Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction pdf

[...]... subjects, and a core of Iranians The latter included both horse and foot They had the capacity to fight both at a distance (with bows and javelins) and hand to hand (with spears and swords) The first expedition, a relatively smallscale affair by Persian standards, was defeated by the hoplites of Athens, with a small contingent from Plataea, at the battle of Marathon The second invasion, led by the Persian king... person, was on an altogether grander scale Not all the Greeks of the mainland joined a league to oppose it In 480 bc a small Greek force, led by 300 Spartans, was overwhelmed at Thermopylae, despite heroic resistance At the same time a naval battle off Artemisium ended in a draw Later that year the Greeks won a naval victory at Salamis The following year the Greeks decisively defeated the Persian army at... the battle of Plataea Ancient Warfare good as their adversaries, but they were deficient in armour, untrained, and greatly inferior in skill’ In his narrative the Persians fight bravely hand to hand until they are demoralized by the death of their commander Herodotus was a moral relativist The stated aim of his history was to preserve the deeds of both Greeks and barbarians For him, barbarians usually... of fantasy (they almost certainly did not eat dogs) It was maintained in the face of contrary evidence Carthaginian armies sought open, decisive battles against Roman armies, and, led by Hannibal, often won them This could be explained away The Carthaginians had relied on the courage of others to fight their battles, and it was the supreme cunning of Hannibal that had won them 9 ‘At my signal unleash... Carthaginians as ‘eastern’, cowardly barbarians, the Romans seem to have made relatively little use of Carthage’s genuine eastern origins Possibly the Romans’ own mythical origins as Trojans from the east precluded pushing this line too hard Instead, geography and climate served Living in a trading seaport made the Carthaginians greedy and mendacious For Romans, treachery was one of the marks of a. .. be said to have had a love-hate relationship with Persian culture, perhaps with the stress on the latter The same is far less true of the Romans and Carthaginian culture When they destroyed Carthage, the Romans gave away its libraries to ‘African princes’, with the exception of a practical work on farming which was translated into Latin Probably via the army, the odd word of Punic (such as mapalia,... built an overseas empire comprising parts of Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic islands, and areas of Spain Having lost its Sicilian and Sardinian territories in the aftermath of the first war with Rome, Carthage expanded the areas of Spain under its control before the second war By the time of the Punic Wars, Carthaginian forces, although commanded by Carthaginians, were not composed 8 of citizens of Carthage... ‘At my signal unleash hell’ extremes both of heat and cold being avoided, account for their ancient, wise culture After the wars the Greeks adopted various Persian material goods Part of the definition of a culture is that it allows its members to hold views which are logically incompatible Ancient Warfare Romans and Carthaginians The concept of the ‘Western Way of War’ was to prove remarkably durable,... Instead, Carthage used subjects, allies, and mercenaries, all of whom were allowed to fight in their native styles The Carthaginian style of war-making facilitated the Roman portrayal of them as being ‘eastern’, and not fighting in the ‘Western Way of War’ The negative ethnographic image of the Carthaginians was constructed partly out of reality (they did sacrifice some of their children), and partly... Denmark uncovered a magnificent boat and weaponry The finds were probably deposited in the bog about 350 bc as a gift to the gods It is likely that they were part of the equipment of a force defeated in a local war The weaponry included swords and mailcoats, with a large number of spears, javelins, and shields Modern interpretation has seen these finds as implying that this barbarian force, created far away . Introductions available now: ANARCHISM Colin Ward ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas ANCIENT WARFARE Harry Sidebottom THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia ARCHAEOLOGY.