11-15-2015, 01:37 PM
Inspired by your review, Francis, I took a look through some sections of the work available on Google Books.
It seems that the claim for cavalry dominating Roman armies earlier than previously thought comes from both an acceptance of the idea of Gallienus creating a 'mobile cavalry army' (a theory recent debunked by DB Campbell), and the further idea that this cavalry force was called a 'tagmata' and organised into '6000 man cavalry legions' - apparently all based on John Lydus... hmm.
Syvanne also claims that the limitanei were created much earlier than usually thought: "However, what modern historians have failed to understand is that the frontier forces had actually already been created during the first century AD and the word limitanei was just a new apt term for these.'
Anyone boasting that the entirety of 'modern' historical scholarship has 'failed to understand' something had better have some pretty dynamic evidence to back up the claim. The book doesn't seem to provide any, beyond the word limitanei appearing in the Historia Augusta. Stuff like that just makes the whole thing sound amateurish. Even Stephen Dando Collins doesn't claim to have outwitted all previous historians!
It seems that the claim for cavalry dominating Roman armies earlier than previously thought comes from both an acceptance of the idea of Gallienus creating a 'mobile cavalry army' (a theory recent debunked by DB Campbell), and the further idea that this cavalry force was called a 'tagmata' and organised into '6000 man cavalry legions' - apparently all based on John Lydus... hmm.
Syvanne also claims that the limitanei were created much earlier than usually thought: "However, what modern historians have failed to understand is that the frontier forces had actually already been created during the first century AD and the word limitanei was just a new apt term for these.'
Anyone boasting that the entirety of 'modern' historical scholarship has 'failed to understand' something had better have some pretty dynamic evidence to back up the claim. The book doesn't seem to provide any, beyond the word limitanei appearing in the Historia Augusta. Stuff like that just makes the whole thing sound amateurish. Even Stephen Dando Collins doesn't claim to have outwitted all previous historians!
Nathan Ross
