Acknowledgments. Author's Note. Chapter 1. Get Up and Fight! Chapter 2. For Pompey, Caesar and Antony. Chapter 3. The Parthian Invasion. Chapter 4. Routing the Parthians. Chapter 5. Putting King Herod on His Throne. Chapter 6. Mark Antony's Mistake. Chapter 7. The Bloody Retreat. Chapter 8. The Sun-Worshipping 3rd. Chapter 9. Riot Duty in Jerusalem. Chapter 10. Saving the Apostle Paul a Second Time. Chapter 11. To Caesar You Shall Go. Chapter 12. The Centurion's Decision. Chapter 13. Cast Up on Malta. Chapter 14. In Nero's Rome. Chapter 15. Fanning the Flames of Revolt. Chapter 16. Victims of the Jewish Uprising. Chapter 17. The Heroes of Ascalon. Chapter 18 . The Execution of a Troublesome Jew. Chapter 19. Blood for Blood. Chapter 20. Slaughtering the Sarmatians. Chapter 21. To Italy, to Make an Emperor. Chapter 22. Prelude to a Disaster. Chapter 23. The Bloodbath of Cremona. Chapter 24. Storming Rome. Chapter 25. Thanks to the 3rd Gallica. Appendix A. Imperial Roman Military Ranks and Their Modern-Day Equivalents. Appendix B. The German Guard. Appendix C. Sources. Glossary. Index.
Stephen Dando-Collins is the author of Caesar's Legion, Nero's Killing Machine, Cleopatra's Kidnappers, and Blood of the Caesars. An Australian-born researcher, editor, and author, he has spent the last three decades identifying and studying the individual legions of the Roman army of the late Republic and the empire of the Caesars.
The analysis of military tactics and players should be a carefully crafted exercise in historiography. It cannot be merely a laundry list of troop numbers (which should be in an appendix), but it cannot offer too much narrative elaboration, or one can end up with virtually fictional characters. Unfortunately, Dando-Collins (Caesar's Legion) displays both tendencies in his new book. The author is a good storyteller, but his habit of describing how ancient figures reacted emotionally in given situations is inappropriate for a historian. Claiming, e.g., that Roman statesman and general Mark Antony was smiling while making a decision is pointless and unreliable, even if an ancient commentator might have written it. The author's lack of discussion about his sources is particularly disturbing and throws many of his conclusions into doubt. Even though he goes into remarkable detail about the number of soldiers in each situation and the exact mileage of their marches, such unsourced statistics become wearying. The period he covers is fascinating for the historiography it has inspired (e.g., Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War), yet this work seems not to recognize those discussions. Not recommended.-Clay Williams, Hunter Coll. Lib., New York Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
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