Gabriele Esposito, Armies of Ancient Italy 753-218 BC (Pen & Sword, 2020)
It’s sometimes easy to forget that Rome was once a small city state on the fringes of the Greek world. But in the 8th Century BCE, Romans were just bit players on the big stage. Five hundred years later, they stood on the precipice of greatness. To get there involved a lot of hard fighting, especially against the unruly neighbours, but also against interlopers from the north and across the sea. Esposito surveys the various wars Rome fought on the road to Empire with an emphasis on their armies and enemies.
Esposito begins with Rome as a kingdom finding its feet along the Tiber river. They defeated the Sabines and organised themselves as a military society, albeit a small one. Rome, like most city states on the make, and under the influence of the Etruscans whom they would soon fight, adopted the Greek hoplite military system around 570 BCE. More wars followed, which proved dangerous to Rome, particularly when the Romans formed a Republic. By 493, after a series of conquests, they were ascendant. With the Republic came more army changes and campaigns against the Volsci against a backdrop of internal social unrest. But by 446, Rome was ready to take on the Etruscans. Esposito takes us through the sack of Rome in 390 by the Gauls and the subsequent defeat of the Etruscans. As Rome expanded, that brought it into conflict with the warlike Samnites in South Italy. To beat them, the Romans reorganized their military again, some of it along Samnite lines, into the recognizable Manipular Legion system. They lost a major battle at the Caudine Forks in 321, but being Romans, they were quickly back into the fray and winning. It took a while, but they got there. With the Samnites defeated by 290, the growing Roman Empire lapped onto the shores of the Greek world, and a war against a major threat in the Pyrrhic War. Rome now had to fight the Macedonian phalanx system, which proved attritional, but they adapted and again won through. Most of Italy was now in their hands. Sicily was next up on the hit list, which brought Rome into the Punic Wars against Carthage, the major power in the west Mediterranean. Rome’s victory after a second round of warfare replaced that power. The following chapters describe the various peoples that Rome had to fight for supremacy: the Etruscans, Latins, Gauls, Samnites, and Greeks.
Esposito’s Armies of Ancient Italy is a useful introduction to a turbulent period of ancient history. He tells a clean story, untangling a complex web of warfare and diplomacy. He is supported by photographs of reenactors in various uniforms, which is helpful for miniature painters, though not essential to the book. They also highlight the book’s weakness, which is a lack of primary sources and archaeological evidence. Those, for me, are where the energy lies in studying ancient history. For the uninitiated though, this might work as a gateway into the period. If so, job done.
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