"Book Review: Republican Roman Warships 509 – 27 BC" Topic

… by Raffaele D'Amato.

"Fans of John Stack's Ship of Rome series and students and readers of ancient history will certainly want to add Osprey's newest nautical "New Vanguard" title to their shelves.
Famed as a mostly land based power, the might of Rome has never been represented by her navy, yet it was control of the sea that set the foundations of her dominance on land.
When people think of the Roman military they see a legionary in segmented armour carrying a rectangular shield and wearing an imperial Gallic helmet on his head, this represents a soldier of the empire. The Republic is usually sidelined, Let alone the vital contribution the fleets of pre Imperial Italy.
Without the decisive victory won in the first Punic War, a victory in which the decisive factor was the defeat of Carthaginian sea power, the defeat of the Pirates and Gauls by Pompey and Caesar (respectively) and the history changing struggle at Actium, Rome would have been unable to dominate the Mediterranean Coast from Gibraltar to Constantinople and Alexandria to Tangier…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Review ? Are you clairvoyant ? Not published until 20 September.And this one has a different cover to the one at the Osprey website..?!

Plasticviking3

Perhaps some lucky person may have been sent an advance copy for review purposes?

Mine arrived yesterday. It looks good but I do not have the time to read it, as yet, so, for the moment, I can't make any comments other than it looks good.

Pre-publication review = marketing. Get on and review it Gazzola ?

Plasticviking3

Unfortunately, it is in a pile of new books yet to read. But I'll get there in the end.

Ok Gazzola i know the (happy) problem. Mine arived and I made a short review here.
ramsravensandwrecks.blogspot.dk

Plasticviking3

Good review. I love Osprey books and have quite a collection. However, I agree with you to a point, in that perhaps editing has suffered due to their haste to get the work published and available for sale? But at the same time, I doubt, considering the variety of topics they cover, that they have experts on everything or anyone who could have spotted the errors you have pointed out. And it may be more of a case of the publisher just trusting the authors concerning what they include in their books, which, although saving time, can lead to errors being missed, as you have rightly pointed out. Not a good way to go really.

In relation to the term dusky, as the author mentions on page 20. It appears it can be used as both an adjective and for the name of a colour. There is a plant called Dusky Rose and the paint colour Dusky Rose, both of which are pink in colour. But there is also a colour called Dusky Blue, which may be what he meant when he relates it to caerulean blue, which suggests he should have considered including the word blue between 'dusky' and 'colour'? Or perhaps he felt the readers would know what colour he meant? I did not know but guessed it was blue because he talked about that colour further on.

I've added your website to my favourites.

Tak Gazzola .Always nice with more input and following the blog. Re. cærulean – the black ships of Homer give a parallel to the use of the 'black'/'dark' meaning. One thing i did not mention was also that blue paint was not cheap and to cover every Roman ship with it was also quite an expense. It would anyway have to cover the pitch, tar and resin that the timbers had to be protected with anyway. a tall order for ancient paint. Not that I want, need or intend to discuss ancient paint further ; )
This one was not suitable for ships.. link

@ Plasticviking3:

I'm sorry, but if you think that the illustrators at Osprey aren't controlled by the author of the book and the editor, you're completely wrong and you don't know what you're talking about.
All technical detail are pedantically verified twice, firstly on the pencil sketch and on the color plate, after. Trajanic Testudo included, read by yourself the extract from the brief (italian language):
"Gli schieramenti Romani visibili potranno essere: la testuggine di fonte 20 o le truppe disposte in avanzata di fonte 21;"

My considered view of New Vanguard 225 Republican Roman Warship is not what I hoped for when I first examined it. The text has some novel aspects but the plates – Osprey's main selling point …uugh.
I have used 6 blogposts to look at them carefully.

ramsravensandwrecks.blogspot.dk

I think this book is an example of how poor Osprey's output can be. Imperial Roman Warship is in my sights now…I hope there is more positive to say about it than its sister publication.