also entails considering, at least to some degree, the other literary evidence.  Ultimately the book will provide something of a commentary on how Procopius deals with war in the sixth century, with the discussion ranging from military organization to planning and logistics, and even how war was fought. 

The book will offer a holistic approach, and we’re fortunate in that the age of Justinian is so well documented, perhaps more so than just about every other period of the ancient or late antique worlds, at least in my opinion.  The catch is that the voluminous evidence doesn’t always cover the same affairs, and this is particularly true for military matters.  There are, for instance, some detailed reports on fortifications in Jordan and Bulgaria, but scarce reports on those same structures in our surviving literary evidence.  We have detailed descriptions of battles from Procopius and some other authors, but little in the way of surviving weaponry.  This means we can’t always compare this disparate material, and trying to make sense of all of it can be a bit of a challenge.  The danger, lo temptation, too is trying to make all the pieces fit together, when, in reality, the pieces come from different puzzles.  Still, one of the great thrills of this project is that it’s given me the opportunity to dabble into all sorts of other kinds of evidence that I’ve paid less attention to in the past. 

To this point, when I haven’t been embroiled in all sorts of other work matters, I’ve been concentrating a great deal on the other evidence.  I’ve discovered, for instance, that there is far more epigraphic evidence for military matters in the sixth century than I’d previously believed.  While we’re nowhere near the epigraphic heights of the first two centuries AD, there are a few inscriptions in Latin that either mention Justinian, a general, and assorted other commanders as well some military units.  There are even more Greek ones.  Many of these have only a tangential bearing on my project, for most of the war-related ones have more to say about war’s impact than about how it is waged, and I’m starting to think I won’t be able to get into those matters.  There’s also the Anastasius edict, which I’d only been vaguely familiar with before.  I certainly hadn’t realized what a fabulous document it is. 

In fact, I feel fortunate that there are so many wonderful research tools at our disposal now, from the two excellent epigraphic databases (for Greek and Latin), to the papyrological one, and the TLG, which does require access to a research library of some capacity or other. 

We also now have the wonderful text and translation of the Justinianic Codex, and the grant allowed me to buy a copy.  I’ve been looking at this legal material in more depth than I ever have before, and it’s forced me to come to grips with what is quite a substantial body evidence, and one that’s been scarcely applied to the military sphere, especially in the sixth century, apart from Jones.  So far it’s posing all sorts of interesting questions for me.  For one thing, there’s a staggering amount of legislation, and it seems aspiring lawyers would have had to understand, even know, just about all of it.  If Procopius himself had been a lawyer, and I think he had, this means that he too would have had to have been intimately familiar with the material.  It turns out too that assessors were tasked with knowing the law, and even providing guidance to judges who might require assistance. 

If Procopius was both a lawyer and an assessor, this in itself raises interesting questions about Procopius’ practices as an historian, but also what or who was considered an essential part of an army.  Surely Procopius wasn’t the only assessor acting in a military environment, just the only one who wrote quite so much and so well.  It also raises questions about the long reach of Justinian, and how exactly Procopius might have got the job.  Were generals assigned assessors by Justinian so that he could, in some ways, keep a check on the generals?  Maybe not directly, but indirectly.  In other words, were the generals expected to follow the letter of the law as dictated by Justinian, and were they assigned assessors to ensure that this happened? It seems unlikely, perhaps, but then quite a lot of the legislation found in the Corpus Iuris Civilis that specifically concerns military matters actually deals with what could be considered property duties and expectations of generals and the like. 

The legal material also has me wondering if it, in some way, should be considered an ideal:  this is how things should be, in Justinian’s eyes.  How often would they work that way in practice?  And for my purposes (military stuff), can Procopius provide evidence for this?  Is the law in some sense the rhetoric, and what Procopius describes the reality? 

Anyway, there’s a lot to chew on, and quite a bit more to digest, so I hope to provide more posts in the coming months.

Agathias on War

It may seem all too predictable, especially given the trajectories of Cameron and Kaldellis, but for a long time I've considered dabbling much deeper into the world of Agathias. As little as there has been written on Procopius, even less has been written on Agathias, and a good part of that, for obvious reasons, has been devoted to his poetic proclivities. What is more, though this is, to some degree, par for the course, opinions of his capabilities vary widely, and there have been no sustained and extensive treatments of his value as an historian.  Kaldellis did write a handful of papers that focused on Agathias the historian, and Cameron wrote her monograph on Agathias more generally, but there's nothing substantial (in terms of size at least - not quality) out there on Agathias as an historian, and certainly nothing focused on his military credentials.

And yet, despite his legal background and poetic leanings, Agathias devoted a lengthy, or at least significant, and detailed history to military matters, a fact which he himself professed early in his text.  He self-consciously followed in the footsteps of Procopius, at times seeking to distance himself from Procopius' perceived failings, at others subtly agreeing and/or engaging with Procopius' military leanings.  Some see Agathias' discussion of military matters as excellent (Syvanne); others as sub-par (Wheeler).  And yet, if no one has undertaken a sustained analysis, how can we know, and how should we use him, if at all?

It's hard to underscore his importance, whether real or potential.  Like Xenophon in his Hellenica to Thucydides in his History, Agathias picks up exactly where Procopius left off in book 8.  And yet, unlike Procopius, his narrative is concentrated on only a few years, though important ones for Justinian's empire.  Agathias' History is undoubtedly shorter than Procopius' Wars - and the fact that current editions and translations don't exist in comparable texts makes my attempts to eyeball the differences between them questionable at best, there's no getting round the potential benefits of that level of detail. 

As I go through the History for other reasons, and start thinking I should devote more energy to the military character of his writing than I have (my interest in Procopius waxes and wanes several times over the course of a day), there have been a number of things that have jumped out at me.  For instance, he seems to engage with Procopius regularly, often indirectly, at least when one focuses on the military angle.  This is, I think, worth drawing attention too, especially since he's less overt in these instances than he is when it comes to the Persians, for instance. 

In addition, we know that Agathias lacked Procopius' experience with war, and so his sources for military matters would inevitably have differed in significant ways.  This would seem to cast doubt on his usefulness on military matters, though so many people who write about war these days who consider themselves experts, at least of a sort, have had no such experiences themselves, myself included.  Thus, it's not out of the realm of possibility for an educated and intelligent writer like Agathias to track down all the necessary materials to craft a believable work of military historiography.  Indeed, with this in mind, another topic that I'd have to explore would be Agathias' engagement with wider military thinking, both that evinced in the surviving military manuals, but also in the wider world.  It has struck me that Agathias' accounts have seemed far more sensible and satisfactory than I had expected and been led to believe - or even remember.  Admittedly, the last time I read him in this much detail my interest was focused almost squarely on combat. 

Anyway, much to consider.  While a thorough analysis may reveal that he doesn't deserve to be classed with Procopius, it might well be that he deserves more credit than he often gets, at least, again, in the realm of military matters.  Indeed, as I've noted before, if nothing else he seems to be one of the best writers of the experience of combat, a not unimportant subject in the wider category of military history.

A Sensory History of Combat in Late Antiquity

Several months ago, Jonathan Eaton introduced a book to me on Twitter that presented a seemingly novel way of approaching historical combat.  The book in question is Mark Smith's The Smell of Battle, the Taste of a Siege: a sensory history of the Civil War, does what it's title suggests.  I haven't finished it yet, but I've been working through it while working on a number of other things.

Admittedly, and for my sins, I've contemplated/started working a sensory history of combat in late antiquity, and the sixth century in particular.  While it's early days yet, there are a few things that have struck me about this approach to war, especially when the ancient world is the subject matter.  The first is the inevitable, "is this even possible".  Smith's book draws on all sorts of different kinds of evidence, from letters to newspaper and magazine articles, and paintings.  He's also able to draw on the perspectives of a wide swath of the 19th c. US.  As always, we don't have the same quantity of material, and the perspectives are much more limited.  What's more, even if there is considerable variety in the kinds of literary evidence that we have from the sixth century, and if it comes from all sorts of different people, that late antique swath wasn't all interested in the same things.  We may have monks and officers and local elites writing about all sorts of things, but it's still a restricted group of people who write about war:  historians, though not always, and the occasional poet.  We do have letters, of course, both the more polished published ones (say of Augustine), and seemingly more authentic ones preserved on papyri, but even when we have letters with military figures they're not writing home about war.  So, we're still restricted:  we have well-educated men, writing in Greek and Latin, operating in an archaic, by their own day, literary world, with some exceptions.  This makes it tough to get a balanced picture.

Another thing that has struck me is related to the first.  Most of our evidence for combat comes from literary descriptions that, for right or wrong, follow a traditional model.  The bulk, majority, even all the writers were classically educated, and well-versed in rhetorical exercises.  Those rhetorical exercises, when they were discussing battle or not, emphasized the sensory.  Indeed, battle itself was classed as an ekphrasis, and the purpose of an ekphrasis was to bring the thing described before the eyes of the reader or listener.  You could, too, extend the eyes to the mind - the reader/listener should be able to imagine what they're reading/listening to.  And, while a great deal of attention is placed on the visual, some of the language is directed towards other senses, like sound.  The conundrum, then, should be all too obvious.  I'm looking for evidence of the sensory experience of battle.  To find it I'm having to rely on, by and large, literary accounts that are, in turn, heavily dependent on classical models that emphasize the sensory.  How do you separate the literary from the historical?  Book 8 of the Wars and Agathias' History provide very descriptive sensory accounts of combat, which aren't dissimilar from the literary flourishes of Corippus, the epic poet, in his Iohannis.  Is it possible to disentangle this material?

One last thing I want to draw attention to is the character of Smith's book, at least so far.  It seems to be heavy on description, and short of analysis.  Granted, the purpose seems to be to get a sense of what it was like to experience an historical event, in Smith's case the Civil War (US), based on what evidence and tools we have at our disposal.  In the case of war, however, this seems to be a version of Keegan's "face of battle", which advocated approaching battle from the perspective of the common soldiers rather than the officers and generals that had featured so heavily.  I am, then, struggling to see what makes this sensory history unique.  Granted, I've read almost nothing, and none of it has focused on antiquity, but at this point I'm quite sceptical. 

I have a growing list of items to read, one of which combines archaeology and the senses.  Indeed, when I decided to give it a go, I thought about how I might find comparative evidence to support (contradict, or other) what I find in the literary accounts, and the physical evidence seemed to be a way forward.  I've thought about the kinds of weapons that we're likely to be used, and what sorts of sensations they were likely to give:  what do iron swords sound like when they crash together, what does it feel like when 100s or 1000s of horses come barrelling down a hill, what does it taste like to have your face in the dirt as you're trampled by your comrades in the midst of mad dash to escape?  If I know something about the environment of a battle (near a city or out in the middle of nowhere), the season (what temperature might it have been, and what sort of precipitation might they have had to deal with), the time of day, the number of participants, and their constituent parts perhaps I can draw on this factual material along with some comparative evidence (the feel of 100s/1000s of horses) perhaps I can write a sensory history of sorts. 

At this point, however, and to be perfectly honest I'm not sure.  Indeed I might be able to pull this off, though I might also end up writing an essay that all-but-slams this approach to history.  And yet, on the other hand, while my mind says yes, my heart says no (don't do it) - this has often been what I'd like to know most.  What was it like to be alive and experience a particular epoch?  Well, perhaps I'm finally about to find out.

Procopius on the Battle of Satala

Surprise, surprise, I'm not done with Procopian battles yet.  More of the historical in the sequel, however, and less of the military historiographical.

In the first book the idea was to try to discern something of Procopius' military mind, and how that fit into larger cultural and historiographical trends from his era.  Reading through these same accounts again, and in the same kind of detail, but with what I guess you could call a more balanced perspective, thanks in part to all the work I've done in between finishing the PhD and finishing the book, I'm encouraged to see that I'm still seeing that P has understood combat in the way that I surmised.  In other words, my head isn't in my hands and I'm not shouting, "Oh God, what have I done/what was I thinking?" It's tempting to say too that, in hindsight, it seems to have made a lot of sense to have tackled "Procopius on War" aspects in the order that I have.  Understanding something of his approach to describing and explaining combat should now make it easier to make sense of what he says.

I've just taken a look at the Battle of Satala (530) again, which you can find around 1.15.1ff.  For Procopius, the battle seems to hinge on the bravery of one elite Roman individual (a Florentius - 1.15.15), who charges the Persian line, at a point when no one side seems to be making much headway, and manages to seize the Persian general's standard (to strategikon shmeion) and thrust it to the ground before meeting his fate.  The Persians panic, freak out, and return to base in light of this, before heading home the next day.  And the battle ends.  For Procopius individuals, especially those in command positions, are important, and with in mind it's no surprise that things turned out the way they did.  But while this might tell us something about what Procopius and some of his peers thought about what happened and understood as important in what happened, does it tell us anything about might what have happened?

The trick, this time round, is to cut through what Procopius says, and I confess that upon looking it over it's more than a little maddening.  Still, there are some things we can pick out.  We find, for instance, the importance of numbers.  Procopius' implies that the Persians had almost twice as many soldiers as the Romans (30,000 to less than 15,000), and that they were all cavalry.  Whether these numbers are feasible or not is something that I'll have to look at later.  For the moment, while the difference does seem to be significant, it's also important to note that Procopius himself seems to imply that both sides are perhaps less than aware of some important details about each others' contingents.  Procopius (1.15.12) claims that the Persians couldn't work out how many men the Romans had - aided in part by the all the dust kicked up by the conditions, though I suspect too by the speed of the Roman advance, as well as their height advantage.  There is then a hint of the sensory here - sight, sound (implied if not stated), and perhaps too taste (we could imagine the taste of the dust on a hot summer's afternoon).  We also get some of the concerns highlighted by the authors of military manuals (Vegetius and Maurice):  conceal your numbers, especially if you're at a disadvantage.

I've been reading Decker's book on Byzantine warfare, and he implies that the Byzantine state (which includes this era) was lacking exceptional commanders, but did have some competent ones.  It's hard not to think that this might be a bit harsh, or at least that we have evidence of some better-than-competent performance is on view here, if Procopius is anything to go.  For we also read that the Roman force had been split up, with a comparatively small contingent (about 1000) sent up high onto the hills that surround Satala (and you can see them on Google Earth), while the rest moved inside the city walls.  The barbarians had moved outside the city walls when Sittas' force came down upon them from on high, as noted earlier.  He also split it in two - this allowed him to use gravity and the conditions to his advantage against a clearly superior-in-numbers foe.  It also seems to be the case that the Persians were amassed in some sort of confined space round the city walls, which meant that they were bunched up.  Indeed, if you take a look at Satala on Google Earth (best I can do without going there), the ancient city is in a little valley, with a plain, and is surrounded by hills.  In other words, it's easy to imagine this happening, especially if the Persians had as many men as Procopius claims.  So while Sittas may have had more than 1000 with him, contra Procopius, the conditions all seem to support Procopius' claims:  Persians crowded together, backed up against the city walls on one side, looking up at the hills on another side, and seeing an indeterminate number of men charging down on horseback, in the middle of a large dust cloud, and then another army charging out from the city gates.  It's easy to think that the Persians would have been terrified, as Procopius implies.

While the Persians may have had the numeric advantage, everything else so clearly favoured the Romans - spatially, they were much better off.  It's hard to work out (impossible really) what the units were at the Romans' advantage - 15,000 seems a large garrison for Satala, and one wonders when all the soldiers arrived and whether any were based there (that's something to check).  Interestingly, Procopius says all the participants on both sides were horses, which seems astonishing to me.  Either way, he also says that the battle became fierce, but even, with both sides constantly, owing to their abundant cavalry, charging and then withdrawing.  In this I'm reminded of Van Wees' suggestions about Homeric warfare, for which he drew on research on warfare in Polynesia (or, well, somewhere).  Basically, there's a lot of each side sitting back while contingents, individuals, what have going forward regularly to charge and so forth.  Not sure if the Homer/Van Wees/Polynesia (somewhere) parallel works - quite different kinds of soldiers involved (see Procopius' preface even).  It seems to imply not a lot of tactical wizardry, however, at least based on how things were going.  So maybe I'm coming round to Decker's claims (competent but not exceptional leaders - still, given they were outnumbered).

I better wrap this up - and so, this is the historical that I can deduce so far (at this early stage).  Procopius's account is short on detail, full of drama, but most certainly plausible.  This brings us back to the charge of Florentius:  is this not, then, too a plausible outcome for why the Romans won?  Given that the two sides seem to have been evenly matched based on all the other available criteria, if Florentius' charge is all that's left, might it not be the reason for the outcome?   This battle may not tell us too much about how the Romans waged war in the sixth century, but I think it does point to the veracity of Procopius' writing, which in turn would lend greater credence to those other, more detailed battles that he describes.  They'll all have to be checked independently and compared with all available evidence, but suggestive.  NOTE:  I tend not to edit these posts, so apologies for typos/moments of awkwardness. 

The Roman Military Revolution

One of the projects that I have on the go at the moment is a textbook/survey of Roman military history that will be arranged thematically, and run from the late republic (let's say the Gracchi) to the late empire, at least in the west (let's say Theodosius II, even though he's an eastern emperor).  Today I've been working on the two main background chapters:  the first is the historical overview, which will present a fleeting survey of Roman history over the course of the period in question, with an emphasis on those events that have special bearing on the subject matter (Roman military); the second surveys the sources, and the historiography and varied approaches to Roman military history.  The first chapter is well under way - I have some material from past courses that I'm going to use for this, with some new material tacked on.  As it happens, I have a good chunk for the late republic through the high empire, and less for late antiquity.  Given that in some ways I feel far more comfortable about late antiquity, this is good news.

The second chapter is well underway too.  The first half will present the myriad of sources at the disposal of students of Roman military history, and my plan in the chapter and the book is to incorporate as much of it as possible into my discussions.  Thus, it won't be a history of the military based on the literary sources, or the archaeological evidence, or the papyri, or the epigraphy, but all of this and more (legal evidence, visual evidence, etc.).  Sprinkled in amongst those overviews of the various sources will be some detailed discussions of select pieces of evidence that the problems they create and the questions that arise.  So, for example, I'll take a brief look at Caesar's take on the rivalry between Titus and Pullo, Ammianus' description of his harrowing escape from Amida, Hadrian's speech to his troops in Africa (which survives in an inscription), our evidence for the soldier-poets from North Africa, the famous birthday party invitation from Vindolanda, and so forth.  There'll be a few - and I'll likely have to cut down my working list to keep the discussion readable and workable.

The second half of the chapter provides an overview of the scholarship on the military (not in any way complete) and various approaches that have been adopted, and it will range from the impact of Keegan's "Face of Battle" to notions of western way of war, under which Rome would fall, and cultural readings of military history, those which look at the relationship between how war should be fought (in Rome's eyes) and how it actually was.  In this discussion I'll raise the issue of military revolutions, and this, at long last, brings me to the subject of this little post. 

Rome's military is famous, perhaps justly so.  Its impact continued well after the end of Rome into the middle ages, and resurfaced again in late medieval/renaissance/early modern Europe, thanks in part to the influence of Vegetius (somewhat surprisingly) and the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the concomitant flood of things Roman, and Greek, to the west, amongst other things.  What surprises me, however, is that no major revolutionary advance has been attributed to the Roman military.  Indeed, most change in the Roman military was gradual, and this is true for nearly every aspect, from their equipment to their tactical preferences.  In other words, ostensibly, there doesn't seem to have been any one thing that revolutionized Rome's military and which we could say led to its impressive string of successes, like the advent of iron weaponry, or the gunpowder.  Rather, the Romans were good at a whole host of things, few if any of which could be attributed to them specifically. 

The only possible exceptions - at least to my mind at this point in the writing process - might be the professionalization of the military under Augustus, admittedly a process that seems to have been under way for decades before that.  When I say professional what I mean is:  men were paid to fight on a permanent basis, the military became a career for a large number of people, and the state even regulated their supplies, housing, equipment, training, payment, and so forth.  One issue is whether this really should be deemed a military revolution - or, like with so much else in the military sphere, whether it should be considered a specifically Roman development.  It does seem to have been an important thing, and perhaps played no small part in Rome's longevity, but they gained their empire without such a thing.  Could they have started with a professional military, and if they had, would they have been so successful in accruing an empire?  But then, as I say, what really constitutes a professional army?  Is it misleading in Rome's case because it seems to resemble modern militaries?  What about the Macedonian army?  Or the assorted Assyrian armies?  Or the Egyptian ones?  Because they organized, supplied, and supported their armies in slightly different ways does that make them any less professional? 

Of course, even if we cannot attribute any particular military revolution to Rome, it's probably worth asking whether any state, kingdom, nation, or empire that could be associated with any such development actually enjoyed the level of success that the Romans did.  In other words, does it matter?  It seems to worked to their benefit to be good at a large number of things, revolutionary in none, and perhaps excellent in but a few.

Perhaps one important issue that I will have to consider in the book is why I think they were so successful in the first place.  The Roman military succeeded because of X, Y, and Z.  Another post, perhaps.  Intriguingly, some answers might be sought in the armies and warfare that immediately followed Rome in the Byzantine east and early medieval west.  To follow what I said above, it is perhaps significant that some military historians see "Roman military organization, training, strategic and tactical principles, and patterns of campaigning as pervasive throughout the early medieval world" (Morillo and Pavkovic 2013:  96-97).  In other words, it's this sort of collection of things that are seen as representative of Roman military prowess, not any one thing.

Thucydides in Late Antiquity

One of my tasks over the next few months is to write a chapter for a companion that explores the place of Thucydides amongst the historians of late antiquity, which both has something for the specialist and the uninitiated.  It's no small task, and to make this manageable, and in the vague hopes of saying something (even if it's little more than a sentence or two) somewhat new, I'm going to focus my attention on one episode in Thucydides' History that has had a particularly marked impact:  his description of the Siege of Plataea.  Yes, this also means I get to touch on something I know reasonably well - the ins and outs of siege descriptions.  It turns out that there are three historians (that we know of) who modelled at least one of their accounts on Thucydides' Plataean siege:  Dexippus (3rd century), Priscus (5th century), and Procopius (6th century).  The main question that I will address is how far can we take this Thucydidean influence, and what does this mean for how we read these later historians?

As I comb through the modern literature and read and re-read some of the relevant ancient accounts, there are a number of issues that have jumped out at me thus far as I have considered those questions.  First, why have those historians chosen to base their description on a siege found in Thucydides and why Plataea?  Combat is ubiquitous in the ancient world, and we can find descriptions of sieges in all sorts of different historians.  What is it about Thucydides' siege that makes it so special?  I wonder how many moderns would ran it as a pivotal moment in the the text, let alone the war?  A siege like Syracuse?  OK - and it did have an impact on Procopius, for it seems to have influenced his account of the siege of Rome in 537/538, and just as Syracuse ushered in big changes in the course of that war, so too did Rome in the Gothic war.  There must have been something about Thucydides, then, and this particular siege that stood out in their minds when they sat down (so to speak) to describe their respective sieges (Philippopolis in Dexippus, Naissus in Priscus, and Naples in Procopius).

Of course, ancient historians are less likely to be motivated by the relative importance of a siege in selecting models, or so I would think.  Rather, it's the literary character that carries of the day more often than not.  This then brings up the second consideration, the impact of education and the rhetorical handbooks.  Indeed, as it happens a number of the surviving progymnasmata highlight Thucydides' account of Plataea as one worth noting.  If those three historians, and others, had read any of those rhetorical handbooks, and they likely would have done in the course of their similar educations, it seems likely the primacy of Thucydides' account would have been hammered into their heads and so it's not surprising, then, that they did think of Plataea.  If anything, maybe we should have been asking not why Thucydides, but which other historian and siege could they have used instead?  Could there ever have been any doubt? 

This, though, brings up a third issue.  Is it really Thucydides they have in mind, or some sort of list of key phrases, quotes, or even passages, the sort of thing that was said to be present (common, ubiquitous?)  in late antiquity?  Did they remember Thucydides from school, then turn to the section they needed and simply copy what they wanted?  Less of a full appreciation of Thucydides then than something far more superficial?  If you read Lucian's How to Write History you get the impression that there were a number of historians (most lost - and assuming he was alluding to real historians) from the first and second centuries who might have fallen into this superficial category, so to speak.

In fact, this brings up a fourth issue.  Although there are all sorts of interesting potential examples of intertextuality involving Thucydides and other authors like Procopius, a topic discussed in a number of provocative works by Pazdernik, is this the same sort of thing we have when we focus on episodes like these sieges or, as suggested above, are they something more superficial?  Can they ever really be something more than a sytlistic choice?  Given the comparative lack of importance it would seem unlikely.  And, the fragmentary state of both Dexippus and Priscus makes this a difficult issue to discuss outside the bounds of Procopius' Wars.  It is worth asking, however.

A fifth point, related to the previous one, if tangentially, has to do with what this Thucydidean impact then has on the veracity of the respective accounts.  If they're all based on Thucydides - and a handful of studies have highlighted the profound linguistic impact - does this mean their sieges are little more than literary artifices?  Ought we then throw out the baby with the bathwater?  The sieges are too closely modelled on Thucydides for comfort, they (the descriptions) couldn't then be based on the actual accounts, and so we should discard them as little more than something of literary interest.  Valuable for what they say about the impact of Thucydides:  check.  Useful for historians with a real interest in the respective conflicts:  no. 

A sixth issue, what does all this tell us about the practice of history-writing in late antiquity, when such a seemingly significant chunk of the works of one segment of the era's historians can be reduced to what we could consider examples of flagrant plagiarism?  In other words, from this perspective, should we consider going back to the old appellation, dark ages?  Are the classicizing historians of the age not deserving of the credit we tend to afford them if this is what they call history?  Perhaps, then, it really is the Malalas', the Jordanes', the Eusebius', the Theodorets and the Marcellinus Comes' that really deserve our attention, as they seem to be the ones who were really doing something different.  Or does the fact that there were still individuals capable of engaging with arguably the world's greatest historian in the age in addition to those experiementing with new forms and new subject matter reveal to us the age's vitality, at least from the perspective of historiography?

All this from Thucydides, late antique historians, and one little siege.  Should be a fun (if endlessly frustrating) chapter to write.

Procopius' Wars: Second Edition

At some point after writing the first seven books of his Wars, Procopius published them, and apparently to widespread acclaim.  Lo, he was so successful that he decided to write an update, of sorts, book 8.  Book 8, as Procopius readily admits, is something of an anomaly.  For him it was the organization that stood out:  he struggled finding a way to update the material of the first seven books, and must have reckoned that tacking them on to the first seven, or each war, wouldn't have worked that well.  Instead, then, he lumped it all together in one book:  8.  Once he decided on this, he did, at least at the most basic of levels, proceed to arrange it (book 8) as he'd done the first seven.  So, the first chunk of book 8 is devoted to PW matters, a wee paragraph is devoted to VW matters, and the last chunk to GW matters.  All good.

When we take a closer look, however, things are rather different.  Yes, there are lots of battles and sieges, much as there had been before - and given that it's a history of war it well should have this sort of stuff.  But, his descriptions of combat in book 8 aren't consistent, at least for the most part, with those in books 1-7.  Rather, it's more of a hodgepodge, with an especial emphasis on the factors he raises in the GW (for more on this, for the moment, see the relevant chapter here: (http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/view/theses/Department_of_Classics_and_Ancient_History.type.html)

There's plenty more that's different in book 8, however.  For one thing, there are far more methodological statements than we find, at least per capita, in the first seven books.  I would suggest that there are also far more "philosophy of history" statements.  Along those lines, we find a number of cases where our narrator feels the need to set the record straight:  "this or that matter has been discussed in a variety of ways by various sources, and they're generally wrong.  Here's how it really is."  That sort of thing.  We might well expect these sorts of statements to pertain, by and large, to key historical events, like battles.  And, near the end, in his description of the Battle of Busta Gallorum/Taginae, we find just such a comment, and it pertains to the various reports concerning the death of Totila.  It seems reports differed, and given the comparatively detailed account he presents first, I'm inclined to believe that it's the one he liked best.  Interesingly, however (and in Herodotean vein), he doesn't take a stand - he mentions the other version, and provides some detail, and then lets is stand for the reader to sort out, at least indirectly (as noted, I think he's pointing towards option 1).  Much more often, however, he chimes in when the matter pertains to matters of geography, less often ethnography, but quite too often mythology.  He's not unusual in this - again, this is very much a Herodotean thing.  What is unusual, however, is that Procopius himself tends not to do this in the first part of the Wars (books 1-7).

There are other unusual things.  There is far more attention on geography, again per capita, and on sensory aspects, at least from the perspective of combat.  In fact, you would be no worse off in writing a "face of battle" account of Justinianic era combat using book 8 alone than you would if you only had books 1 through 7.  There's also all that myth.  We read about Jason and Medea, Orestes, Agamemnon, Iphigenia, Odysseus, Aeneas, and so forth.  The placing of his discussions of myth does make sense:  for the first of the lot, it comes in the heart of his Lazican discussion, and the setting for those myths tends to be in the lands that are the focus of that part of the war with Persia.  The same's true for the war against the Goths and Italy-based myths (Odysseus' voyages primarily).  So, all well and good, as I suggested.  But, why didn't he do the same in the first seven books?

The Procopius of book 8, then, is, for all intents and purposes, not the Procopius of books 1-7.  Why is that?  What made Procopius adopt this notably different approach, an approach that on the surface (and possibly deeper down?) is much more Herodotean than the very Thucydidean (even Polybian) first seven books?  It could be that in the absence of autopsy Procopius sought to supplement his narrative with details that he could provide given the resources at his disposal, ie the ancient/classical texts that he alludes to throughout book 8. 

But, I wonder if there isn't another possibility, one that doesn't necessarily preclude the former, though which might seem to contradict Procopius' statements at the start of book 8.  He claimed that his work was popular, and there might be something to these claims, but its appeal might not have been quite as universal as he had imagined.  In other words, some - many? - might have criticized the historian.  Reading Procopius again in full (in translation, admittedly - Kaldellis' new one) for a seminar I'm teaching, it's clear that he isn't for everyone.  Indeed, if you're not terribly interested in military history, it's hard not to read the Wars as little more than "one damned thing after another", where the thing, or things, in question is combat (and its attendant battles, sieges, and campaigns).  I hate to admit it, but even my eyes glossed over a little from time to time.  Maybe, then, there were others who lampooned Procopius for just this problem, and so to counter this - and to reach even greater renown - he sought to add extra episodes of interest, the types of scenes that would appeal to a broader audience.  What with all the myth, geography, and literary argumentation it's hard not to think that these were included for just this purpose.  Secular military history wasn't as popular in the sixth century AD as it was in the early fourth century BC.  Readers (and listners) had other options, even if Procopius was part of a grand tradition, and even if he is succeeded by Agathias, Menander, and Theophylact,  In sum, I read book 8 as a response to Procopius' critics, even if its character is to some degree conditioned by his resources.  Perhaps this pseudo-Herodotean approach might also reflect the appeals of his similarly-educated readers, those who spent years pouring over rhetorical treatises and argued over the respective merits of different figrues from myth.  Maybe they expected more of this, and told Procopius to include it in his update.

I realize that this reading is conditioned by my own circumstances - not everyone loves Procopius, and Herodotus is undoubtedly the most popular of classical historians, as evidenced by the success of Holland's recent translation.  What interests us, then, might not have interested Procopius' peers.  Still, might be worth considering - or exploring in more detail (at some unspecified point in my future, if I still have the fortitude to persevere with these Procopian projects).