08-09-2013, 09:26 PM
Quote:Constantine has been overdone. I'd like to see one there hasn't been a biography on.
Well, that's introducing a whole new criterion... if they have to be unjustly ignored as well... :dizzy:
Quote:what a winner M. Aurelius is... he's very much metonymic for that stage of the Empire at large.
He's surely a fascinating figure, but see my point above - was he a 'general' in the sense that many of others were? In fact the period of his reign was arguably one of the most important in the later development of the Roman army, but if this is a study of particularly able bellicose individuals, rather than of the development of military systems more generally, then I'm still not convinced that Marcus would make it.
What about Shapur I, by the way? Fairly colossal in the Sassanian period, literally colossal in the Naqsh-e Rustam relief!
Nathan Ross
