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7 - The Military Situation, 395–493

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2019

Hugh Elton
Affiliation:
Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario
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The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity
A Political and Military History
, pp. 224 - 244
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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References

Further Reading

The primary sources for a military history of the fifth century are very fragmentary. The Notitia Dignitatum provides a starting point, though this document was an administrative one, much updated in an irregular fashion in the west. For an introduction, see Kulikowski, M., ‘The Notitia Dignitatum as a Historical Source,” Historia 49 (2000), 358377. There are very few detailed descriptions of either Roman or barbarian armies, focusing us to reconstruct based mostly on anecdotes and interpretations based on the better-known fourth and sixth centuries. A useful starting point is Maas, M., ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila (Cambridge, 2014), Elton, H. W., Warfare in Roman Europe, AD 350–425 (Oxford, 1996), the essays on the Late Empire in Sabin, P., van Wees, H., and Whitby, Michael, eds., Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (Cambridge, 2007), and Whitby, Michael, “The Army c.420–602,” in Cameron, Averil, Ward-Perkins, B., and Whitby, Michael, eds., Cambridge Ancient History 14 (Cambridge, 2000), 286–314. There are some useful papers in the wide-ranging Lewin, A. and Pietrina, P., eds., The Late Roman Army in the East from Diocletian to the Arab Conquest, BAR S1717 (Oxford, 2007), Useful on policy is Blockley, R. C., East Roman Foreign Policy (Leeds, 1992). On naval warfare, see Charles, M., “Transporting the Troops in Late Antiquity: Naves Onerariae, Claudian and the Gildonic War,” Classical Journal 100.3 (2005) 275–299, Charles, M., “Vegetius on Liburnae: Naval Terminology in the Late Roman Period,” Scripta Classica Israelica 24 (2005) 181–193, and Charles, M., “Ramming the Enemy in Late Antiquity: Galleys in the Fifth Century A.D.,” Latomus 69.2 (2010), 479–488.Google Scholar
On the Huns, Kelly, C., The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome (New York, 2008) provides a more nuanced perspective than Thompson, E. A., Attila and the Huns, rev. (London, 1995) or Kim, H. J., The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe (Cambridge, 2013). See also Lindner, R. P., “Nomadism, Horses and Huns,” Past and Present 92 (1981), 1–19. On the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, see Whately, C., “Jordanes, the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, and Constantinople,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne, supplément 8 (2013), 65–78. Important for the source material is Maas, M., “Fugitives and Ethnography in Priscus of Panium,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 19 (1994), 146–160. On the Persians, see Greatrex, G., “The Two Fifth-Century Wars between Rome and Persia”, Florilegium 12 (1993), 1–12,), Greatrex, G. and Lieu, S.N.C., The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, AD 363–630 (London, 2002), and Whitby, Michael, “The Persian King at War,” in Dabrowa, E., ed., The Roman and Byzantine Army in the East, (Krakow, 1994), 227–263.Google Scholar

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