Yann Le Bohec, The Roman Army, London 2000

This English translation of a French monograph by the historian of Classical Antiquity Yann Le Bohec forms, in its entirety, a broad and partially in-depth introductory work on the subject of the Roman army of the early and high imperial period.

It starts with a rather short introduction in which the author offers an explanatory overview of the methods to analyze the literary and archaeological sources, which can provide knowledge about the Roman army.

The first of the three lengthy chapters covers the “Organization of the Army”. First, it deals specifically with the structure of the Roman army as a whole, including urban Roman cohorts, legions, auxiliary troops, “local militias”, and navy. It continues to explain their respective tasks and responsibilities according to the hierarchy of command and elaborates on various military careers, especially those of professional soldiers. The last major block of topics in this chapter deals with the various forms of recruitment and their practical implementation (e.g. drafting) for the various forms of service in the armed forces (legion / auxiliary forces) of the Roman Empire.

The second chapter deals with the “Army in action”. In the first section, the author describes the military training and the learning processes of drills and combat discipline it comprised. In the next section, under the heading “The Tactics”, Le Bohec provides a general overview of the armament and equipment status of soldiers from the various branches of service. The author explains that this information provides the basics for the following sections, in which various real scenarios such as marching order, logistics and pioneering work are dealt with, as well as the various forms of combat, siege and the course of a field battle. The last thematic block of this chapter introduces the readership to the general topic of territorial and border defense. It starts with basic information on spatial security concepts and their practical implementation through the construction of standardized camps of various sizes in the “border areas” of the Roman Empire.

The subject of the third chapter is the “Role of the Army in the Roman Empire”. Le Bohec first traces the historical development of the Roman army up to the end of the Soldier Emperors period (AD 284), elaborating on the background of individual rulers and the respective military challenges of their time. The following section looks into the role of the military as a strong economic agent for the local market as well as for the overall Roman economy and concludes with a review of demographic aspects such as nuptiality, natality and mortality in the context of the army. The role the army used to play in shaping religious and social coexistence in the places which served as military bases is examined in the final section of this chapter. In addition to the exchange processes between the military and the civil society, Le Bohec also touches upon the topics of Roman civil and military law, language, and calendar.

In his conclusions, Yann Le Bohec observes that the Roman army formed a complex and multi-layered system in the first two centuries AD. From the middle command level upwards it consisted of professional soldiers anchored in a defensive territorial strategy and able to present a significant offensive potential in the different geographical areas.

With this work, Yann Le Bohec succeeded in making the complexity of the Roman military in the imperial era accessible to a wider audience. Furthermore, he examines the complex influences of the military on the various areas of politics, economy, religion, and social life in the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the year of its creation being 1989, of the translation 1993, the work clearly bears signs that thirty years have passed since. This applies not only to methodological handcraft (“nothing forbids dreaming that artificial satellites will replace aircraft”, p. 14: aerial photo archeology), but also to certain research opinions, an example being the defensive orientation of the territorial security of the 2nd century or the technological development of auxiliary troops. With this knowledge in mind and taking into account the outdated research trends, this work nevertheless proves quite useful for its potential readership due to its broad thematic diversity.