02-20-2007, 11:05 PM
K. Kagan, The Eye of Command. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007. Pp. 271. ISBN 0-472-03128-7. $24.95.
Reviewed by Michael B. Charles, Queensland University of Technology
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
[url:1wf58zl9]http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2007/2007-02-33.html[/url]
-------------------------------
Kimberley Kagan (K. hereafter) is no longer a dedicated classicist,
though she displays a very sound command of the classicist's tools, be
they linguistic, analytical or theoretical. In view of this, it is
revealing to read a monograph on aspects of ancient military history by
a historian with a broad interest in warfare. Indeed, K. lectured at
the United States Military Academy between 2000 and 2005 before taking
up a position in International Affairs, History and the Humanities at
Yale. In essence, K.'s volume constitutes a re-examination of Sir John
Keegan's now-seminal The Face of Battle.[[1]] This influential 1976
work posited that a firm understanding of battles -- at any point in
history -- may be gained from examining the experiences of soldiers'
accounts of engagements between small units. In short, a thorough
familiarity with the dynamics of the face of battle leads to a more
informed understanding, or so it is argued, of why any given battle
resulted in the way that it did. Yet, in K.'s belief, historians cannot
hope to gain a complete mastery of any particular battle solely from
this approach. Rather, the historian needs to take into account the
view of the commander, and the way in which his view shapes the outcome
of a battle.
A brief word on the book's organization will allow a better
understanding of K.'s argument. The book is divided into two parts. The
first, entitled "The Face of Battle", encompasses three chapters, these
being "The Face of Battle", "Eyewitness to Battle: Ammianus on Amida"
and "Strasbourg as a Face of Battle Narrative". The second, entitled
"The Eye of Command", also includes three chapters, these being "The
Eye of Command", "Caesar's Eye" and "Friction: Caesar and the Battle of
Gergovia". Thus the book juxtaposes Keegan's approach to military
history, which is demonstrated by means of selected battle narratives
in Ammianus' Res Gestae, with K.'s favoured approach, which is
exemplified through the military descriptions of Caesar in his Bellum
Gallicum. To put it simply, K. uses the two narrative techniques,
employed by Ammianus and Caesar respectively, to demonstrate that
Caesar's 'eye of command' style enables the reader to gain a much
better oversight of what occurred in battle and, what is more
important, why it occurred.
More than anything, The Eye of Command represents an extended dialogue
with The Face of Battle. Happily for some readers, prior knowledge of
the latter work is not assumed, though one might as well add that some
knowledge of Keegan's oeuvre (in addition to that of Clausewitz) would
be beneficial to any reader seeking to gain the most from The Eye of
Command. Still, all the most pertinent sections of Keegan's text
accompany the argument. Thus K.'s intention is to demonstrate the
importance of an ongoing debate on the theory of military history,
though I did find her concluding statement that "A historian ... can
understand much more of a battle's complexities through the eye of
command" (p. 200) to be a little too neat, if not verging towards
dogma. The real value of Keegan's The Face of Battle was that it
prompted us to look more closely at small group activity at the
coal-face, so to speak, rather than pay unwarranted amounts of
attention to e/lite-centric military narratives that recreate battles
as large-scale chess tournaments between those in overall command. As a
mid-point between two extremes, K.'s book seeks to demonstrate that the
commander, though he may not have a complete understanding of his
troops' responses from a psychological perspective or from the point of
view of morale, nevertheless has the minimum amount of awareness needed
-- evidence for which, according to K., exists in Caesar's writings on
the Gallic War (though Keegan, it seems, would disagree) (p. 181).
Although Keegan's work did pay some attention to Caesar and his
writings, it is somewhat surprising that K. bases her argument in
favour of the 'eye of command' thesis almost exclusively on the Bellum
Gallicum of Julius Caesar, to the general exclusion of other
commander-historians. One wonders why the writings of more modern
commanders such as Napoleon do not rate much of a mention, let alone
those of more contemporary military leaders such as Norman Schwarzkopf.
On the opposite side of the fence lies Ammianus, a writer who, as
stated above, displays a Keegan-style 'face of battle' approach (p.
22). In particular, K. cites Ammianus' descriptions of Strasbourg (A.D.
357) and Amida (A.D. 359) (p. 28), an event in which Ammianus took
part. In her discussion of his Amida narrative, K. makes much of the
historian's personal involvement. Ammmianus' confused description of
the attack of Persian heavy cavalry and elephants on the Roman
stretched column immediately before Julian's decease (25.3.2-5) also
aligns well with K.'s overall thesis regarding Ammianus' ability to
impart "the perspective of the participants" (p. 28).[[2]] Note, too,
K.'s comment that, as a (generally) horse-borne staff officer,
Ammianus' infantry narratives "do not emerge from his own personal
combat experience" (p. 29), even though he was close by on these
occasions. Yet, if Ammianus can be a 'face-of-battle' historian without
always participating in the contests that he relates, one wonders why
K. does not give much attention to the battle descriptions of an 'eye
of command' historian -- even Caesar -- who was absent from some (or
all) of the events found in his narrative? Does the eye-of-command
historian, then, have to be an eyewitness of sorts, even if some of the
events are perceived rather than seen? This is not made especially
clear and warrants revisitation.
The reader also gets the feeling that the focus on Ammianus and Caesar
may be overly rigid for a monograph with generalist ambitions. There
are some cursory references to battles of other eras (e.g., the Somme
on p. 50; Agincourt on p. 57), but in-depth comparative analysis is
infrequent, except for the exceptionally well-written conclusion (pp.
181-200), which provides a valuable synthesis of the work's more
important points. Indeed, I could not help but wonder whether K.'s work
on the Bellum Gallicum could be useful with regard to (re)interpreting
the Bellum Civile (another work in which much of the military action
takes place away from Caesar's gaze), or even if it could be used to
shed further light on the authorship, and manner of composition, of the
three 'Caesarian' works dealing with the Spanish, Alexandrian and
African wars. Likewise, in what category does an author such as
Xenophon, also a soldier-historian, fall? What of Thucydides? And what
sort of approach did armchair historians such as Tacitus employ when
they dealt with battles in their narratives? Were their accounts
infused with material gained from the 'face of battle', or did they
rely almost exclusively on more detached 'eye of command' observations,
married to rhetorical topoi? Thus a more broad-ranging approach might
have added further interest to those primarily interested in ancient
historiography.
The volume's focus on causality also merits discussion. K. takes pains
to point out that, in deference to Keegan's thesis, that the
psychological impact of weapons, death and dying at the face of battle
may have some ultimate say in the engagement's outcome (e.g., p. 17).
Yet one might wish to have seen greater emphasis placed on troop
morale. To be fair, K. does detail the way in which over-enthusiasm on
the part of Caesar's troops led to failure at Gergovia (52 B.C.) (pp.
169-170 and 174). K. also makes the claim, in her concluding remarks,
that Caesar "paid great attention to the morale of his soldiers" (p.
181). This point, however, is not especially well harnessed in the text
proper, although the conclusion does shed some welcome light. Troops
with poor morale may break if charged, contrary to their commander's
intentions, while those with stronger morale may absorb blows,
retaliate in some measure, and regroup, confident that they can master
any situation. One need only think of Scipio Africanus' supremely
confident troops at Zama in 202 B.C., for whom roughly eighty Punic
elephants, even if most of them never met their intended targets, were
no real cause for concern, nor was Hannibal's third line of seasoned
infantry veterans -- even when the going got tough.[[3]] Greater
consideration of morale, not only during but also before the battle,
would have added further depth to K.'s discussion of concepts such as
nonlinearity and complexity (perhaps even the microevents or
microcauses of chaos theory), the former of which, as she rightly
points out, can be used to help with explaining "phenomena that resist
accurate mathematical modelling" (p. 100). The same holds true with
respect to understanding the results of modern sporting contests,
though we need not detain ourselves on this point here. On pp. 116-117,
K. lists the various variables that a commander has to take into
account before a battle begins, including his "emotional stability",
but the quality and temperament of the troops go unmentioned on several
occasions where discussion is arguably warranted. Mutual trust between
commander and troops allows a commander to orchestrate a battle with
much greater surety in the knowledge that a) complexity is reduced
(and, as a consequence, Clausewitzian friction minimized) and b) that
there is a greater possibility of predicting cause and effect.
On matters of detail, K. shows herself to be very well informed. Some
matters, however, are worth mentioning. For example, on p. 23 (with p.
204, n. 1), K. seems to imply that Ammianus' work was presented
altogether "shortly after the year 390". K. adduces some of John
Matthews' writings on the topic, even though, for example, Matthews
holds that "the history was brought to completion in 390 or 391" (my
italics).[[4]] K. speaks of Ammianus' description of elephants at
Amida, noting that this stems from personal observation (p. 32). This
might be so, at least in part, yet it is worthwhile to bear in mind the
rhetorical nature of the language that Ammianus employs.[[5]] Indeed,
much of his 'elephant-language' is a reprise of earlier descriptions,
although K. does state that "specific information ... frames literary
descriptions of combat itself" (p. 32). A dedicated Caesarian scholar
might also wish to refine K.'s broad claim that Caesar's letters to the
Senate "may have been the basis for the Commentaries" (p. 110). In
addition, classicists may not approve of K.'s decision (or was it that
of the publisher?) to steer clear of Latin and Greek in the first half
of the book. This generally poses no real problems, though one shudders
a little to see statements such as "[Ammianus'] ... use of the word
entangled is significant" (p. 37). The Latin (implicatas) is happily
found in the notes (p. 208), but why cannot the Latin be juxtaposed
with the translation in the text (as it is, for example, on pp.
122-123, 125-126 and 142-145)?[[6]]
With respect to format, the volume incorporates five illustrations and
a like number of maps. The photographs are all of well-known sculptural
pieces. The maps pertain exclusively to Caesar's campaigning in Gaul --
there is not a single diagrammatic representation of Strasbourg to be
seen. There are forty pages of endnotes. Many are discursive and thus
will not be used by many readers. In any case, a good many (if not far
too many) references are merely to textual loci. Again, one wonders why
these could not have been placed in the text, especially when most
refer to either Ammianus or Caesar's Bellum Gallicum? They could have
been more usefully placed in the text, although this was probably the
publisher's decision. The bibliography is relatively brief at ten
pages, and more representative of relevant scholarship than exhaustive.
The same cannot be said about the very detailed index, though one
wonders how many readers not familiar with Clausewitz, the physical
sciences or game theory will look up themes such as "complexity" (p.
261), "friction" (p. 263) or "nonlinearity" (p. 267).
In sum, K.'s approach makes for a somewhat theoretical exegesis, yet
one which, for most readers of BMCR, will still add a substantial
amount to their knowledge of Caesar and Ammianus. In particular, K.'s
notion that Ammianus describes battles from the perspective of the
participant (e.g., Strasbourg) owing to the formative experience of
Amida is important (p. 60; p. 66). Of even greater merit is her
demonstration that, pace Keegan, the "orders of senior commanders" are
not "irrelevant" to a battle's outcome (p. 11). Some sections of the
book, however, may represent somewhat heavy going on account of the
discipline-specific constructs employed. The retelling of battles,
especially in the Caesarian section, is also a little stolid -- perhaps
the more analytical approach found in the conclusion might have been
warranted elsewhere. Despite these minor grumblings, K.'s book, for the
most part, is successful and persuasive, albeit in need of greater
focus and synthesis in some sections. Anyone who employs Keegan's 'face
of battle' approach in their own historical work should certainly read
it. In an era of (hopefully) burgeoning academic interdisciplinarity,
this book represents something of a wake-up call to those accustomed to
read their Xenophon or Caesar in splendid isolation from contemporary
historical, sociological or psychological theory. Indeed, one might
very well wonder how many students of Arrian's Anabasis or Xenophon's
like-named work have read Clausewitz, much less Keegan? I cannot recall
being encouraged to do so. K.'s engaging work asks many questions of
military history as a discipline. Military scholars of antiquity would
do well to take note.
------------------
Notes:
1. J. Keegan The Face of Battle (New York, 1976).
2. See also Amm. Marc. 25.5.2-3. Again, Ammianus articulates his own
personal confusion at being surprised by the Persian elephants and
cataphracts (heavily-armoured horsemen).
3. On the morale of Scipio's troops vis-a\\-vis those of Hannibal, see
M. B. Charles and P. Rhodan, "Magister Elephantorum: A Reappraisal of
Hannibal's Use of Elephants", CW 101 (2007), forthcoming.
4. J. Matthews, "The Origin of Ammianus", CQ 44 (1994), p. 262, n.
52; see also id., The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989), 8-9 and
27. For a summary of scholarship on the possibility of the final six
books of the Res Gestae being composed (if not presented) together, see
chapter 4.3 of M. B. Charles, Vegetius in Context: Establishing the
Date of the Epitoma Rei Militaris, Historia Einzelschriften 194
(Stuttgart, 2007), forthcoming. In short, a good many scholars,
including Matthews, believe that the Res Gestae appeared in what one
might anachronistically term 'instalments' (perhaps declaimed in
public), especially if Matthews' views regarding Ep. 1063 of Libanius
are taken into account; cf. C. Fornara, "Studies in Ammianus
Marcellinus I: The Letter of Libanius and Ammianus' Connections with
Antioch", Historia 41 (1992), 328-344. The timeframe for publication is
thus difficult to determine, though this is obviously not the
appropriate forum in which to discuss such a vexatious issue. In any
case, it is the terminus ante quem that remains most contentious for
students of Ammianus.
5. On this theme, see M. B. Charles, "The Rise of the Sassanian
Elephant Corps: Elephants and the Later Roman Empire", Iranica Antiqua
42 (2007), forthcoming, with P. Rance, "Elephants in Warfare in Late
Antiquity", Acta Ant. Hung 43 (2003), p. 365, with n. 48.
6. A similar approach is found on p. 38, where K. provides a list of
eight words from Ammianus in the context of "The intense vocabulary of
motion".
Reviewed by Michael B. Charles, Queensland University of Technology
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
[url:1wf58zl9]http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2007/2007-02-33.html[/url]
-------------------------------
Kimberley Kagan (K. hereafter) is no longer a dedicated classicist,
though she displays a very sound command of the classicist's tools, be
they linguistic, analytical or theoretical. In view of this, it is
revealing to read a monograph on aspects of ancient military history by
a historian with a broad interest in warfare. Indeed, K. lectured at
the United States Military Academy between 2000 and 2005 before taking
up a position in International Affairs, History and the Humanities at
Yale. In essence, K.'s volume constitutes a re-examination of Sir John
Keegan's now-seminal The Face of Battle.[[1]] This influential 1976
work posited that a firm understanding of battles -- at any point in
history -- may be gained from examining the experiences of soldiers'
accounts of engagements between small units. In short, a thorough
familiarity with the dynamics of the face of battle leads to a more
informed understanding, or so it is argued, of why any given battle
resulted in the way that it did. Yet, in K.'s belief, historians cannot
hope to gain a complete mastery of any particular battle solely from
this approach. Rather, the historian needs to take into account the
view of the commander, and the way in which his view shapes the outcome
of a battle.
A brief word on the book's organization will allow a better
understanding of K.'s argument. The book is divided into two parts. The
first, entitled "The Face of Battle", encompasses three chapters, these
being "The Face of Battle", "Eyewitness to Battle: Ammianus on Amida"
and "Strasbourg as a Face of Battle Narrative". The second, entitled
"The Eye of Command", also includes three chapters, these being "The
Eye of Command", "Caesar's Eye" and "Friction: Caesar and the Battle of
Gergovia". Thus the book juxtaposes Keegan's approach to military
history, which is demonstrated by means of selected battle narratives
in Ammianus' Res Gestae, with K.'s favoured approach, which is
exemplified through the military descriptions of Caesar in his Bellum
Gallicum. To put it simply, K. uses the two narrative techniques,
employed by Ammianus and Caesar respectively, to demonstrate that
Caesar's 'eye of command' style enables the reader to gain a much
better oversight of what occurred in battle and, what is more
important, why it occurred.
More than anything, The Eye of Command represents an extended dialogue
with The Face of Battle. Happily for some readers, prior knowledge of
the latter work is not assumed, though one might as well add that some
knowledge of Keegan's oeuvre (in addition to that of Clausewitz) would
be beneficial to any reader seeking to gain the most from The Eye of
Command. Still, all the most pertinent sections of Keegan's text
accompany the argument. Thus K.'s intention is to demonstrate the
importance of an ongoing debate on the theory of military history,
though I did find her concluding statement that "A historian ... can
understand much more of a battle's complexities through the eye of
command" (p. 200) to be a little too neat, if not verging towards
dogma. The real value of Keegan's The Face of Battle was that it
prompted us to look more closely at small group activity at the
coal-face, so to speak, rather than pay unwarranted amounts of
attention to e/lite-centric military narratives that recreate battles
as large-scale chess tournaments between those in overall command. As a
mid-point between two extremes, K.'s book seeks to demonstrate that the
commander, though he may not have a complete understanding of his
troops' responses from a psychological perspective or from the point of
view of morale, nevertheless has the minimum amount of awareness needed
-- evidence for which, according to K., exists in Caesar's writings on
the Gallic War (though Keegan, it seems, would disagree) (p. 181).
Although Keegan's work did pay some attention to Caesar and his
writings, it is somewhat surprising that K. bases her argument in
favour of the 'eye of command' thesis almost exclusively on the Bellum
Gallicum of Julius Caesar, to the general exclusion of other
commander-historians. One wonders why the writings of more modern
commanders such as Napoleon do not rate much of a mention, let alone
those of more contemporary military leaders such as Norman Schwarzkopf.
On the opposite side of the fence lies Ammianus, a writer who, as
stated above, displays a Keegan-style 'face of battle' approach (p.
22). In particular, K. cites Ammianus' descriptions of Strasbourg (A.D.
357) and Amida (A.D. 359) (p. 28), an event in which Ammianus took
part. In her discussion of his Amida narrative, K. makes much of the
historian's personal involvement. Ammmianus' confused description of
the attack of Persian heavy cavalry and elephants on the Roman
stretched column immediately before Julian's decease (25.3.2-5) also
aligns well with K.'s overall thesis regarding Ammianus' ability to
impart "the perspective of the participants" (p. 28).[[2]] Note, too,
K.'s comment that, as a (generally) horse-borne staff officer,
Ammianus' infantry narratives "do not emerge from his own personal
combat experience" (p. 29), even though he was close by on these
occasions. Yet, if Ammianus can be a 'face-of-battle' historian without
always participating in the contests that he relates, one wonders why
K. does not give much attention to the battle descriptions of an 'eye
of command' historian -- even Caesar -- who was absent from some (or
all) of the events found in his narrative? Does the eye-of-command
historian, then, have to be an eyewitness of sorts, even if some of the
events are perceived rather than seen? This is not made especially
clear and warrants revisitation.
The reader also gets the feeling that the focus on Ammianus and Caesar
may be overly rigid for a monograph with generalist ambitions. There
are some cursory references to battles of other eras (e.g., the Somme
on p. 50; Agincourt on p. 57), but in-depth comparative analysis is
infrequent, except for the exceptionally well-written conclusion (pp.
181-200), which provides a valuable synthesis of the work's more
important points. Indeed, I could not help but wonder whether K.'s work
on the Bellum Gallicum could be useful with regard to (re)interpreting
the Bellum Civile (another work in which much of the military action
takes place away from Caesar's gaze), or even if it could be used to
shed further light on the authorship, and manner of composition, of the
three 'Caesarian' works dealing with the Spanish, Alexandrian and
African wars. Likewise, in what category does an author such as
Xenophon, also a soldier-historian, fall? What of Thucydides? And what
sort of approach did armchair historians such as Tacitus employ when
they dealt with battles in their narratives? Were their accounts
infused with material gained from the 'face of battle', or did they
rely almost exclusively on more detached 'eye of command' observations,
married to rhetorical topoi? Thus a more broad-ranging approach might
have added further interest to those primarily interested in ancient
historiography.
The volume's focus on causality also merits discussion. K. takes pains
to point out that, in deference to Keegan's thesis, that the
psychological impact of weapons, death and dying at the face of battle
may have some ultimate say in the engagement's outcome (e.g., p. 17).
Yet one might wish to have seen greater emphasis placed on troop
morale. To be fair, K. does detail the way in which over-enthusiasm on
the part of Caesar's troops led to failure at Gergovia (52 B.C.) (pp.
169-170 and 174). K. also makes the claim, in her concluding remarks,
that Caesar "paid great attention to the morale of his soldiers" (p.
181). This point, however, is not especially well harnessed in the text
proper, although the conclusion does shed some welcome light. Troops
with poor morale may break if charged, contrary to their commander's
intentions, while those with stronger morale may absorb blows,
retaliate in some measure, and regroup, confident that they can master
any situation. One need only think of Scipio Africanus' supremely
confident troops at Zama in 202 B.C., for whom roughly eighty Punic
elephants, even if most of them never met their intended targets, were
no real cause for concern, nor was Hannibal's third line of seasoned
infantry veterans -- even when the going got tough.[[3]] Greater
consideration of morale, not only during but also before the battle,
would have added further depth to K.'s discussion of concepts such as
nonlinearity and complexity (perhaps even the microevents or
microcauses of chaos theory), the former of which, as she rightly
points out, can be used to help with explaining "phenomena that resist
accurate mathematical modelling" (p. 100). The same holds true with
respect to understanding the results of modern sporting contests,
though we need not detain ourselves on this point here. On pp. 116-117,
K. lists the various variables that a commander has to take into
account before a battle begins, including his "emotional stability",
but the quality and temperament of the troops go unmentioned on several
occasions where discussion is arguably warranted. Mutual trust between
commander and troops allows a commander to orchestrate a battle with
much greater surety in the knowledge that a) complexity is reduced
(and, as a consequence, Clausewitzian friction minimized) and b) that
there is a greater possibility of predicting cause and effect.
On matters of detail, K. shows herself to be very well informed. Some
matters, however, are worth mentioning. For example, on p. 23 (with p.
204, n. 1), K. seems to imply that Ammianus' work was presented
altogether "shortly after the year 390". K. adduces some of John
Matthews' writings on the topic, even though, for example, Matthews
holds that "the history was brought to completion in 390 or 391" (my
italics).[[4]] K. speaks of Ammianus' description of elephants at
Amida, noting that this stems from personal observation (p. 32). This
might be so, at least in part, yet it is worthwhile to bear in mind the
rhetorical nature of the language that Ammianus employs.[[5]] Indeed,
much of his 'elephant-language' is a reprise of earlier descriptions,
although K. does state that "specific information ... frames literary
descriptions of combat itself" (p. 32). A dedicated Caesarian scholar
might also wish to refine K.'s broad claim that Caesar's letters to the
Senate "may have been the basis for the Commentaries" (p. 110). In
addition, classicists may not approve of K.'s decision (or was it that
of the publisher?) to steer clear of Latin and Greek in the first half
of the book. This generally poses no real problems, though one shudders
a little to see statements such as "[Ammianus'] ... use of the word
entangled is significant" (p. 37). The Latin (implicatas) is happily
found in the notes (p. 208), but why cannot the Latin be juxtaposed
with the translation in the text (as it is, for example, on pp.
122-123, 125-126 and 142-145)?[[6]]
With respect to format, the volume incorporates five illustrations and
a like number of maps. The photographs are all of well-known sculptural
pieces. The maps pertain exclusively to Caesar's campaigning in Gaul --
there is not a single diagrammatic representation of Strasbourg to be
seen. There are forty pages of endnotes. Many are discursive and thus
will not be used by many readers. In any case, a good many (if not far
too many) references are merely to textual loci. Again, one wonders why
these could not have been placed in the text, especially when most
refer to either Ammianus or Caesar's Bellum Gallicum? They could have
been more usefully placed in the text, although this was probably the
publisher's decision. The bibliography is relatively brief at ten
pages, and more representative of relevant scholarship than exhaustive.
The same cannot be said about the very detailed index, though one
wonders how many readers not familiar with Clausewitz, the physical
sciences or game theory will look up themes such as "complexity" (p.
261), "friction" (p. 263) or "nonlinearity" (p. 267).
In sum, K.'s approach makes for a somewhat theoretical exegesis, yet
one which, for most readers of BMCR, will still add a substantial
amount to their knowledge of Caesar and Ammianus. In particular, K.'s
notion that Ammianus describes battles from the perspective of the
participant (e.g., Strasbourg) owing to the formative experience of
Amida is important (p. 60; p. 66). Of even greater merit is her
demonstration that, pace Keegan, the "orders of senior commanders" are
not "irrelevant" to a battle's outcome (p. 11). Some sections of the
book, however, may represent somewhat heavy going on account of the
discipline-specific constructs employed. The retelling of battles,
especially in the Caesarian section, is also a little stolid -- perhaps
the more analytical approach found in the conclusion might have been
warranted elsewhere. Despite these minor grumblings, K.'s book, for the
most part, is successful and persuasive, albeit in need of greater
focus and synthesis in some sections. Anyone who employs Keegan's 'face
of battle' approach in their own historical work should certainly read
it. In an era of (hopefully) burgeoning academic interdisciplinarity,
this book represents something of a wake-up call to those accustomed to
read their Xenophon or Caesar in splendid isolation from contemporary
historical, sociological or psychological theory. Indeed, one might
very well wonder how many students of Arrian's Anabasis or Xenophon's
like-named work have read Clausewitz, much less Keegan? I cannot recall
being encouraged to do so. K.'s engaging work asks many questions of
military history as a discipline. Military scholars of antiquity would
do well to take note.
------------------
Notes:
1. J. Keegan The Face of Battle (New York, 1976).
2. See also Amm. Marc. 25.5.2-3. Again, Ammianus articulates his own
personal confusion at being surprised by the Persian elephants and
cataphracts (heavily-armoured horsemen).
3. On the morale of Scipio's troops vis-a\\-vis those of Hannibal, see
M. B. Charles and P. Rhodan, "Magister Elephantorum: A Reappraisal of
Hannibal's Use of Elephants", CW 101 (2007), forthcoming.
4. J. Matthews, "The Origin of Ammianus", CQ 44 (1994), p. 262, n.
52; see also id., The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989), 8-9 and
27. For a summary of scholarship on the possibility of the final six
books of the Res Gestae being composed (if not presented) together, see
chapter 4.3 of M. B. Charles, Vegetius in Context: Establishing the
Date of the Epitoma Rei Militaris, Historia Einzelschriften 194
(Stuttgart, 2007), forthcoming. In short, a good many scholars,
including Matthews, believe that the Res Gestae appeared in what one
might anachronistically term 'instalments' (perhaps declaimed in
public), especially if Matthews' views regarding Ep. 1063 of Libanius
are taken into account; cf. C. Fornara, "Studies in Ammianus
Marcellinus I: The Letter of Libanius and Ammianus' Connections with
Antioch", Historia 41 (1992), 328-344. The timeframe for publication is
thus difficult to determine, though this is obviously not the
appropriate forum in which to discuss such a vexatious issue. In any
case, it is the terminus ante quem that remains most contentious for
students of Ammianus.
5. On this theme, see M. B. Charles, "The Rise of the Sassanian
Elephant Corps: Elephants and the Later Roman Empire", Iranica Antiqua
42 (2007), forthcoming, with P. Rance, "Elephants in Warfare in Late
Antiquity", Acta Ant. Hung 43 (2003), p. 365, with n. 48.
6. A similar approach is found on p. 38, where K. provides a list of
eight words from Ammianus in the context of "The intense vocabulary of
motion".
