Generalship in Ancient Greece, Rome and Byzantium: The Art of Generalship

376 Pages·2022·1.567 MB·English

by  Shaun Tougher, Richard Evans

Generalship in Ancient Greece,
Rome and Byzantium
For NCT
Generalship in Ancient Greece,
Rome and Byzantium
Edited by Richard Evans and Shaun Tougher
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish
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© editorial matter and organisation Richard Evans and Shaun Tougher, 2022
© the chapters their several authors, 2022
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 10/14 Ehrhardt
by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 5994 5 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 5996 9 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 5997 6 (epub)
The right of Richard Evans and Shaun Tougher to be identified as the editors of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright
and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Contributors ix
Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
Richard Evans and Shaun Tougher
1. Kings, Tyrants and Bandy-Legged Men: Generalship in Archaic
Greece 6
Cezary Kucewicz
2. Commemorating Thermopylae: The andreia of Glorious Defeat
as a Literary Construct 36
Richard Evans
3. Plato on Military and Political Leadership 52
Nicholas Rockwell
4. Reconstructing Early Seleucid Generalship, 301–222 bc 67
Alex McAuley
5. Generalship and Knowledge in the Middle Roman Republic 86
Michael Taylor
6. Command Assessment in the Bellum Gallicum: Caesar and Fortuna 98
David Nolan
vi | CONTENTS
7. Remembering P. Quinctilius Varus: Opposing Perspectives on the
Memory and Memorialisation of the Failed General in the Annales
of Tacitus 116
Daniel Crosby
8. Decius and the Battle near Abritus 139
David Potter
9. Ammianus and the Heroic Mode of Generalship in the Fourth
Century ad 151
Conor Whately
10. The Fine Line between Courage and Fear in the Vandal War 164
Michael Stewart
11. The Generalship of John Troglita: Art in Artifice 187
Martine de Marre
12. The Best of Men: Cross-Cultural Command in the 630s ad 206
Eve MacDonald
13. Tian Yue Marshals His Tropes: Public Persuasion and the Character of
Military Leadership in Late Tang China 225
David A. Graff
14. The Ideal of the Roman General in Byzantium: The Reception of
Onasander’s Strategikos in Byzantine Military Literature 242
Philip Rance
15. Generalship and Gender in Byzantium: Non-Campaigning Emperors
and Eunuch Generals in the Age of the Macedonian Dynasty 264
Shaun Tougher
16. The Politics of War: Virtue, Tyche, Persuasion and the Byzantine
General 284
Dimitris Krallis
Epilogue 306
Richard Evans and Shaun Tougher
Bibliography 307
Index 351
Acknowledgements
This volume has its origins in a panel on ‘The Art of Generalship: Late Antique,
Byzantine, and Chinese Ideals’ held at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds
in 2014. For this publication the scope of the original panel was extended to encom-
pass the ancient Graeco-Roman world. In the course of its production several debts
of gratitude have been incurred. We would like to thank all the contributors to the
original panel, including those who were not able to contribute to the final volume:
Doug Lee, Peter Lorge, Ken Swope and Jamie Wood. We are also indebted to the
many colleagues around the world who acted as readers for the individual chap-
ters and supplied helpful and constructive feedback. In addition, we cannot thank
enough Edinburgh University Press for their support and extreme patience, espe-
cially Carol Macdonald. The schedule faced of course not just the usual obstructions
to finalisation experienced by academics but also the ongoing Covid pandemic.
Finally, Shaun would like to thank Richard for his immense contribution to the
completion of the volume; he proved as excellent and positive a co-editor as he was
a colleague at Cardiff.
Richard Evans and Shaun Tougher
Pretoria and Cardiff

List of Contributors
Daniel Crosby recently completed his PhD studies at Bryn Mawr College,
Philadelphia, USA. While the main focus of much of his forthcoming and ongoing
research is on divination in the ancient world, he has also published on Roman
prosopography (2016), on Patristics (2017) and in this volume on Tacitus and the
dynamics of cultural memory.
Martine de Marre is currently Associate Professor of Ancient History in the
Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies at the University of South Africa,
Pretoria. Her research focuses on the socio-cultural history of Roman North Africa,
especially the role of women, and the works of Augustine, Fulgentius and notably
Corippus (2020).
Richard Evans taught at the University of South Africa, Pretoria, and Cardiff
University, Wales. He is currently an Academic Associate in the Department of
Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa. He has authored books
on Gaius Marius (1994), the Roman Republic (2003), ancient Syracuse (2009 and
2016), Pergamum (2012) and ancient warfare (2010, 2013 and 2015). He has also
edited or co-edited volumes on mass and elite interaction in antiquity (2017), ancient
divination (2018) and piracy in ancient Greece and Rome (2020).
David A. Graff is Professor in the Department of History at Kansas State University,
Manhattan, USA. Since 2017 he has held the Richard A. and Greta Bauer Pickett
Chair for Exceptional Faculty. He has published widely on Chinese military history,
with a particular focus on the Tang Dynasty (2002) and the comparative military
practice of China and Byzantium (2016).
x | LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Dimitris Krallis is Professor at the Department of Humanities and Director of
the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser
University, Canada. He has published on the social, political and intellectual his-
tory of the Byzantine Empire, with books on the life, work and career of Michael
Attaleiates (2012 and 2019).
Cezary Kucewicz completed an MA in Ancient History at Cardiff University,
Wales, and more recently his PhD at University College London, England, on
Homeric warfare. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Gdańsk,
Poland, and Wolfson College, Cambridge, England. He is the author of The
Treatment of the War Dead in Archaic Athens: An Ancestral Custom (2021).
Alex McAuley is Senior Lecturer in Hellenistic History at Cardiff University,
Wales. He has published extensively on the Hellenistic period, notably on the accul-
turation process between Macedonians and Mesopotamian groups at the start of
Seleucid rule. Royal women in the dynastic structures of the Diadochi have also been
a focus of recent research.
Eve MacDonald is a Lecturer in Ancient History at Cardiff University, Wales.
She is interested in the social and military history of the Sasanian period and its
connections to the Byzantine and early Islamic worlds. She has published on the
archaeology of the Sasanian frontiers, and on Carthage and North Africa.
David Nolan completed his PhD at the University of Tasmania, Australia. His
research interests focus on Caesar’s leadership in his conquest of Gaul, on the battle
narrative in the Bellum Gallicum and on the role of the centurions (2016).
David Potter is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, USA. His research interests encompass Greek and Latin historiography,
public entertainments in the Graeco-Roman world, ancient warfare, and Greek and
Roman Asia Minor. His publications are many, including Emperors of Rome (2008),
The Roman Empire at Bay (2014) and The Origin of Empire (2018).
Philip Rance obtained his PhD at St Andrews, Scotland. He has taught History
and Greek Language at universities in the UK and Germany, and held numerous
research fellowships in Europe. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Free University,
Berlin, Germany, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia,
Bulgaria. He has published extensively on late antique and Byzantine history and
literature.