battle descripions in ancient historians

[eugene]

Why did the majority of ancient historians described battles and wars almost without comments and remarks?

[Nathan Ross]

Perhaps you could expand on the question a bit - what kind of comments and remarks do you have in mind?

[Macedon]

Nathan is right. If you are talking about any kind of remarks then the ancients were as judgmental as scholars today. History was and is supposed to be better served by an impartial account of what has passed, but that was and is almost never the case.

Yet, there are countless comments about smart, genius or incompetent generals, politicians, soldiers, civilians, even historians, about just or unjust wars, acts, punishments, demands, about realistic or unrealistic accounts of others, about the piety or impiety of individuals, cities or nations, about the effectiveness of tactics, the cowardice or boldness exhibited by the units or armies etc. As you have phrased the question it, personally, strikes me as generally wrong but then you say "almost without", which is subjective in itself and open to different definitions.

[eugene]

I said "almost without" because when ancient historins describe battles, their direct judgments and narrator interventions on generalship, tactics etc. are very few. They prefer to show their judgements indirectly, by speeches. Thucydides is a very bright example of it. In this case Polybius is an exception.

[Macedon]

Yes, they are. But then, so is the case with historians today. It is and was generally believed (as I wrote above) that history should be impartial and report rather than judge (so you are not really referring to small personal comments but to open judgment). If you are looking into the principles that would normally be expected by a historian to follow, you should look up the cases of historians judging other historians (Polybius, Diodorus etc). I have not looked into that matter, but I would personally risk to say that not much has changed in what we, as a western society, expect from our historians from what the ancients expected from theirs. Of course, as is the case today, historians would rarely be truly impartial and factors such as own experience, own nationality, own opinion, religion, need to glorify patrons etc are often visible. I do not think that one could speak of "the majority" being that impartial. Maybe it would be better to make such a study on a case by case basis.

[Nathan Ross]

I'm still not quite sure what you mean, eugene, although I realise it's difficult to provide examples of things you believe not to exist!

If you mean the expression of a historian's own opinions, however, then I think there are indeed examples from ancient literature. To pick just one at random, Tacitus (Annals, XV 8-16), has much to say on the military ineptitude of Caesennius Paetus in Armenia. Having stated that Paetus' letter to Nero was 'as grandiloquently phrased as it was void of content', Tacitus goes on to describe the general's faulty strategy when faced with the invading Parthians:

Even so, he might still have held the camp and foiled the Parthian by a strategy of delay, had he possessed the strength of mind to stand either by his own decisions or by the decisions of another. As it was... leaving his winter quarters and clamouring that not moat or rampart but men and arms were the means assigned him for dealing with a foe, he led on his legions as if to contest a pitched field; then, after the loss of one centurion and a few soldiers whom he had sent ahead to inspect the enemy's force, he retraced his steps in trepidation.

This is surely expressive of the historian's own opinion, as is the following remark about Paetus' 'inane self-confidence'. Tacitus then provides another critique of the general, based on a suggested alternative strategy: Paetus spreads out his troops, 'thus dispersing a force which, if concentrated, might have coped more effectively with its shifting adversary.'

Following the final surrender of Paetus's camp, Tacitus indulges in an investigation of the facts behind the matter, to further reveal Paetus' weakness:

For the rest, it is established that the beleaguered forces were so well supplied with corn that they set fire to their granaries; while, on the other hand, Corbulo has put it on record that the Parthians were on the point of raising the siege through the scarcity of supplies and the dwindling of the forage, and that he himself was not more than three days' march distant. He adds that a sworn guarantee was given by Paetus, in face of the standards and in presence of witnesses deputed by the king, that not a Roman would enter Armenia until Nero's despatch came to hand intimating whether he assented to the peace. This version was doubtless composed to darken the disgrace, but to the rest of the tale no obscurity attaches: that in one day Paetus covered a distance of forty miles, abandoning his wounded everywhere; and that the panic-stricken rush of fugitives was not less ugly than if they had turned their backs on a field of battle.

This sort of argument, backed up by something like a forensic analysis of the case, is far from a mere relation of supposed fact, I would say, and more of a structured indictment. The purpose is to make Corbulo look good by comparison.

Was that the sort of thing you meant by 'comments and remarks'?

[Paul Elliott]

I had thought that the OP was referring to accounts of what it was like in battle, of which there are very few in Roman accounts due to the non-military background of most writers. Ammianus Marcellenus is my fabourite exception since he fought as a junior gusrd officer for Constantius.

[M. Caecilius]

Military background was not necessarily that uncommon, considering you needed to have done at least a token stint in the legions to get into a senatorial career. That means Tacitus and Cassius Dio could be expected to have been tribune, be it only for a year and without seeing real action. Suetonius, of course, managed to get a dispense even after Pliny had managed to secure a tribuneship for him. Livy, I believe, managed to stay a civilian, but his rival, Asinius Pollio, fought in the civil wars (though his work does not survive). Velleius fought under Tiberius in Pannonia and Germany.

I'm less sure about the Greeks. Thucydides certainly fought, as an Athenian strategos (and was exiled for losing against Brasidas), Xenophon wrote the Anabasis as well as his History, so he definitely knew what a battlefield (and a retreat) were like, Polybius was in the army too, fighting for the Achaean League as a Hipparchus...

In short, many ancient writers did have military backgrounds. That they did not bother to write about their personal experiences of battle is strange; on the one hand, maybe they felt they did not need to describe what they and the major part of their audience (likewise senators and equestrians who had done military service as a tribune, praefect of an auxiliary/cavalry cohort, or even legate) already knew, on the other, they may have been placed in safe enough positions not to leave many traumatic experiences they needed to talk about.