Ancient Warfare Magazine

Ancient Warfare is a unique publication focused exclusively on soldiers, battles, and tactics, all before 600 AD. Starting with ancient Egypt and Persia and continuing to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Ancient Warfare examines the military history of cultures throughout Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa. Ancient Greece and Rome receive the most frequent coverage, due both to the wealth of contemporary sources and the modern fascination with these two great civilizations. Subject-matter ranges from the familiar to the more obscure: while Alexander the Great, the Persian Wars and Caesar’s Gallic campaigns all receive regular coverage, Ancient Warfare also looks at some of the less common parts of ancient military history, from chariots as battle taxis to PTSD in antiquity.

Ancient Warfare Magazine

EDITORIAL – Ancient tech tree • NEWS ITEMS BY LINDSAY POWELL

Site of the Battle of the Granicus located – claim

Violent event in Early Bronze Age Britain

Belt fittings suggest drug use by Germanic warriors

Gladiator in Britain wore helmet made in Pompeii

‘Terracotta Army commander’ restored

Earliest evidence for Neolithic-Age archery in Spain

The Roman army recycled mail

HOPLITE STORIES • Modern discussions of Greek warfare traditionally focus on the technological impact of hoplite shields and their importance for the phalanx formation. Relatively little emphasis is placed on the shields as private, custom-made objects. Looking at shields as personal items offers fascinating clues about the individual experience of combat and the mindset of Greek warriors.

TRAGEDIES OF TRIUMPH • After his fourth and final ‘great’ battle at the Hydaspes in 326 BC, Alexander’s winning streak came to an end. Alexander’s army seemed to have been thrown back into the bad old days of 328/7, facing insurgencies and internal disputes and making little progress to pacify and rule his newly-conquered lands.

THE DAUNII AT WAR • In 279 BC, a force of Daunians from Arpi numbering 4000 infantry and 400 cavalrymen, allies of the Romans, found themselves behind the camp of Pyrrhus of Epirus during the battle of Asculum. Upon realizing the lack of men defending the area, they soon surrounded and looted the camp, setting it ablaze before a relief force sent by Pyrrhus could come to the rescue. This impressive feat notwithstanding, the Daunii and their soldiery are rarely visualized despite the treasure trove of art they left behind.

WAR IS A VIOLENT TEACHER • “While great progress has been made in practically everything, and nothing is similar now to the way it was before, I think nothing has advanced and improved as much as the art of war.” Demosthenes said these words in 341 BC as a warning to his fellow Athenians to not underestimate the capabilities of their enemy, Philip of Macedon. Looking back over the last few generations, many of his listeners would have agreed that war had changed – even if, in as many ways, it had remained the same.

Super weapons for super men in the Iliad

Picked hoplites

KEEPING YOUR DISTANCE • Before 400 BC, as a rule, Greek armies employed mainly foreign peltasts, typically from Thracian communities. Some efforts were made, late in the Peloponnesian War, to equip Athenian oarsmen as peltasts (see AW 17.5). Even at the battle of Cunaxa (401 BC), the practice was already varied. Diodorus describes a brief exchange of javelins that more resembles the Roman practice than any battle in Thucydides (14.23.2), but Xenophon instead describes different practices of the Persians (who threw shorter javelins from horseback).

How far, exactly, is a ‘javelin cast’?

THE BOGEYMEN WITH JAVELINS • It was not the largest battle during the so-called Corinthian War - the conflict between Sparta and the coalition of Thebes, Athens,...