Zosia Archibald

Over the years, I've gone back and forth over whether I really wanted to read this monograph. The topic looked interesting but my suspicion was that it was going to be too technical for my background.

In actuality, the main issue was that it turned out to be a bit too scatter-shot to really give me a lot of satisfaction. Yes, Archibald is basically interested in examining the foundations of Macedonian power, which were laid while in contact with the Persians during the Greco-Persian wars. She show more is also interested in debunking the notion that the Macedonians, and to a lesser degree the Thracians, were somehow mostly isolated from the experience of the greater Hellenistic world. The problem is that she never provides a really concise summing up of what she's trying to do; the word "thesis" doesn't even enter the discussion until page 127 of this book. The main point might have been to engaged in a running commentary on a lot of the period conventional wisdom regarding the region in question.

The other problem is that since this book was published in 2013, it may well have reached the point where it's about to be superseded as a viable study. So, caveat emptor. I was glad to read it as an inter-library loan. show less