Product Description

Philip Sabin's book offers a unique and dynamic insight into ancient warfare, combining academic rigour with the accessibility of simulation gaming. Taking a new and innovative approach to the battles of antiquity, Phil Sabin draws together ancient evidence and modern scholarship to create a whole new means of examining the great clashes of the ancient world. Having developed a model to capture the movement and combat of the opposing armies we are able to actually interrogate the lessons of history. The book develops detailed 'scenarios' for individual battles such as Marathon and Cannae, to cast light on which particular interpretations of the ancient conflict are realistic. Readers can use the model to experiment for themselves by refighting engagements of their choice, tweaking the scenarios to accord with their own judgements of the evidence, trying out different tactics from those used historically and seeing how the battle then plays out.The book thus offers a unique dynamic insight into ancient warfare, combining academic rigour with the interest and accessibility of simulation gaming.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53557 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 298 pages

Review
"'A highly innovative study, presenting a new way of understanding what happened in the great battles of the ancient world.' Adrian Goldsworthy 'Sabin offers a brilliant reconstruction of ancient Greek and Roman battle.... There are new insights both into specific battle and into the relative importance of moral and material factors. Lost Battles is required reading for anyone interested in ancient warfare.' Barry Strauss"

About the Author
Philip Sabin is Professor of Strategic Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College, London. He has worked closely with the armed services and appears regularly on TV and radio. He has also co-edited the two volume Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare.

Customer Reviews

Modeling The Unknowable
This book aims to develop a new way of looking at the warfare of the ancient world; to shine a light on the battles whose history has been lost to the moth, fire and decay. The amount of written ancient history that has survived across the centuries is small and is not really increasing; although archaeological evidence is helping. This means that for even the most important battles we can have partial histories from one or two historians, often based on other lost histories from eye-witnesses. These accounts can fail to agree on numbers, events and location. In some cases parts of each version appear unlikely and one often suspects special pleading on the parts of some or all of one's "witnesses".

Instead of despairing Phil Sabin has created a model of ancient combat based on the evidence of all the ancient battles that we have, and has turned it into a war game wherein the historian can test the various possibilities of the evidence in front of him. Did one side have 20,000 and the other 400,000? Well, now you can find out by trying it. Of course the author is not so unwise as to say that by adding together many battles about which we know little we arrive at one about which we know everything. Instead we arrive at a series of plots from which we can devise a line of best fit. This is not to say that outliers are wrong, simply that they are untypical. Phil uses as his touchstone the battle of Cannae in which a smaller army enveloped and destroyed a larger one (and led many a German general to his doom). He demonstrates how this seemingly unlikely result could have been achieved, and allows one to tinker with the solution. This is the strongest part of the model, its ability to be changed by the user to fit their views and then tested. If you belong to the camp of Xenophon, as I do, on how effective cavalry was then you can tweak the rules of the model and test away.

To the wargamer the model (a set of game rules in effect) is of medium complexity but with a limited number of units can be played quickly. Whether the general reader will be able to grasp the concept is another matter and it may be a bridge too far for many. However, the concept is one that is coming to the fore as part of modern history and this book is a valuable part of this trend.

History and simulation
Phil Sabin has written an extremely interesting book which seeks to develop a model of ancient battle (based on the great clashes of the classical period) which enables the generation of insight into vexed questions about these battles (given the frequently limited source material). He applies this model to provide new insights into the reconstructions of the 30+ battles discussed. Indeed the book is worth buying for either the model OR the review of the known information about these battles. The combination of the two factors makes it outstanding.

disappointed
This book attemps at reconstructing ancient world battles at hand of a computer model. Archaelogical finds, written sources, geography are discussed but not in a systematical way. The core issue remains the one of "simulating". This book might be of interest if you're into creating scenarios for wargames but there are far better studies on ancient warfare...