"Różycki skilfully lays out his ‘battle-plan’ on how to examine his sources, which vary from military treatises to narrative sources and archaeological evidence for the military equipment of Roman soldiers. [...] The concluding section neatly sums up the answers to the main questions asked in the introductory section and throughout the book [...] This new monograph brings to the forefront of modern scientific study the issue of battlefield emotions, including fear and post-traumatic stress, [...]. Różycki’s meticulous work is a big step forward on the road to understanding the battlefields of Antiquity, and the men who fought on them, their emotions and their ‘human’ reaction to success, adversity, hardship and defeat. Overall, this is a voluminous, yet very approachable, work with extensive bibliographical references to works in several languages (including Slavic; always the ‘handicap’ of western academics), and despite some minor editorial faults, it is a very welcome contribution in the field which, I hope, will stimulate further discussion in the future.
Georgios Theotokis, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, in De Re Militari 11 January 2022