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Why Did the Roman Empire Fall?
[I am] holding a wolf by the ears.TIBERIUS, EMPEROR OF ROME (R. 14–37) The Roman empire was antiquity’s largest and most powerful state. It reached its zenith under Trajan (r. 98–117), encompassing...
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MHQ Reviews: 1177 BC
1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline. 264 pages. Princeton University Press, 2014. $29.95. Reviewed by Richard A. Gabriel This book is the first in a series—Turning Points in...
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Jihad: War to the Knife
‘When Saudi Wahhabists crashed Western passenger planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, they did so in the fundamentalist spirit of jihad’...
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Why Hannibal Lost
Among the basic distinctions in warfare is the difference between tactics and strategy. The term tactics refers to the operational techniques military units employ to win battles. Strategy, on the...
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Why Hannibal Lost
The Carthaginian commander ruled the battlefield but never understood his role in the broader political struggle. Among the basic distinctions in warfare is the difference between tactics and strategy....
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Book Review: The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s...
The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb By Neal Bascomb. 400 pages. Houghton Mifflin, 2016. $28. Reviewed by Richard A. Gabriel A CURIOUS PARADOX OF WRITING is that...
View ArticleThe Myth of Masada
The 2,000-year-old hilltop fortress stands as a revered symbol of Jewish nationalism— but does the historic record support the myth or a very different reality? In 1963 Yigael Yadin, famed...
View ArticleWhat We Learned from Marathon, 490 BC
In the summer of 490 fleet of 600 trireme vessels, sent by King Darius I and commanded by BC a Persian his experienced Median admiral Datis, set out from Ionia with an army of 25,000 men—light...
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His Own Worst Enemy
Mark Antony’s victories and political alliances with Julius Caesar and Octavian set his star on the rise—until Cleopatra pulled down the shades. Marcus Antonius (83–30 bc) would have been no one’s pick...
View ArticleThe Best Medicine
Death came slowly to soldiers wounded on the battlefields of antiquity. The muscle-powered weapons that hacked at their flesh only rarely inflicted sudden death. Bodies pierced by spears or slashed by...
View ArticleWhat We Learned: from Mount Gilboa, 1006 BC
The Israelite victory at Michmash Pass (1010 BC) sparked a popular uprising that ejected Philistine outposts from the Israelite hill country. Saul’s control of the foothills thwarted outright frontal...
View ArticleBuddha: Enlightened Warrior
In his youth Siddhartha Gautama was a brawny, six-foot warrior prince, trained in the art of war—and perhaps touched by tragedy. It is a curious fact of military history that the founders of three of...
View ArticleTrajan’s Column
A 100-foot column in Rome records the 2nd Century military exploits of Trajan and his legions. Nineteen centuries after its construction, Trajan’s Column remains one of antiquity’s great works of...
View ArticleMilitary History Book Review: The Poison King
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor, Princeton University Press, 2009, $29.95 This is an enjoyable but strange book. The introduction claims it...
View ArticleWhat We Learned: from the Battle of Salamis
In the spring of 480 Xerxes led 180,000 soldiers over a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont BC, Persia’s King and invaded Greece. Accompanied by 1,207 warships and 3,000 transports, Xerxes intended to...
View ArticleWhat We Learned: from the Battle of Thessaly
In 353 BC Philip of Macedon marched into Thessaly at the request of the Thessalian League to attack the city of Pherae, which had allied itself with Phocis against Thebes in the Third Sacred War. Upon...
View ArticleThe Genius of Philip II
Western warfare that united Greece and enabled his son Alexander to conquer the world. The full moon cast long shadows across the 3,000 dead and wounded sprawled in grotesque piles throughout the...
View ArticleWhat We Learned: from the Teutoburg Forest
In the summer of Publius Quintilius Varus assumed command of the army of the Rhine in AD 9, Roman general Germania. Rome had been dealing with a Pannonian tribal revolt and wanted to avoid similar...
View ArticleThe Right Hand of Khan
General Subotai’s Mongols overran Europe in 1241—and taught the Red Army how to fight. In 1221 a cavalry force of some 20,000 Mongols under Genghis Khan’s ablest general, Subotai, began a...
View ArticleWhat We Learned: from Cynoscephalae
Cynoscephalae was the first battle in the campaign of Roman imperialism against Macedonia and the eastern Mediterranean. It was also the first clash of two rival military systems: the Greek spear...
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