I have questioned the reliability of some of the most commonly used ancient sources because I have little confidence in the information as presented. This is based to a certain extent on modern academic methods that have been criticised and yet continue to be used in many publications. I think that there needs to be a more cautious approach much like caveat emptor. To assume any writer has a better understanding is dangerous, particularly if the ancient sources were not among the best and brightest by modern standards.

One example of this presentation is taken from The Fall of the Roman Empire: A Reappraisal by Michael Grant. On page 85 (in Chapter 2 The People Against the Army), he wrote:

"The military expert Vegetius declared that the solution was a reversion to ancient discipline."

For those that may not know of Dr. Grant’s academic credentials and status, he had several doctorates, held various significant academic positions, was a member and president of the Royal Numismatic Society, and wrote many publications about ancient Rome. Given this information, one should expect that Dr. Grant knew his subject; however, Vegetius is not considered by all Roman military historians to be worthy of the title expert. In fact, as stated in other threads, Vegetius was a civil servant with no known military experience or in-depth military knowledge. So why did one of the best known modern Roman scholars describe him as such?

Sometimes the issue is clouded by the differences in opinion expressed by historians, who are supposedly experts. Take for example the review of The Late Roman Army by P. Southern and KR Dixon, (London, 1996) written by H Elton of Trinity College in Connecticut and author of Warfare In Roman Europe. Elton states:

"Until very recently, there has not been a book in English on the late Roman army. Now we have two published in the same year. I wrote one; this is the other, by Pat Southern and Karen Dixon… (They) describe how the military machine was structured, but they do not describe what it actually did. It is as if one were to describe the tobacco industry in great detail without talking about smoking…I could go on, but I think you get the picture by now. However, given the lack until this year of a monograph in English on the subject, it is liable to be consulted often while its low price and impending paperback edition open the possibility of classroom use… For academics, it is only a starting point, and they will (and should) move on quickly. Students and general readers will probably find the whole very disorienting, given the minimal attention paid to chronology and historical explanation in the text. Teachers will dislike the way three centuries are often homogenized into a single period and will be irritated by the numerous basic errors.

Military historians will be disappointed by the focus on things, not on how the army did its job. But despite all this, I suspect it will be a popular work."

I would suggest that this is similar to "the pot calling the kettle black" as Elton does not cover all of the errors and omissions that he criticises in Southern and Dixon. May be Elton is right as Pat Southern was a librarian and Karen Dixon a research fellow when they wrote their book. Elton was a professor of Classics and History.

I feel much more comfortable assessing modern writers because we know more about them and there are greater expectations that they follow some form of recognised scholarly method to support their theories, usually through reference to other writers and evidence. These are normally presented as notes and pictures that complement the written text. This does not mean that the writer presents a reasonable or logical theory.

For example, one of the most popular books on Roman military strategy is "The Grand Strategy of The Roman Empire" by Edward N. Luttwak. By popular, I mean that it is often cited in footnotes and bibliographies, and has been read (or at least purchased) by many people, not all of whom intended the book to rest on a library shelf. This opinion is based on seeing the book among the stock of booksellers at historical wargaming conventions.

Now on the back cover of my copy, there are several positive reviews of the book, as one would expect to encourage sales, and a short biography that identifies the author as "a well-known writer on strategic defense". At first glance, there seems to be enough information to consider Mr Luttwak an expert. I certainly did until I read a review of another book on Roman strategy, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East by Benjamin Isaac published in 1990. The reviewer, DS Potter of the University of Michigan, wrote this about Luttwak:

"These questions were answered affirmatively by Edward Luttwak in his deservedly influential book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. to the Third (Baltimore, 1976). This view has not, however, commanded universal assent among Roman historians. One reason has been that Luttwak is not a classicist by training. He is an authority (among the most important in the United States) on defense systems."

I now have a different opinion of Mr Luttwak. I consider him to be well read on the subject of Roman strategy as long as he did read the substantial bibliography presented in his book; however, it is not apparent to me whether he did or not. If not, then he would not be the first writer to embellish their bibliography. Even Vegetius may have only read secondary sources based on the primary sources that Vegetius noted as his inspiration. There are many authors of historical fiction that have also stated that they did lots of research for their own books.

Colleen McCullough discussed her own research at the end of her novel The First Man In Rome which is a fictional account of the life and times of Marius and Sulla two of the most important Roman leaders. She cites as sources the 180 volumes of the Loeb Classical Library in her personal collection. The depth of her research is certainly apparent in the detailed glossary. I think her own comments best show her confidence:

"My scholarship will be obvious enough to those qualified to judge, without a bibliography. However, should any reader be interested, he or she may write me in the care of the publisher for a bibliography."

My own writing is based on such research and I can even claim to be an "expert" because I served more than 25 years in the military with most of my time spent in military intelligence (one of the well known oxymorons). Like Mr Luttwak, I have experience in modern strategy and consider myself well read on the Roman military. I do lack any academic credentials specific to the study of the Roman military and my published work is limited to historical wargaming; however, the example of Colleen McCullough clearly suggests that academic credentials are only one measure of a person’s knowledge.

One of my first non-academic experiences was prompted by my reading of The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation by Arther Ferrill (New York, 1986). The title was enough to inspire me to read the book, as did many of my wargaming friends. At the time, I did not realise the influence this book would have on historical wargaming, particularly on the composition of Hunnic military forces. On page 142, Ferrill makes a rather surprising statement:

"Several decades of sedentary life in the Great Hungarian Plain led to important changes in the way Huns fought in war. To a very great extent they had been forced by circumstances to abandon their earlier cavalry tactics in favour of infantry, and their infantry was probably very little different from that of the Germanic barbarians."

Ferrill does support his theory by giving examples based on the approximate number of horses that could graze on the plains (150,000) and that Marco Polo noted that a single horseman could have up to 18 horses. His whole argument is based on the hypothesis that "if one assumes that the Huns used ten horses per cavalryman" then the Huns could field 15,000 cavalrymen. In these passages, Ferrill has several endnotes suggesting that he had drawn upon other sources; however, all of the notes are taken from a single source which is the article "Nomadism, Horses and Huns" by Rudy Paul Lindner in Past and Present #92 (1981). In his notes, Ferrill describes this article as "excellent discussion" and "persuasive". Ferrill is less reliant on his other sources such as A History of Attila and the Huns by EA Thompson and The World of the Huns by OJ Maechen-Helfen, which portray the more typical Hunnic forces of predominantly mounted warriors.

I was able to make a copy of Mr. Lindner’s articles because a friend found a copy of Past and Present #92. My own opinion of his theory does not include excellent and persuasive simply because he makes no reference to later nomadic groups such as the Avars, Bulgars, and Magyars and a similar reliance on infantry, although all of these groups settled in the same territories as the Huns. Surely there would be a pattern if these nomads were influenced by the same circumstances suggested by Ferrill and Lindner.

This theory did cause a ripple within historical wargaming circles. One of the gurus of ancient wargaming, Phil Barker of the Wargames Research Group (WRG), wrote

"The over-simplistic calculation of grazing in Hungary used by two modern authors to justify the suggestion that the Huns turned themselves into infantry for lack of horses totally lacks credibility".

This is taken from his popular wargaming army list books published by WRG in 1993. This assessment was contrary to that published in the American version of army lists intended for use with the same wargaming rules. The American army list contains the following comments:

"Recent research shows that the Alfold could not support the large number of horses that the nomadic Huns required and as a result many settled down and fought more in the fashion of their Germanic subjects…Thus some historians have seen the great battle of Campus Mauricius as a clash of two infantry armies."

Now neither of these army lists mentions the names of the historians, so I may be wrong in assuming that Ferrill and Lindner were the culprits.

Finally, I want to touch on something McCullough wrote, "those qualified to judge". Just who are these people? If one suggests that they are the scholars and academics, then are people like Colleen McCullough excluded? Should someone like Edward Luttwak be excluded because he was not trained as a classicist? Are writers like Southern and Dixon to be avoided because one of their "competitors" wrote a negative review of their book?

But then I like the Monty Python skit about the dinosaur theory by Ann Elk…