Warfare in the Ancient World (review)

This work covers the military history of the ancient world from the Sumerians to the fall of the Roman Empire. Chapter 1 is a reliable survey of the military history of the Ancient Near East. Chapters 2 and 3, the most substantive of the book, deal with Greece. Carey, relying mainly on secondary literature, provides a good discussion on Homeric warfare and gives summaries of major battles from the classical period to Alexander the Great. He does not, however, adequately address key questions on hoplite warfare.

Hoplite soldiers carried about 60 pounds of equipment and fought as a phalanx, a closely packed formation generally eight men deep. Spartan hoplites marched slowly into battle accompanied by flute music. This was a model of discipline not easy to maintain. Relying on Herodotus, Carey describes Athenian hoplites at Marathon charging the Persians from a distance of some 200 yards. Some discussion on whether the Athenians had the stamina for such a maneuver, on how they maintained their cohesiveness, and on the normal practice of initiating the clash of phalanxes was in order. Carey refers to the right wing of the phalanx as the "place of honor" without explaining that hoplite armies had offensive and defensive components and that the right wing was the striking force.

Certain generals experimented with weighted wings in the fifth century BC and a century later, the Theban general Epaminondas defeated the Spartans with a reinforced left wing at Leuctra (371 BC) and Mantinea (362 BC). Carey cites Xenophon's disapproval of this tactic without commenting on the historian's criticism of such a successful innovation or on Epaminondas's peculiar deployment of the left wing.

In the fifth century BC, lightly armed warriors, peltasts, began to supplement hoplite armies. Carey argues that this type of formation emerged at the "Battle of Sphacteria" (424 BC) where Athenian peltasts outflanked a Spartan garrison, forcing it to surrender. Sphacteria was not a battle but rather a blockade where approximately 14,000 Athenians defeated a Spartan army of slightly more than four hundred men. Lightly armed soldiers earned a place in hoplite warfare in 426 BC at Aegitium where Aetolian peltasts surprised and defeated a strong Athenian hoplite force on rough ground.

Carey provides a good survey of the main battles in Roman history from Allia in 390 BC to Châlon in AD 451, although he omits the Civil Wars (AD 68/69) and the Jewish Rebellion (AD 68–72), which feature some of the best documented Roman military operations. Roman tradition credits King Servius Tullius with creating the Roman army ca. 550 BC, apparently using the phalanx system as a basis. The author makes no effort to show how the Roman phalanx evolved into the legionary army. Carey notes that the legions seemed to enter battle in checkerboard formation without speculating on how the Romans prevented their foes from exploiting the gaps in this arrangement. In the early years of the Empire the Emperors protected their frontiers with a linear defensive system. Carey argues that Constantine established a defense in depth based on a mobile army consisting of great cavalry units. He may be right but there are other viewpoints on this matter.

Nicias's blunders led to the Athenian disaster at Syracuse; Alexander's strategy crushed the Persians at Gaugamela; Caesar's last minute arrangements defeated Pompey at Pharsalus. But Carey glosses over such matters and generally ignores the role of leadership and strategy in achieving victory. Furthermore, the book lacks a discussion of siege warfare. The attempt to cover nearly four thousand years in a slim volume makes a balanced study impossible. Thus it would churlish to end on a negative note. This is an interesting work with a lot of clearly presented information and will be useful to history students in military schools and to amateur historians.