- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (3 Jun 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0300106637
- ISBN-13: 978-0300106633
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.6 x 4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 407,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Soldiers and Ghosts
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Review
"Soldiers and Ghosts is a stunningly original contribution to our understanding of ancient warfare, written with great style and verve. It is one of those rare books that powerfully challenges received opinion and demands attention. At the same time, it is a wonderful read that should hold appeal for any layman with an interest in the Greeks and Romans or simply in the history of warfare." Donald Kagan, author of The Peloponnesian War; "Soldiers and Ghosts offers a wholly original cultural history of Greek and Roman warfare. The book is hugely impressive in scope and ambition, often brilliant in interpretation, elegantly constructed and wonderfully written." Hans van Wees, author of Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities"
Jeremy Black, History Today, February 2006
'[Lendon] offers an interesting analysis of the Homeric cult of the individual warrior in the subsequent age of the hoplite.'
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
They built long citadels, the eldest of the Greeks, and they built them low and strong, not thrusting into the sky but clinging to the rocks, with walls of great stones piled up and cisterns dug deep. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
They built long citadels, the eldest of the Greeks, and they built them low and strong, not thrusting into the sky but clinging to the rocks, with walls of great stones piled up and cisterns dug deep. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
this book contains interesting information about what seems to have driven Greek and Roman thinking on warfare, respectively.
Here are some keypoints
- the enormous impact of Homer's Illiad on (real) warfare over centuries
- the ongoing conflict between individual heroism as propagated by Homer's writing versus the more effective phalanx at the price of submission to the collective
- the tension between virtus and disciplina for the Romans
- the deeply rooted urge to be competitive (Greeks and Romans)
However, the writer goes through numerous iterations to highlight and summarize these points again and again without necessarily adding new insights to it. Hence, the book would have benefitted to be shorter and more focused.
Here are some keypoints
- the enormous impact of Homer's Illiad on (real) warfare over centuries
- the ongoing conflict between individual heroism as propagated by Homer's writing versus the more effective phalanx at the price of submission to the collective
- the tension between virtus and disciplina for the Romans
- the deeply rooted urge to be competitive (Greeks and Romans)
However, the writer goes through numerous iterations to highlight and summarize these points again and again without necessarily adding new insights to it. Hence, the book would have benefitted to be shorter and more focused.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An excellent read, especially if you are interested in more than a narrative history that simply rehashes what you probably already know and are trying to make sense of how the Greeks and Romans might well have thought of war, battles and fighting. It is one of the best books on ancient militray history that I have ever read.
Format:Paperback
Fantastic! If you want to know WHY rather than HOW, then this book is for you. It is also interesting to put changes (not necessarily progress) into context over such a long period from the Trojan war to the end of the Roman Empire.
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