lunedì 21 gennaio 2013

Recension of an interesting book

The book is "I FIGLI DI MARTE" (THE SONS OF MARS) by Gastone Breccia, ed Mondadori,              ISBN 978-88-04-61427-2.

I really hope this book will be soon translated in other languages, because it's an useful tool to understand all the aspects of an extraordinary war-machine like the roman army was. The author examines the changes of the characteristics of the single soldier, of his equipment, of the techniques of fighting and of the strategies of the whole army, linking all these aspects together in an extremely rational overview. The reader can understand how the roman army has not been a fixed structure in the centuries but has changed accordingly with the evolution of the techniques of the enemies and with the purposes of the res publica, starting from a bunch of bandits in the time of Romulus and arriving to a flexible, versatile, powerful tool that survived and was improved, even after the fall of the west empire, a thousand years more.