05-03-2012, 11:52 AM
Salvete!
I have at last been able to fetch my copy from the local book shop yesterday. I have yet only scanned through the text but to me the photos alone are worth the 50 Euro price tag:
Mr. Fischer appears to be quite well connected to the collectors' scene which means that something like 50% to 75% of items shown are from private collections and have never been published before and even quite a number of provenanced finds were new to me. My personal highlights are:
(1) A headless statue from Egypt showing a warrior with a third century Dosenortband sword wearing a long scale shirt and what appears to be scale leg/shin armour.
(2) A breast plate from a lorica segmentata embellished with denarii(!) riveted to it (so much for peasant armor!)
(3) A number of spectacularly colorful belt sets from the Antonine and later periods.
(4) A dozen or so yet unpublished cheek pieces from helmets.
(5) A helmet from Pompeii (due for publication by Salvatore Ortisi in his corpus of militaria from the Vesuv cities). The helmet is a typical "Pseudoattic" (or "Auxiliary Cavalry" if you prefer) embellished helmet except that it has no neck guard, i.e. it is basically a skull cap. Without further information, one can speculate on the following:
(a) it could be just what it is; we know from portraits that military leaders may have worn these helmets without cheek pieces so a further reduction to a mere skull cap is not impossible
(b) a neck guard could have been riveted on such as the "Imperial Italic" from the same area
© it could be a gladiator helmet of an Eques as these are shown without neck guards. The brim we see on depictions of this helmet type could be a later addition or could have been separately attached.
In addition to beautiful photos the book appears to offer a lot of information on Roman military equipment and - to a limited extent - also military organisation and history. The first few chapters deal with equipment from a functional perspective followed by a chronological Section which offers first a summary of equipment used and then a short selection of context dated finds. I find this approach quite useful, e.g. you get a reconstruction drawing of a legionary from the Marcomannic wars with some commentary and on the next page a neat (although somewhat small) overview of Marcomannic war find sites (Eining, Iza, Musov etc.) with drawings of finds, all very concise a lot of information condensed into just 2 pages.
Finally, there are two somewhat disconnected Annexes dealing with military camps (again with a lot of maps and ground plans) and with Roman ships and marines (including the first ever reconstruction drawing I have seen of the "military" ship from Pisa).
As Simplex points out the book is aimed at a wider audience and the huge chronological scope means that it appears to offer more of a summary of current thinking than ground-breaking discussion but there are very original parts such as a revised helmet typology (which is basically a refinement of the "Continental" system Montefortino-Hagenau-Weisenau-Niederbieber by adding a number of subtypes). Interestling, he also admits helmets shown in art but not currently supported by finds (such as the "smurf caps") into his typology. I will have to read these Sections in detail for a more thorough review.
The aim and scope of the book are also to blame for some of its limitations: in particular the information on the illustrations is often very tearse ("unprovenanced, private collection"). There are so many photos that some are often drastically reduced in size (e.g. the only picture of six(!) unpublished cheek pieces from private collections is hardly larger than a post stamp). [EDIT: IN MY ORIGINAL POST I STATED THAT THERE ARE ONLY LIMITED FOOTNOTES. IN FACT, THE TEXT IS QUITE EXTENSIVELY ANNOTATED, I MERELY OVERLOOKED THE FACT THAT THE FOOTNOTES ARE PRINTED AS ENDNOTES AT THE END OF EACH CHAPTER.]
Also the photos are used to illustrate the text but the finds on the photos are not discussed in detail and there are no measurements given. This will make it very difficult for the reader to find more information on, or even attempt to reconstruct the items.
Should you buy it even if you have not (yet) mastered the language of Goethe and Schiller? Well I would have bought it even if it were written in Swahili but as you can take from the above, I have a finds and photos fetish. Even if you do not, you may find the illustrations alone worth the money. However, if you speak English, a little dictionary should be all you need to sort through the text. After all, English is just a "substratally Celticized, superstratally Romanized Low German dialect" (http://www.rotary-muenchen.de/2005-2006/...nemann.pdf).
I have at last been able to fetch my copy from the local book shop yesterday. I have yet only scanned through the text but to me the photos alone are worth the 50 Euro price tag:
Mr. Fischer appears to be quite well connected to the collectors' scene which means that something like 50% to 75% of items shown are from private collections and have never been published before and even quite a number of provenanced finds were new to me. My personal highlights are:
(1) A headless statue from Egypt showing a warrior with a third century Dosenortband sword wearing a long scale shirt and what appears to be scale leg/shin armour.
(2) A breast plate from a lorica segmentata embellished with denarii(!) riveted to it (so much for peasant armor!)
(3) A number of spectacularly colorful belt sets from the Antonine and later periods.
(4) A dozen or so yet unpublished cheek pieces from helmets.
(5) A helmet from Pompeii (due for publication by Salvatore Ortisi in his corpus of militaria from the Vesuv cities). The helmet is a typical "Pseudoattic" (or "Auxiliary Cavalry" if you prefer) embellished helmet except that it has no neck guard, i.e. it is basically a skull cap. Without further information, one can speculate on the following:
(a) it could be just what it is; we know from portraits that military leaders may have worn these helmets without cheek pieces so a further reduction to a mere skull cap is not impossible
(b) a neck guard could have been riveted on such as the "Imperial Italic" from the same area
© it could be a gladiator helmet of an Eques as these are shown without neck guards. The brim we see on depictions of this helmet type could be a later addition or could have been separately attached.
In addition to beautiful photos the book appears to offer a lot of information on Roman military equipment and - to a limited extent - also military organisation and history. The first few chapters deal with equipment from a functional perspective followed by a chronological Section which offers first a summary of equipment used and then a short selection of context dated finds. I find this approach quite useful, e.g. you get a reconstruction drawing of a legionary from the Marcomannic wars with some commentary and on the next page a neat (although somewhat small) overview of Marcomannic war find sites (Eining, Iza, Musov etc.) with drawings of finds, all very concise a lot of information condensed into just 2 pages.
Finally, there are two somewhat disconnected Annexes dealing with military camps (again with a lot of maps and ground plans) and with Roman ships and marines (including the first ever reconstruction drawing I have seen of the "military" ship from Pisa).
As Simplex points out the book is aimed at a wider audience and the huge chronological scope means that it appears to offer more of a summary of current thinking than ground-breaking discussion but there are very original parts such as a revised helmet typology (which is basically a refinement of the "Continental" system Montefortino-Hagenau-Weisenau-Niederbieber by adding a number of subtypes). Interestling, he also admits helmets shown in art but not currently supported by finds (such as the "smurf caps") into his typology. I will have to read these Sections in detail for a more thorough review.
The aim and scope of the book are also to blame for some of its limitations: in particular the information on the illustrations is often very tearse ("unprovenanced, private collection"). There are so many photos that some are often drastically reduced in size (e.g. the only picture of six(!) unpublished cheek pieces from private collections is hardly larger than a post stamp). [EDIT: IN MY ORIGINAL POST I STATED THAT THERE ARE ONLY LIMITED FOOTNOTES. IN FACT, THE TEXT IS QUITE EXTENSIVELY ANNOTATED, I MERELY OVERLOOKED THE FACT THAT THE FOOTNOTES ARE PRINTED AS ENDNOTES AT THE END OF EACH CHAPTER.]
Also the photos are used to illustrate the text but the finds on the photos are not discussed in detail and there are no measurements given. This will make it very difficult for the reader to find more information on, or even attempt to reconstruct the items.
Should you buy it even if you have not (yet) mastered the language of Goethe and Schiller? Well I would have bought it even if it were written in Swahili but as you can take from the above, I have a finds and photos fetish. Even if you do not, you may find the illustrations alone worth the money. However, if you speak English, a little dictionary should be all you need to sort through the text. After all, English is just a "substratally Celticized, superstratally Romanized Low German dialect" (http://www.rotary-muenchen.de/2005-2006/...nemann.pdf).
Regards,
Jens Horstkotte
Munich, Germany
Jens Horstkotte
Munich, Germany
