Ancient World Commanders

by Angus Konstam

Ancient World Commanders from antiquity to the medieval period, including the main military leaders of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Israel, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Huns, Goths, Visigoths, Alans, Vandals, Kievan, Rus, The Vikings, Moors, Franks, Normans, Mongols. From the mythological warrior Achilles to the Chinese general and strategist Zhou Yu, this superbly illustrated book describes more than 160 prominent war leaders of the "ancient world"-from the beginning of recorded history in about 2,000 BC , to the end of the 5th century AD.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

Angus Konstam is a Scottish writer of popular history. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland and raised on the Orkney Islands, he has written more than a hundred books on maritime history, naval history, historical atlases, with a special focus on the history of piracy.

Reviews

[Anibal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Angus Konstam is an excellent historian, specialized in naval and military history. He can do magnificent monographs like "strongholds of the picts", magnificent display books like Cities of the Renaissance world among dozens of great publications. This is not one of them.

Clearly this book hadn't much time invested on it. There was no fact checking (there are dozens of wrong dates for example), many descriptions have terrible mistakes, anachronistic pictures without sources, wrongly referenced pictures, many grammar mistakes, missing text repeated sentences, Etc.

The first edition of this book was in 2008 and the objective was to provide the reader with a quick overview of the most important military commanders of the ancient world and their most important deeds. With that information"...the list can be viewed as a tool that can place these leaders in a wider context, tracing the early developments of history through the activities of the commanders who first defined the military art." But unfortunately it fails both purposes. The first objective falls short because much information is incorrect, so it becomes unreliable; the second because it is organized in alphabetical order...the reader can't see the development of the art of war, or the context in which each leader was inserted, or their opponents! You go from Stilicho, to Sudas (the 15th cent BC Bharata King), to Sulla; unless you're already acknowledged in the field it becomes hard to read the relevant biographies for a time period or event, because there isn't even a compared chronological table!

The obvious solutions would be to separate each leader through smaller time periods, or military confrontations...as it is it's less useful than an online encyclopedia bio.

The mistakes are many, almost in every page, and I will only state a few:

Dates - You will learn that Alcibiades was born in 450 BC diying in 40 BC; or that Antiochus III lived from 241 - 197 BC but reigned ten more years until 187 BC (UNDEAD); Ardashir I of Sassan reigned from 226 - 241 BC (!!!!); Aulus Plautius C. 45 - 60 AD is probably the most successful adolescent general...and I even haven't left the "A" letter!

Mistakes - in the Cleon bio it states "...and captured an Athenian force stranded on the island of Sphacteria.". In fact he was the leader of the Athenian force that captured the Spartan force at that engagement.

Pictures - In the Marcus Junius Brutus Bio, it has a picture currently attributed to Lucius Junius Brutus. That statue is far earlier than Marcus Junius Brutus (the statue is dated IV to II cent BC). It even fails to provide the correct museum where it is displayed (in the book says Museo della civita, but it isn't there...it's in the Capitoline Museums. Palazzo dei Conservatori).

It needs considerable revision and a change in structure.

[Michael Moats · Rating 3 out of 5]

poorly edited. mistakes throughout the book. would have been better if the people were list chronologically instead of alphabetically.

[Matthew Dambro · Rating 3 out of 5]

A picture book with very brief articles on military leaders from the ancient world. It would serve as a very introductory summary.

[Chad Wolfgang · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the worst editing of any book I have ever read. It only got two stars because the subject matter is something I enjoy.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has all the telltale signs of a book that was rushed to the market with minimal copy-editing, and the knowledge that there was demand for a book on ancient military history and that it was more important in the publisher’s mind to get a book for sale than it was to make sure that the book was polished. Presumably, if the work sells enough, it can be edited in a second edition. As a fond reader of ancient history and military history [1], I feel ambivalent about this work. On the one hand, I am glad that someone took the effort to examine ancient leaders, defend the timescale they were looking at ,and made sure that they did not ignore the rich military history of East and South Asia. On the other hand, though, this is a sloppy work, with inconsistent dates, short entries that are filled in by reproductions of artwork with dubious historical accuracy about the scenes portrayed, and very sloppy printing, including at least one entry, that for Mark Anthony (Marcus Antonius), a duplication of the first paragraph of the entry (103-104) that somehow was not caught in the light-to-nonexistent editing process this book went through.

Concerning the contents and structure of the book, it is straight forward and in many ways laudable. The author introduces his subject, defends the end of ancient history at the fall of Rome in 476AD, and expresses his desire to recognize the scope of world history and not only Western history, at least insofar as historical records exist. And the author achieves those aims, organizing leaders, some of whom merit only a short paragraph, like the noted leaders of the Three Kingdoms period in China in the twilight days of the later Han and beyond, and others of whom are given entries that last several pages. The author shows a broad familiarity with military history across cultural boundaries, although the author does not mention warfare in areas outside of the realm of historical familiarity for the author, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and the Americas. Even so, this is far better than most historical accounts of ancient history. The entries for military leaders, including those known from biblical history as well as from Greek myth and legend, are organized in alphabetical order, by the name that the person is known to its reading audience. For example, this means that Gnaeus Pompey (who we know as Pompey) is included under P and not G.

Aside from its immensely sloppy production, which would not have required a great deal of time to tighten up, but which was apparently beyond the ken of the folks at Compendium who produced this effort, this book has a lot worthy of praise. Fans of art history will be especially pleased by this work, which shows marble busts, terracotta images, and reproductions of paintings about its subjects in a way that is truly impressive. In fact, this book has at least as much art on it as it does text, which means that this book will be most pleasing to those readers who appreciate artwork about the ancient world, even when it is highly anachronistic in its presentation. At the very least, the use of art demonstrates the legitimacy of studying such leaders because of their importance to broader culture, and if this is a deliberate aim, to legitimize the study of ancient military history in light of broader cultural interests, it is a successful aim. Let us hope that the publishers and authors are not too embarrassed by the rough state of the text of this book, which does not meet the polished promise of its gorgeous images, because it is likely that most people who want to read about ancient history are going to care a lot more about the text. At least they should.

[1] See, for example:

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[Robert Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, but superficial, account of many military commanders of ancient times. To some extent the superficial aspect can be forgiven. If the author had gone into detail on everyone he covered he would have filled an encyclopedia, but, considering the concept involved, I think he should have gone a bit more into strategies, tactics, and key battles/wars of the people covered. Still a good general reference work, although not intended as a book for someone to simply sit down and read.

[Cassandra Chapel · Rating 1 out of 5]

There were numerous typos, and with some the end of the sentence was missing. An alright read but needed better proof reading and better placement of the pictures so that it didn't cut into the flow of the reading.

[Regina Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on short bursts. I am still trying to figure out how Mycenaean warriors wore that armor which is like garbage can.

[Elysavania Tran · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite