Themes of 2009

Posted by: Jasper Oorthuys in Commentarii on May 26, 2008

For a while now I've been thinking about the themes for 2009. Some seem obvious. There's doubtless going to be a plethora of books and articles about the Teutoburg forest, but I'm confident that our angles and take will be deeper and more original than what's usually served up.

The Clades Variana will have to be a theme then and I have pretty much made up my mind that the first issue of the new year will be on Mercenaries, which should provide discussion materials from the earliest times to the Late Roman Empire. But what about the other four issues?

For a while I've been jotting down ideas for themes on the whiteboard on the wall across from my desk. There are so many interesting possibilities.

Here's the list of what I have so far:

A late Roman Republican campaign, e.g. against Jugurtha, Mithridates
Machinery of War: siege equipment, the larger warships, technology and innovation
The Wars of the Successors. A headache in waiting in regards to illustrations, but very interesting for sure
Tactics, standards and military music
The Parthian Wars (or one of the)
Warfare in ancient Egypt: Pharaos, Ptolemies and Roman Egypt: lots and lots of possibilities
Military leadership: generals & kings!
Hero-soldier. Not just stories of heroics, but also decorations, myths, mirroring and displaying of 'Heroic' behavior
Siege warfare

I'm open to suggestions for more: go ahead and put them in the comments. And if you have any favorites, I'd like to hear about that as well.

Perhaps I'll select a few of the above and put those themes up for the vote. Which ones are selected will have to be up to me (there some constraints of course, for example. I have to be able to find authors and, often more difficult, illustration materials), but I see no problem with one or two themes based on reader favorites.

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