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"Many of the wars of the late Republic were largely civil conflicts. There was, therefore, a tension between the traditional expectation that triumphs should be celebrated for victories over foreign enemies and the need of the great commanders to give full expression to their prestige and charisma, and to legitimize their power. Triumphs in the Age of Civil War rethinks the nature and the character of the phenomenon of civil war during the Late Republic. At the same time it focuses on a key feature of the Roman socio-political order, the triumph, and argues that a commander could in practice expect to triumph after a civil war victory if it could also be represented as being over a foreign enemy, even if the principal opponent was clearly Roman. Significantly, the civil aspect of the war did not have to be denied. Carsten Hjort Lange provides the first study to consider the Roman triumph during the age of civil war, and argues that the idea of civil war as 'normal' reflects the way civil war permeated the politics and society of the Late Roman Republic."--

When focusing on Augustus as a commander in chief, a strategist, and a field commander – and especially the formative years of the civil war(s) –, there are numerous potential approaches. We know that he fought battles, campaigns, and wars. Sometimes he did well, sometimes less so. Traditionally, Augustus has not been viewed as a good general, but he was, or so this article claims, an excellent commander. We shall here discuss the actual fighting only when it has a direct bearing on what might be termed the 'command structure', in this case during the triumvirate and beyond, and its formulation of strategy. Rather, the main question is as follows: how did the learning curve followed by Young Caesar on his rise to power create a new, shared command structure as part of a monarchical system, with Augustus as commander in chief? If we look at political initiative in warfare and military campaigns, rather than just tactically, then leadership is always a learning curve. This is accordingly a question of how we, as scholars, approach ancient warfare, strategy, and the relationships between commanders: for example, the 'high command' or commander in chief in one theatre and the field commander in the other. This is thus an article on how we, as scholars, approach Roman military history in general.

"Cassius Dio : Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician, a collection of essays on this historian, is the first to appear in the new Brill series Historiography of Rome and its Empire. The volume brings together case studies that highlight various aspects of Dio's Roman History, focusing on previously ignored or misunderstood aspects of his narrative. The main purpose of the volume is to pursue a combined historiographic, literary and rhetorical analysis of Dio's work and of its political and intellectual agendas. Dio's work is often used as a handy resource, with scholars looking at isolated sections of his annalistic structure. Contrary to this approach, the volume puts emphasis on Cassius Dio and his Roman History in its historiographical setting, thus allowing us to link and understand the different parts of his work. Contributors are: Christopher Burden-Strevens, Jesper Carlsen, Marianne Coudry, Andriy Fomin, Alain Gowing, Brandon Jones, Adam Kemezis, Carsten Hjort Lange, Jesper Majbom Madsen, Christopher Mallan, Josiah Osgood, Jussi Rantala, Verena Schulz, Søren Lund Sørensen, Gianpaolo Urso and Richard Westall"--Provided by publisher