Gladius Book Reviews

Gladius by Guy de la Bedoyere Book Summary

This “encyclopedic [volume] collects pretty much every fact known about what it was like to be in the military arm of the Roman Empire" (The New York Times Book Review).
The Roman army was the greatest fighting machine in the ancient world. It was also the single largest organization in Western antiquity, taking in members from all classes, from senators to freed slaves. The Roman Empire depended on its army not just to win wars, defend its frontiers, and control the seas, but to act as the very engine of the state. In Gladius—the Latin word for sword—Guy De la Bédoyère reveals what it meant to be a soldier in the army that made the empire.

Surveying numerous aspects of Roman military life between 264 BCE and 337 CE, De la Bédoyère draws not only on the words of famed Roman historians, but also those of the soldiers themselves, as recorded in their religious dedications, tombstones, and even private letters and graffiti. He vividly recreates their everyday lives, whether in a bleak frontier garrison in Britain or North Africa, guarding the emperor in Rome, fighting on foreign battlefields, mutinying over pay, marching in triumph, throwing their weight around on city streets, or enjoying honorable retirement.

By illuminating the history of one organization that reflected all corners of the Roman world, Gladius gives us a portrait of an ancient society that is unprecedented in both its broad sweep and gritty intimacy.

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