Lendon\'s book "Soldiers and Ghosts"

[Aulus Perrinius]

Is it any good/accurate? I heard Lendon proposes that the Legionaries would have been more like zulu swarms basically rather than the robotic solid troops they're commonly percieved as being. Can anyone help me?

[elagababbalus]

Hello,

You can find out for yourself here...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16099213/Soldiers-and-Ghosts

I thought it was very elegantly written, not being an expert on the topic I couldnt find anything to take issue with in terms of accuracy, but he does at the end say his work had the input of Goldsworthy and the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare so I cant imagine his views stray far from accepted scholarship.

[Alexandr K]

Hi,

See this thread. The forum's search engine is a very useful thing :wink:

IIRC to me Lendon's main theme of the (heroic) past of the ancients very strongly influencing the way they then fought seemed rather too far stretched. Nevertheless I found it to be very interesting and thought provoking book. Some time I will probably return to it to read it again.

Greetings
Alexandr

[Vincula]

I found this online post.

[Matthew Amt]

Is it any good/accurate? I heard Lendon proposes that the Legionaries would have been more like zulu swarms basically rather than the robotic solid troops they're commonly percieved as being. Can anyone help me?

The comparison to Zulus is actually an image that I tend to bring up, though I don't recall if Lendon actually says that or not. From the threads already posted, not everyone enjoyed the book as much as I did. Mind you, it's been a while since I read it! Yes, it does tend to hammer points home repeatedly, though I didn't find that wearing. The point was that the cited sources all pointed to his conclusions. I do remember that practically every Roman anecdote he mentions was something I already knew, but putting them all together like that completely changed the way I visualize a Roman army in action! That's when I came up with Zulus instead of robots. Again, I don't think Lendon actually says that, but I don't want to take credit by mistake!

It's definitely worth reading, and I do think it's accurate.

Vale,

Matthew