Barry S. Strauss

Arguments about whether the Trojan War actually happened may well predate Homer. Certainly they predate any existing copies of Homer, since Thucydides had trenchant comments on just what might or might not have happened.

This book isn't one of those arguments; it accepts the Trojan War as real. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a history. It's more of a projection: Take the story of the Iliad and retell it, cutting out only those parts which are clearly impossible in the light of archaeology show more and modern science. The result is at least 75% Homer, no more than 25% observed facts. Was there a city of Ilium (Wilusa), i.e. Troy? Certainly. Was it badly damaged, very likely sacked, around the end of the Mycenaean era in Greece? Yes. Were the attackers Greeks? Very possibly. Were they led by a King of Mycenae? It would make sense, since Mycenae was a very great city. Was the king's name Agamemnon? It's possible. Did he have a supporter named Achilles? We can't absolutely rule it out. Did they have a quarrel about two women whose names we know, did it result in a Trojan attack on the ships, and did that lead ultimately to the death of the Trojan prince Hector....?

Well, let's look at some realities. By all accounts, the Trojan epic and romance attributed to Homer (the Iliad is an epic; the Odyssey a romance) were composed about four hundred years after the event -- maybe more. So, for four hundred years, the story would have had to be preserved in folktales and oral epics -- the Greeks lost the skill to write after the Mycenaean era, and didn't regain it until they borrowed a new writing system hundreds of years later.

But oral history is pretty predictable: it forgets complicated facts and boils everything down to stories of individuals. Take the story of the Battle of Otterburn in 1388; the Earl of Douglas, who was raiding Northumberland, won a battle against Henry "Hotspur" Percy. The ballad of Chevy Chase, which was picked up a few hundred years later, knows of the battle but throws out all the details and ends up telling us that Percy and Douglas actually fought hand to hand -- making a battle into a series of single combats just as the Iliad is a series of single combats. Or take the Song of Roland. We know that Roland was a real noble at the time of Charlemagne. But he was just some border lord who got himself killed. By the time of the Roland, he is the greatest knight of Christendom, who defeats an entire enemy army even as he's dying -- dying not, we note, because he was overwhelmed by his enemies but because he blew his horn so loudly that he damaged his skull. Enemies couldn't kill him; he had to do it himself.

And this sort of distortion can happen quickly. There's a sea chanty, "Santy Anno," which described Santa Anna beating Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War, even though the reverse was true. That chanty was first collected less than a century after the Mexican War, in a time when written records were readily accessible.

And we're supposed to accept the accuracy of a story transmitted orally for close to half a millennium with no written support whatsoever?

This book is highly readable, even fascinating -- I breezed through it. But believable? Come on.... show less

This fairly short work effectively covers what we know about the course of the most famous slave uprising in history and the man who inspired and led it with a fair degree of success for two years until the Roman state's eventual triumph. In fact we know relatively few specifics about the detailed course of events and the individual battles involved, and very little indeed about Spartacus himself. In popular conception, Hollywood has of course filled in many of the gaps through the show more wonderful, though romanticised, classic film version starring Kirk Douglas (Spartacus actually fell in the final battle and his body was never recovered, although it is quite true that 6,000 survivors of that battle were crucified along the road from Capua, where the revolt started, to Rome). Strauss fills in some of the gaps through intelligent speculation and extrapolation from details of other Roman military engagements, analysis of the various Roman literary sources (none of which were contemporary), archaeology and even the topography of southern Italy. He doesn't fill space unnecessarily by writing extensively in general about the history of Rome, or of gladiators, as some authors might to make a book longer (the main text is 190 pages).

In the introduction he briefly covers the symbolism of Spartacus's later reputation (he and Julius Caesar are probably the two most famous names from ancient Rome to the general public). He has been hailed as a freedom fighter both by the political left, albeit sometimes in a rather romanticised way, as his aim was freedom and a peaceful life outside Italy for his followers, not the abolition of slavery as an institution; but also by the political right in the form of Ronald Reagan. His ultimate failure was probably inevitable, as despite the success of his guerilla tactics against complacent Roman generals, especially in the early stages of the revolt, his only plausible aim was escape from Italy and he faced the inexorable iron might of the Roman military machine. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate his significance. Even the little we do know shows he was an inspiring leader, and his earlier background in the Roman auxiliary forces gave him an understanding of Roman military tactics his fellow rebels lacked. In the author's words, "What began as a prison breakout by seventy-four men armed only with cleavers and skewers had turned into a revolt by thousands. And it wasn’t over: a year later the force would number roughly 60,000 rebel troops. With an estimated 1-1.5 million slaves in Italy, the rebels amounted to around 4 per cent of the slave population". He was clearly a force to be reckoned with and the Roman state only beat him when it sent one of its top people, Marcus Licinius Crassus, against him. Even then, it was only when the slave army split due to ethnic and other tensions that Crassus really began to succeed. The revolt represents one of the most dramatic series of events in Roman history, even in the extremely eventful first century BC filled with the doings of Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Octavian, Mark Antony and others. show less

This is an excellent account of probably the most famous assassination in history, an event that shaped the future development of one of the ancient world's greatest empires, and whose effects are thereby arguably still felt today. It explores the motivations of all the key players, so far as we can determine them based on the primary and secondary sources we have and reasonable surmise. It analyses the political and other factors that led to individuals and groups in Roman society show more supporting or opposing Caesar and his threat (or not if they did not see it as one or did not mind) to the ideals of the Roman Republic. This was a Republic that had flourished for four and a half centuries since an alleged ancestor of Brutus, one of the leading conspirators, threw out the last of the semi-legendary kings of Rome and established the Republic, so this was a very high stakes conflict. The story is dramatically and colourfully told, and the principal personalities brought out very clearly: this includes Decimus who, while playing as important a role in the conspiracy as Brutus and Cassius, is much less well known, probably largely as he is overlooked in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. A great read. show less

Describes, explains, and analyzes the military exploits of Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar.
Very detailed, yet also very clear.
Interesting comparisons of the three along five major dimensions of warfare: attack, resistance, clash, closing the net, knowing when to stop.

(Considering a recent book I read, "The Killing of History," this was a welcome antidote to the post-modern destruction of historical writing. Strauss is clearly one of the "old school" historians.)