General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1914 Original Publisher: Clarendon Press Subjects: Rome History / Ancient / Rome History / Ancient / General History / Ancient / Rome History / Military / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: SECTION III THE USE OF THE AUXILIA FOR WAR AND FRONTIER DEFENCE A History of the art of war under the Roman Empire ‘ has not yet been written, for the simple reason that we do not possess an account by a good military historian of a single campaign between that of Thapsus (46 B. c.) and that of Argentorate (357). Josephus does indeed give a first-hand account of the Jewish war of 66-70, and took some trouble over military details, but his subject limited him to siege operations and street-fighting. The most valuable section in his work is a general sketch of the Roman army and its organization, and a description of the arrangement of troops on the march.1 Tacitus, on the other hand, who is forced by his subject to describe several campaigns, and remains in consequence our chief authority, cared nothing for the technical side of warfare, and does nothing more than record, as a rule correctly enough, details which he found in his sources.2 1 Josephus, Bell. Iud. iii. 5. 2 He was not, however, an ’ unmilitary historian ‘ in the sense that, fof instance, Ephoros was. Ephoros made elaborate accounts of military operations an important feature of his work, although he was quite lacking in military knowledge (Polybius, xii. 25); Tacitus never pretends to concern himself with more than the moral and social aspects of war. The same attitude may be observed both in Dio and Herodian (ii. 15, 6). This attitude was perfectly justifiable, since ther…
