Legions of Rome

[mcbishop]

Not sure whether this has been mentioned before (Search wasn't much help) but this may be of interest for the coming October. Roll over Ritterling ;-) )

Mike Bishop

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

The site alone made me roar with laughter......

M.VIB.M.

[arklore70]

hmmmmmm....maybe if he would care to site his sources it might not be so funny 8) and taken with a bit more credibility. Sadly, I am sure this will be like the rest of his books.

[Jona Lendering]

Hihi, I discovered, yesterday, a very stupid mistake in one of my legion pages. I bet he has used these pages. If I spot the mistake in his book, and he has not referred to my pages, there's always the possibility we charge him of plagiarism. :mrgreen: :twisted:

[Praefectusclassis]

I'd better make sure we get a review copy of that book for AW. Hmmm, let's see, who really knows his Roman legions that I can ask to write a thorough review... :twisted:

[Jona Lendering]

I'd better make sure we get a review copy of that book for AW. Hmmm, let's see, who really knows his Roman legions that I can ask to write a thorough review... :twisted:

Duncan!

[Narukami]

hock: :? roll: :?:

In his first book he wrote that this is actually what he wanted to do but that his publisher convinced him to concentrate on just a single legion.

Wonder how many pages he will need to cover all he has listed on his web site ...

:|

Narukami

[Sean Manning]

I take it that his previous books have some problems? The description of the upcoming book does sound like he thinks it will be a new Ritterling in less pages.

[Jona Lendering]

I take it that his previous books have some problems?

That's putting it mildly.

The description of the upcoming book does sound like he thinks it will be a new Ritterling in less pages.

I think he cannot read German. Otherwise, his book on the tenth legion would have been better, because he could have consulted Ritterling.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Well he is quite entertaining.

[Ron Andrea]

Almost as entertaining as his costume. Oh, those are his clothes?

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Well, I won't comment on his clothes, he looks like a lot of 'characters' you see here in europe. :wink:
Still, I seem to recall a list of references in the back of his books, plus I recall he does put in a
disclaimer of some sort, (I would have to go back and find the books to quote the actual text), but I guess the friction is
he does not include all he uses? I guess he was on the black list long before I came across his books, or discovered this site, so
I must not see all the facts in this case. :?

[Jona Lendering]

As far as I am concerned, it has little to do with blacklists. There's something more fundamental at issue.

Ancient history -to which, for argument's sake, I reckon archaeology and classics- is becoming increasingly complex. I always like the example that all archaeological dates of sixth-century BC Catalonia are based on the arrival of Greek refugees, whose expedition is dated by a Babylonian reference to the Persian conquest of Lydia. You can hardly blame a Spanish or Catalonian archaeologist for not knowing that the cuneiform date was incorrect.

As a consequence, historians have become increasingly specialized. There are few of them who are really capable of understanding all interregional and interdisciplinary connections. Scholars who refuse to become a one-sided specialist will never write a Ph.D. thesis, and can never work at the university, where generalists are more needed than ever.

Yet, you and I, and everyone interested in the past, love to hear a good story about a great theme. The Rise of Rome. How Christianity Branched Of From Judaism. The Persian Wars. Constantine. We still read Gibbon's outdated Decline and Fall because we want a grand narrative.

The universities have abandoned the people for whom they are working - the taxpayers. So there is a lot of room for generalists, who never know all details. Right now, we see the rise of a lot of poor authors who are not sufficiently trained as historians, but benefit from a justified demand for grand stories. People like Tom Holland are dangerous; they pretend to return to grand narrative, which is indeed a very good thing, but in fact return to nineteenth-century ideas.

I think this is a very bad development, especially as I have seen that the subdiscipline of Iranology is, essentially, outflanked by quacks, and real scholars, who try to keep up with the latest developments in the field, are under attack because they do not subscribe to an older idea of ancient Persia, which is essentially the propaganda of the late Shah.

I think that in the end, poor popularizers will be more influential than true historians. The Dando Collinses will determine what our past will look like. That is essentially the end of true scholarship.

Not all is lost, though. Museums are still capable of attracting people and showing them real scholarly debate. The Teutoburg Forest exhibitions in Germany were very good. But I am not very optimistic about the future. We are losing our past. That may be a step towards greater freedom, as some existentialist philosophers have argued, but I think that it is also a loss.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I guess I still have a lot to learn, as, even though I understand where he is generalising to some extent, and making
his own decisions about how somethings were done, I find that it was his visualisations that helped me become more interested in the Roman aspect of ancient history, and with out that spur, plus that of other novelists, I would not have found re-enacting as a hobby, or found this site.
I think perhaps every cloud has a silver lining? Yes blacklist was abit too strong a term I think.
I guess it is his ability to spin a goodstory that has helpednim have so many book published? Publisher pressure perhaps?

[Praefectusclassis]

I guess it is his ability to spin a goodstory that has helpednim have so many book published? Publisher pressure perhaps?

Contrary to popular fiction, publishers are in business for one reason only: to turn a profit. To attain that goal you need to a) sell your product and b) don't spend too much making it. To get a) you need to have good reviews where they matter and a price people are willing to pay. For b) you want to avoid having lots of highly qualified staff. Printing is expensive, but compared to, say, paying fact-checkers, it's peanuts, especially if your print-run is large.

Military history has potentially a very large audience and therefore a huge number of potential readers (note: several 1000 is quite good) and buyers of your book. Do they read the Brywn Mayr review or equivalent academic reviews for other periods? No, if they read them, it's more likely in, eg, Military History magazine and the like. Are they forgiving about errors that only especially interested readers pick up on (such as RATers) if it's otherwise an excellent read? Yes, very. In other words: from a business point of view it makes good sense to get an author who knows how to spin a yarn. If the publisher's editor can catch an error without doing extra research and spending too much time on a book, fine, but why would you go to the trouble of hiring a specialist to double-check something if that forces you to either make a book more expensive (and risk lower sales) or keep the price low, but ruin your margins?

I think the only way to escape out of this problem is publishing critical reviews where they matter: in (digital) publications that have so much authority and such a large reach that they influence purchase behavior. Such publications have become very rare since the coming of the internet. And even then, the reviewer is left with a difficult problem. A book that's written for a non-specialist/academic audience needs to be accessible (reading is a hobby for most people, after all) without dumbing down, while keeping abreast of the latest specialist insights. Do you recommend a book that's very accessible, but has factual problems, or a badly written, but factually perfect book? The perfect combination may well be out of reach for most authors (within a reasonable amount of time) as well. It's a very difficult problem to solve.