Stephen Dando-Collins' books on the Roman Legions

Has anyone else read any of these? I bought his first one, "Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome" practically right when it came out in 2002 and remember thoroughly enjoying it; namely how it gave a wide variety of info to the non-specialist, and described historical events with a novelistic detail.

I likewise bought the second one, "Nero's Killing Machine: The True Story of Rome's Remarkable 14th Legion" a couple years later because I remembered liking the first one, and let's face it: that's an amazing title for a book :-D Again, looking back now, I remember really enjoying this one at the time.

In the intervening years, as my collection gradually grew, I'd added Dando-Collins' next two books, though I hadn't got around to reading them yet. I just saw at Borders the other day that he has yet another one out (I remember from Caesar's Legion that he mentioned wanting to someday have one book on each of the legions...guess he's doing his best to get there!) So anyway I thought to myself, "Hey, I remember his books, those are cool!"

This is a very long and drawn out way of saying, last night I started reading his "Mark Antony's Heroes: How the Third Gallica Legion Saved an Apostle and Created an Emperor," and about 10 pages in.... I can't stand it!!! Maybe it's just because I've gone to university now and whatnot, but the writing style just strikes me as really sophomoric, and well, just too simple. I know he's writing for a general audience and all, but in this one it feels like that audience is in the 3rd grade or something.

Even reading the "author's note" at the beginning of the book, I started feeling a little uneasy with the way in which he uses this sort of "Well, if a+b=c, and c-a=b, b+c must = a!" mentality in reference to his source materials. He says right off the bat that there's no ACTUAL documentary evidence of the 3rd Gallica being the legion that "saved" Paul the apostle (a main premise of the book, mind you) but that he infers it is true based on other circumstantial evidence, including such things as "well, the legions wouldn't use non-citizens to guard a political prisoner." That is, it would HAVE to be an actual legion, and not some auxilia unit. Now, I could be showing my own ignorance here, but 1) I was always under the impression that the legionaries weren't granted full citizenship until their retirement and 2) if Germans from beyond the Rhine were good enough to be Caesar's bodyguard, I don't see the logic in supposing that someone guarding a prisoner would HAVE to be a citizen in the first place.

Besides all this, he also seems to play the semantics game with respect to ancient sources in inferring that the 3rd was indeed the legion involved, claiming that a passage from the bible uses the word "legionaries", and it wouldn't have used this word if they weren't actually legionaries doing the guarding (again, as opposed to auxilia). Now I know I'm a skeptic and all, but in a work that has been translated and retranslated from language to language as often as the bible I don't really see the logic in assuming the word in the NIV is exactly what was meant in the original Greek.

Anywho, I'm not far enough into the book yet to be "committed" so I'm thinking about just putting it aside and reading something else for the time being. I was hoping for some "lighter reading" for bedtime, and I remembered Dando-Collins' books fitting the bill nicely, but I'm not sure I'll be able to tolerate this one, going "what the hell?!?!" every five minutes. Has anyone else read it that can tell me if I'm way off the mark here?

EDIT: Oh and by the way, another thing that bothers me: he uses modern military ranks instead of the Roman ones, and ditto for names of ancient cities. "Rome" I can understand, but for some of the lesser-known places, chances are the "average reader" isn't going to know where they are anyway, so why not just use the "correct" name, and mark it on the map on the inside of the book as such. Blah.

I've got 6 of his books, none of which I've read from cover to cover, but my impression from grazing is that they're a good light read. Think of them as interesting journalism (stretching the 'facts' a bit to fit his line) rather than historiography (stretching his line a bit to fit the unavoidable facts).

I purchased his first. Didn't make it through 50 pages, just hated the quasi-fictional approach to the material.

Thanks for the warning. I had been thinking about buying Mark Antony's Heroes.

Thanks for the well-written, well-thought-out take. I was as excited by you about the books as I started reading your post, but by the end I knew I'd hate them.

Well as Levar Burton said on "Reading Rainbow" every day after school in the 1980s and 90s: "...you don't have to take MY word for it!" :-D

It's just one man's impression and I'd hate to keep anyone from reading a book that they might end up enjoying. I just feel that personally, anyone who is already in this group probably knows enough about the material to begin with to be maybe as annoyed as I was, that's all. But I could always be wrong :-)

Getting a degree in History ruins your enjoyment of most historical fiction. I had read that Dando-Collins was pretty poor in the footnotes category. I am currently reading the McCullough 'First Man in Rome' series as a bit of light reading in between my ancient history books and though its entertaining enough I have been dipping back into Gruen and Syme amongst others when she makes some connection that makes me wonder how true it is. But the fact is that our first hand sources for the Ancient World are so limited in number and so lacking in modern concepts of HISTORY that who knows? maybe she is spot on!

Yeah, that's a good point about historical fiction... the problem I have with Dando-Collins is he's claiming all that he says is fact, when right from the outset you really have to question whether it actually is or not.

I loved Wallace Breem's books that I've read (Eagle in the Snow, and The Legate's Daughter) because they're fiction set in a historical setting; Breem didn't claim to be re-writing--indeed, correcting!--history as Dando-Collins asserts.

My history degree IS like a curse; one that has ripened with age. Now I have gotten to the point where I can't abide books that don't address opposing interpretations and theories.

>7 rcss67: & 9 Same problem here. If I start reading historical fiction and find an error I can't bear to finish it and it gets tossed across the room. Don't even get me started on the movies. I start yelling "That's not the way it was," and get shushed for ruining the good time of all the non-history majors.

Haha... movies are a whole other pet peeve of mine! Don't even get ME started on not only how inaccurate they always are from the original source material (be it fiction or non), but even the principle of movies themselves! :-D