100 Books Like The Roman Army at War 100 BC - AD 200

It was this book that sparked my interest in the Roman Army—and I know from talking with others that it has created a host of other Roman military history buffs since its original publication.

The second and third parts of the book detail the evolution of the Roman army from its origins as a city-state militia, transforming from a legion based on maniples into one based on cohorts, and finally becoming the professional army and navy of the Caesars. 

Peter Connolly both wrote and illustrated the text. Using archaeological and epigraphic evidence he produced exquisite, painstakingly detailed paintings of arms and armour of infantry and cavalry, siege weapons, and warships. As an introduction to the subject, it has never been bettered.

Connolly was the honourary patron of The Ermine Street Guard reenactment society in which I served honourably for ten years.

I was recently asked to record a podcast for Dan Snow’s History Hit on the Praetorian Cohorts (AKA Praetorian Guard). Being away from my home library, I downloaded a Kindle edition of Guy de la Bédoyère’s book to refresh my memory. 

This is a first-rate study of the Praetorian Cohorts, from their inception to their demise. De la Bédoyère is best known as a Roman historian on Channel 4 TV’s Time Team. He knows his sources and draws extensively on them to enliven his text; he tells stories about Guard prefects and the emperors’ growing reliance on them to attain, and then hold on to, power. 

The history, organisation, and role of the Praetorian Cohorts are essential to understanding the Roman Army. This is a fine book to start that study.

I think this is the single best edition of Julius Caesar’s original compositions: the footnotes, maps, battle diagrams, and appendices offer a treasure trove of information for the Roman history buff without overwhelming the casual reader.

(I had a particular interest in Appendix C, on “Roman Calendars, Dates, and Time,” where I learned that the main reason winter operations rarely occurred in ancient warfare was the inability to feed their animals.)

The translations struck me as contemporary sounding yet never sacrifice accuracy for clarity. I recommend this book as a perfect gateway for the fan of ancient Rome to enter the realm of authentic ancient Roman literature.

To understand the Roman Army as it changed through time, studying the arms and armour used by its soldiers is essential. 

Archaeologists Mike Bishop and Jon Coulston explain the evidence upon which interpretations of Roman arms and armour are made, and then examine equipment from five historical periods from 200 BC to AD 400. The book is illustrated throughout with 154 exquisite line drawings—of helmets, daggers, spearblades, swords, and scabbards—allowing direct comparisons of the material. There are also 8 plates of particular artefects, which augment the text. 

As a veteran of The Ermine Street Guard, I know that Roman period re-enactors will find this book especially valuable as a source when researching particular military items.

This is as close to the horse’s mouth as we can get, yet it’s still a hundred years after the events of Republican Rome’s demise. Remember the Viet Nam war? It was one of America’s great foreign policy failures. Rome hated failure like a teenager hates acne. Cover it up, deny it, erase it. That is what Plutarch does in this work. I think it speaks to Crassus' towering achievements that Plutarch has anything nice to say about him at all!

Though Plutarch is not our only source for the political and military anecdotes detailing Roman aristocrats, their achievements, and their foibles, good translations of his biographies provide some of the most accessible and enjoyable reading for those who want to get a little closer to the source material. Waterfield’s translation is contemporary and excellent. The selection of Plutarch’s biographies in this volume span the sweep of the Middle and Late Republic, Cato the elder to Caesar. And he narrates with his usual style including all manner of interesting oddities and side comments about Roman society to spice the details up. An outstanding choice for learning more about the ancient historical record in a very readable set of biographies.

The Civil War of 69 AD — aka “The Year of Four Emperors” — was a complex, pivotal moment in the history of the Roman Empire. Since it took place at a key moment in my trilogy’s timeline, and since so many of my characters were active participants, I had to understand it. Morgan expertly clarifies an interrelated series of historical threads that I needed to follow to make my three-part fictional story both historically accurate and novelistically intriguing.

Pasolini’s films, Mamma Roma and Accattone, were among the reasons I decided to move to Rome in the first place.

Their blend of poetry and wretchedness chimed with my own vision of life at that time and I seized the chance to improve my knowledge of the city, of Italian and of Roman dialect, by reading his first novel Ragazzi di Vita, as soon as I arrived in the city.

Ragazzi di vita are hustlers, doomed from birth by circumstances outside their control, and I was drawn to the novel’s dark non-conformist romanticism, its refusal to compromise and the sheer texture of the language, which I only partly understood. It’s like Kerouac, but for real.

I’ve always seen Muriel Spark as a kindred spirit, and her experience of Rome as mirroring my own, albeit on a more luxurious scale (although I did once live round the corner from her flat near Piazza Farnese).

Of the novels she set in Italy, my favourite is probably The Public Image, a story of revenge and dissimulation that captures the dark heart of the city at a time when it was known as Hollywood on the Tiber. It’s a wonderful portrait of what lay beneath the dolce vita and also, presciently, has a lot to say about celebrity culture and its manufacture. Listen up, influencers!

In seventeenth-century Rome, a talented young woman artist, Artemesia Gentileschi, is put on trial for accusing her painting instructor of rape. Unwilling to bow to convention, Artemesia pours her rage into her art, inventing an aesthetic against the voyeurism and female submissiveness found in traditional artistic representations of women.

Fremantle heightens the drama and contemporary relevance of Artemisia’s life and art by telling her story in the present tense. Drawing subtle connections between women’s struggles for autonomy and dignity in the past and those in the present, this page-turner of a novel is a searing, nuanced portrait of a woman’s passion for art, determination to right being wronged, and steadfast resolve to be recognized as a great artist.