Ancient Warfare Magazine 

A review by Nik Gaukroger 

In June 2007 a new magazine was launched to cover ancient warfare in the classical period. The driving force behind the project were a number of people who set up and run the Roman Army website ( www.romanarmy.com ) and the Roman Army Talk forum (http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/ ). They are a group of enthusiasts on, obviously, all things Roman, especially re-enactment, but also branch out into the allies and enemies of Rome in the period as well. As an aside I’d recommend the websites mentioned if you are interested in the subject. 

The format of the magazine is A4 colour on good quality glossy paper. Each issue is 50 pages of articles, etc. plus the covers. A limited number of relevant advertisements are included, but these do not dominate. 

Four issues have been published to date – June/July, August/September, October/November and December/January – and all my copies have arrived safe and sound within the cover period. I have noticed from the Roman Army Talk forum, which has a section for Ancient Warfare announcements, etc, that the editor is very responsive when issues do not appear to have been delivered to subscribers which is a good sign in my view. 

Each issue has a planned theme to which about one third to a half of the articles in that issue relate in some manner. The first four themes have been: “Agricola’s Campaigns”, “Daily Life”, “Shields, Helmets and Armour” and “The Conquest of Spain”. Upcoming themes announced on the website are: “Victory and Defeat”, “The Age of the Trireme”, “The campaigns of Julius Caesar”, “Warfare in the Ancient Near East” and “Rome in Crisis. The Third Century AD”. All in all to me that looks to be nicely varied nicely varied content which is what I llok for in this type of magazine. 

To illustrate how the theme works I can do no better than quote from the magazine’s own web site: 

“Introduction: covering geography, chronology and the main features of the theme. Broad outlines of historiography may be given, as well as a succinct bibliography. 

Source: a discussion of the main sources for this theme, or when the theme is too broad, a discussion of a particularly relevant source or type of source. For example, a theme involving daily life could be illustrated by a discussion of personal correspondence as revealed in papyri from Egypt or the Vindolanda tablets. 

The rest of the theme is then fleshed out by one or more of the following regular features: the Warrior, the Battle, the Find, the Battlefield or the Campaign.” 

In my opinion this is a very effective way of handling each these as it introduces the reader to the background of the topic and what the sources available to us are before it gets into the nitty gritty of, say, battle accounts, discussion of equipment, etc. 

In addition to the theme a variety of other articles are included which may not relate to the theme – for example in issue 4 there was an article on Sasanid cavalrymen – and also regular features of News, Reviews and Letters to the Editor. 

In the first four issues the quality of articles has been high and so has the quality of illustrations which are large, colourful and, importantly, relevant to the articles they appear with. Article length appears to be in the range that would fill one to three Slingshot pages for the text alone, tending to the lower end which means around 1000-1500 words. So far there have not been articles of what we may call “academic proportions” in terms of size, however, I do not think that the magazine would suit that sort of article. Of course that does not mean that the articles published are not founded on a sound academic base, they are, and they are also very readable. 

So overall I would very much recommend this to those interested in the period. The magazine website where you can subscribe is at www.ancient-warfare.com and a years subscription is 31.75 euros.