This is a sober overview of the Roman army insofar as it can be reconstructed. Southern is skeptical that the story of the army can be known in all respects but she outlines what can be realized. The difficulty is to understand from the limited knowledge we do have and to apply the known across the board to the disparate examples of the army under both the Republic and to the Empire and to all situations and conditions across the span of Roman history. It is an Herculean task. The volume spans a thousand years and Southern attempts to cover the Roman army's history, culture, and organization. She provides what can be discovered about military music, holidays, strategy, the construction of Roman fortresses and forts, the most common battle formations, and the many tools of war, from spears, bows and arrows, swords, and slingshots, to the large catapulta (which fired giant arrows and bolts) and the ballista (which hurled huge stones).

Oddly enough, the work is poorly illustrated, depicted and unexplained is why she chooses mostly Renaissance pictures and sources the Library of Congress. It would have been natural, given her expertise in archeology, to depict recent research and illustrations from the fascinating and rich historical and archaeological record to portray the soldier's experience in the army.

Roth's Roman Warfare is the better of the two similar volumes between the two.

Hyginus Gromaticus, De munitionibus castrorum, http://www.intratext.com/X/LAT0347.htm; Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Epitoma rei militaris; and the Emperor Maurice, Strategikon, http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13410.html, remain the only three basic texts of strategy and tactics arising from ancient Roman military practice (pp. 28-31).