Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World

Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World
by Philip Sabin

Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World
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Book Summary Information

Author: Philip Sabin
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-31
ISBN: 1847251870
Number of pages: 298
Publisher: Continuum

Book Reviews of Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World

Book Review: Modelling The Unknowable
Summary: 5 Stars

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.

Summary of Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World

From the author's introduction:

Ancient battles seize the modern imagination. Far from being forgotten, they have become a significant aspect of popular culture, prompting a continuing stream of books, feature films, television programs and board and computer games... there is a certain escapist satisfaction in looking back to an era when conflicts between entire states turned on clear-cut pitched battles between formed armies, lasting just a few hours and spanning just a few miles of ground. These battles were still unspeakably traumatic and grisly affairs for those involved - at Cannae, Hannibal's men butchered around two and a half times as many Romans (out of a much smaller overall population) as there were British soldiers killed on the notorious first day of the Somme.

However, as with the great clashes of the Napoleonic era, time has dulled our preoccupation with such awful human consequences, and we tend to focus instead on the inspired generalship of commanders like Alexander and Caesar and on the intriguing tactical interactions of units such as massed pikemen and war elephants within the very different military context of pre-gunpowder warfare.

Lost Battles takes a new and innovative approach to the battles of antiquity. Using his experience with conflict simulation, Philip Sabin draws together ancient evidence and modern scholarship to construct a generic, grand tactical model of the battles as a whole. This model unites a mathematical framework, to capture the movement and combat of the opposing armies, with human decisions to shape the tactics of the antagonists. Sabin then develops detailed scenarios for 36 individual battles such as Marathon and Cannae, and uses the comparative structure offered by the generic model to help cast light on which particular interpretations of the ancient sources on issues such as army size fit in best with the general patterns observed elsewhere. Readers can use the model to experiment for themselves by re-fighting engagements of their choice, tweaking the scenarios to accord with their own judgment of the evidence, trying out different tactics from those used historically, and seeing how the battle then plays out. Lost Battles thus offers a unique dynamic insight into ancient warfare, combining academic rigor with the interest and accessibility of simulation gaming. This book includes access to a downloadable computer simulation where the reader can view the author's simulations as well create their own.

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