Conclusion

That Roman war was violent goes without saying, but this of itself does not prove that either there was a specific Roman way of war or that it was especially bellicose, cruel or brutal.

Not only does the breadth of study make a great deal of difference in the conclusions one draws, but also the implicit assumptions about the relation­ship of culture and war. This is a broad discussion among military historians, and beyond, but the interpretation of texts and images as reflective of underlying reality should be done only with explicit reference to the histor­iographical problems involved. In addition, while modern theory has con­tributed much to our understanding of Roman military violence, scholars should use, or draw on those who use, the critical tools for understanding ancient sources developed over centuries of the study of Roman history.

The fact of the matter is that despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that we know more about Rome than virtually any other ancient culture, we are not in a position to definitively say whether Roman military violence was distinct. Historians frankly cannot state confidently that Rome was excessively bellicose or less warlike, or indeed the same as the other societies of its time, or indeed, of our own.

Bibliographic Essay

For general surveys see Adrian Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011) and Patricia Southern's The Roman Army: A History 753 BC-AD 475 (Stroud: Amberley, 2014). Specific periods are covered in Michael Sage, The Army of the Roman Republic: From the Regal Period to the Army of Julius Caesars (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2018), Lawrence Keppie's The Making of the Roman Army (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), and Yann Le Bohec, The Roman Imperial Army (New York: Routledge, 2013).

Recent studies of imperialism include D. W. Baronowski, Polybius and Roman Imperialism (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2011); Andrew Erskine, Roman Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Vladimir D. Mihajlovic and Marko A. Jankovic, Reflections on Roman Imperialism (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2018). Weaponry is covered in M. C. Bishop and J. C. N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment (London: Batsford, 1993). Two studies of Roman battle are A. D. Lee, ‘Morale and the Roman Experience of Battle' and Catherine Gilliver ‘The Roman Army and Morality in War', both in Alan Lloyd's, Battle in Antiquity (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2009). Nathan Rosenstein's chapter ‘Mortality in War' in Rome at War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 107-40, discusses casualty numbers.

Focused discussions of military violence include Emma Dench's chapter ‘Force and Violence' in Empire and Political Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 105-33, as well as Graeme Ward's ‘The Roman Battlefield: Individual Exploits in the Warfare of the Roman Republic' and Serena Witzke's ‘Violence against Women in Ancient Rome: Ideology versus Reality', both in Werner Riess and Garraett Fagan (eds.), The Topography of Violence in the Greco-Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016).

Specific studies are Adam Ziolkowski's ‘Urbs direpta, or How the Romans Sacked Cities', in John Rich and Graham Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Roman World (New York: Routledge, 1993); and for the archaeological evidence of battles, Manuel Fernandez-Gotz, Conflict Archaeology: Materialities of Collective Violence from Prehistory to Late Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 2017), about half of which is on Roman battles.

William Harris returns to his thesis with Roman Power: A Thousand Years of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), and Arthur Eckstein elaborates on his contrary view in Rome Enters the East: From Anarchy to Hierarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean, 230-170 BC (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

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