The Roman Army [antikvár]

Rome was founded during the European iron age in about 800 BC. Beginning as a small village on the Tiber, she rose to dominate first Italy and finally the whole Mediterranean basin. The conquest of Italy took 600 years; the rest took little over a hundred. How did she achieve such remarkable success ? This book provides an account ofthe Roman Army during three critically important periods: the Macedoniancampaign,Caesar'sconquestofnorthern Europe, and the early years ofthe Empire. The text at the top of each page gives an exciting narrative of events, whilst the illustrations and text below vividly depict the armour, tactics, weapons and organization of the legions as they evolved. In the 2nd century BC, Rome was a republic. She had already completed her conquest of Italy and controlled Spain and north-west Africa. Her main rivals, Carthage and Syria, had been defeated. Only the Greek state of Macedonia remained defiant. The first section of this book describes the victory over Macedonia which left Rome the undisputed master of the Mediterranean world. Our second section deals with the army of Caesar's time, in the middle of the 1st century BC. By now the legions had been reorganized. A new type of army came into being, loyal not to Rome but to its military leaders. Finally, we proceed to an analysis of the army of the early Empire, during the 1st century AD. Rome had now created a single political unit that stretched from Scotland in the north to Egypt in the south, from Spain in the west to Armenia in the east. But the period was marred by violent civil warfare. The army which had achieved so much was convulsed with internal strife, as different legions competed to put their own commanders on the imperial throne. The story of this struggle unfolds in the third section of the book which ends with the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.