Michael Sage – författare

Warfare in Ancient Greece assembles a wide range of source material and introduces the latest scholarship on the Greek experience of war. The author has carefully selected key texts, many of them not previously available in English, and provided them with comprehensive commentaries.For the Greek polis, warfare was a more usual state of affairs than peace. The documents assembled here recreate the social and historical framework in which ancient Greek warfare took place - over a period of more than a thousand years from the Homeric Age to Alexander the Great. Special attention is paid to the attitudes and feelings of the Greeks towards defeated people and captured cities.Complete with notes, index and bibliography, Warfare in Ancient Greece will provide students of Ancient and Military History with an unprecedented survey of relevant materials

Warfare in Ancient Greece assembles a wide range of source material and introduces the latest scholarship on the Greek experience of war. The author has carefully selected key texts, many of them not previously available in English, and provided them with comprehensive commentaries.For the Greek polis, warfare was a more usual state of affairs than peace. The documents assembled here recreate the social and historical framework in which ancient Greek warfare took place - over a period of more than a thousand years from the Homeric Age to Alexander the Great. Special attention is paid to the attitudes and feelings of the Greeks towards defeated people and captured cities.Complete with notes, index and bibliography, Warfare in Ancient Greece will provide students of Ancient and Military History with an unprecedented survey of relevant materials

For its first two centuries the Roman Empire enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence. There were short periods of trouble and instability, but they had no lasting effect. At the end of the second century AD, the situation began to change and by the third century the Empire was beset by serious internal and external threats._Rome in the Third Century_ examines this time of troubles. Michael Sage begins by analysing the available sources, which are difficult to use and provide mostly fragmentary glimpses of the period and looks at the surprising disappearance of historical writing in the western half of the empire. He then discusses in detail the increasing pressures on Rome’s northern and eastern frontiers, along with the growing internal threats that the empire faced as the state weakened and experienced increasing internal disintegration. He then narrates the period between the death of the emperor Septimius Severus in 211 and the accession of the emperor Diocletian at the end of the century, when a reformed empire emerged, in many respects very different from its predecessor. The crucial changes in government and the military of this period are explained and assessed and there is a new analysis of contemporary views, both Christian and pagan, of the crisis.

This latest volume in the Roman Conquests: series deals with some of the best known Roman campaigns of all. Indeed, due to the involvement of Julius Caesar and the commentaries he wrote upon them, these are some of the most studied of any ancient campaigns. Before Caesar, however, Rome had already established a foothold across the Alps in Gaul (the Province, modern Provence) and Michael M Sage starts with these early acquisitions which were largely reactive and defensive. The Gauls were one of the great warrior societies of ancient Europe and some of Rome's heaviest defeats were suffered here at the end of the second century BC. This context makes all the more remarkable the dazzling success of the audacious campaigns, just half a century later, by which Caesar rapidly completed the initial conquest of the rest of Gaul. The subsequent revolts that soon occurred, culminating in the great unified rising under Vercingetorix, are also covered in detail, with the epic siege of Alesia as the dramatic climax. Michael Sage narrates and analyses all these campaigns, showing how the Roman war machine was able ultimately able to overcome vastly superior numbers of Celtic warriors to extend Rome's rule from the Mediterranean to the English Channel.