07-27-2006, 05:04 PM
Quote:I just think that ancient sources are often discounted without the proper diligance,True, and the most beautiful complaint about this happens to be from a book that deals with Thermopylae: Charles Hignett's Xerxes' invasion of Greece. In the introduction, he sarcastically remarks that there appears to have arisen some sort of new type of study of history, in which the first rule is that the best source must be discarded first.
All this being said, I'd wish that military historians and classicists learned more from each other. I have seen strange translations by classicists who did not understand military matters, and historians taking sources too serious; a case in point is the Teutoburg Forest, which is not a forest at all, and if the historians had paid attention to what classicists were doing, they would not have been surprised.
I once wrote a book for arhaeologists in which I explained how sources must be read. It was soon a bargain book and ended as a remainder. I wonder what my next book, about battle narratives, will do.