Don Taylor - Roman Republic at War

A Compendium of Battles from 498 to 31 BC

Donathan Taylor

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Donathan Taylor, 2017

Cover painting Donathan Taylor, 2017. Cover painting, illustrations and maps may not be used without the express written permission of the artist Donathan Taylor.

ISBN 978-1-47389-442-6

eISBN 978-1-47389-444-0

Mobi ISBN 978-1-47389-443-3

The right of Donathan Taylor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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I wish to express my appreciation to the staff of the Rupert and Pauline Richardson Library whose aid was invaluable in bringing this work to fruition. The director, Mrs Alice Specht, was very gracious in permitting me the opportunity to retain ample portions of the librarys collection of Loeb Classics for months at a time, and the acquisitions department is second-tonone in its ability to garner rare published materials from various special collections. A note of thanks must also be extended to the staff of the British Library for their kind and patient assistance, as well as to Mr Ian Taylor for drafting the maps. Thanks also to David Jones of David Jones Photography for the photograph of the cover painting.

The author also wishes to thank William Heinemann Ltd, Harvard University Press and the Loeb Classical Library. A very grateful word of thanks must go to Philip Sidnell, Matt Jones and the firm of Pen & Sword Books for their generous guidance throughout this project. Also, a special note of appreciation to Tony Walton for his editorial wizardry; any errors are mine.

Also, a heartfelt word of gratitude to my mentors Donald W. Engels and Thomas Kennedy. Thanks also to Colin Wells for much needed and appreciated words of encouragement years ago.

Finally, I want to offer a very special thank you to my family Joy, especially, but also Autumn, Ian and Corrender for providing me with constant encouragement. They are four points of light which forever steady my course and draw me onward.

The primary purpose of this compendium is to provide readers a basic reference of the most significant battles in Roman Republican history. The information in each entry is drawn exclusively from ancient, late antique and early medieval texts, in order to offer a brief illustration of each battle based solely on the information provided by the earliest surviving sources which chronicle the event. Such an approach will provide the reader with a concise foundation of information to which they can then confidently apply later scholarly interpretation presented in secondary sources in order to achieve a more accurate understanding of the most likely battlefield scenario.

In writing the battlefield descriptions I have not sought to subject the evidence contained in the original sources to intense analysis, nor have I attempted to embellish upon the surviving accounts beyond that which was necessary to provide clarity to the modern reader. In essence, Ive allowed the original writers to speak for themselves. My task was simply to harmonize the disparate information in order to provide a better appreciation of what the ancients describe as occurring on the field of battle.

A task of this nature cannot be truly and properly addressed unless one is willing to undertake an exhaustive reading of the ancient authors. Otherwise, one runs the risk of overlooking any number of battles to which the classical writers will in many cases devote only a few lines in their texts.

The names of battles included in this work are typically derived from one or more of the ancient sources consulted, and so in many cases may not bear the name perhaps more commonly used to identify a specific engagement in general or popular studies of Roman history. When an exact name is not given by primary sources, the battle is identified by the nearest community or recognizable geographical feature. Likewise, the dates used in this study are largely those provided in various editions of the Loeb Classical Library.

I cannot claim emphatically that this work includes every Roman battlefield contest mentioned in the original sources that might be deemed by some modern historian to be a major encounter. Engagements which, in this authors judgment, appear to have been nothing more than skirmishes relatively small, brief, unintended clashes of no significant strategic value for either hostile party involved have not, with rare exceptions, been selected for inclusion.

Also not included are those battles discussed or alluded to by one or more ancient writers for which there is simply no identifiable name, location or landmark. Likewise, I have generally avoided sieges, a particular form of hostile encounter that occurred throughout the history of Rome. Some of these more celebrated events are included nonetheless, so readers will find descriptions of sieges ranging from Alesia to Veii.

For the convenience of the reader, an effort has also been made to disentangle the confusing knot of names that often denote Roman individuals associated with a particular battle or military campaign. While perusing Livy, Polybius or any number of ancient sources, young researchers are oftentimes perplexed by the unexpectedly redundant nature of Roman names and so commonly mistake, for instance, the general Publius Cornelius Scipio whom Hannibal defeated at the Ticinus River with the general Publius Cornelius Scipio, responsible for defeating Hannibal at Zama, or with the general Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, who destroyed Carthage. Then, to make matters worse, in the course of their reading students may also encounter the generals cousins Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum or Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, as well as any number of Lucius Cornelii, Gnaeus Cornelii, etc. All of this would be made a bit easier to sort out if it were not for the fact that ancient authors rarely offer the reader an individuals entire name. So Livy may very likely refer to a particular character in his text as only Publius Cornelius, and thereby leave the budding scholar with the uneasy feeling that another Publius Cornelius might have crept into the text when they momentarily turned away from their readings. I have therefore elected to include, when possible, the prenomen , nomen , cognomen , and agnomen if available, of each Roman to which the text alludes.