This was an interesting book to read, although I am not sure to what extent it can be called a "history book." While I very much liked Rose Mary Sheldon's "Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods, But Verify", I had more mixed feelings with this book, which is built on a collection of vignettes about the various wars that Rome fought against Parthia.
One of the most interesting features is, of course, that Sheldon reviews each campaign with the perspective of an intelligence officer, identifying what she terms "intelligence breakdowns" or "intelligence failures". Another is that she criticizes a number of modern authors - Luttwak in particular takes a beating - for presenting Roman thinking an intentions in anachronistic terms. In particular, she makes a strong case that Romans had no such thing as a "Grand Strategy" and that their invasions, in Parthia as elsewhere, were essentially about glory-seeking, prestige and status. There was no deliberate attempt at seeking to draw what she terms a "scientific frontier" or improve the Empire's security.
However, she can't resist transforming what I expected to be strictly a history book into a political pamphlet - or a plea to learn the lessons from the US-led invasion of Irak. While the parallels she draws are interesting, and sometimes enlightening, many of the comparisons she makes are somewhat far-fetched (such as complaints from the troops that they did not enough armour), somewhat superficial and almost always anachronistic.
While I understand the author's need to do so, I also found this a pity to the extent that, at times, her historical narrative becomes biased and distorted as a result. I almost felt that I was reading a modern version of Plutarch's moralizing "Parallel Lives" where the purpose is to make a point if at the expense of historical accuracy.
For instance, Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius receive praise because, unlike Crassus and Marc-Antony, and unlike many of the successors of these first Julio-Claudians, they dealt with Parthia through "diplomacy" (including through covert operations, threats and hostages) rather than through full-scale invasions. In doing this however, she fails to recognize that this deliberate choice may have been dictated because they simply privileged invasions on other fronts, namely Germany and Britain, and that the decision to resort to diplomacy on the eastern front was simply one of expediency, as opposed to their personal preference.
Some of her other claims are also somewhat questionable and disputable, largely because she tends to exaggerate her points and sometimes ignores the evidence that does not suit her thesis.
The points she makes about Roman aggressiveness, the sheer impossibility for Rome to recognize any other State as an equal and the need to ensure that all neighbours were subservient, are very good ones. So is its corollary that this was obtained through armed force and the threat of retaliation, terror and war with a total disregard for human life or for the cost of such wars to the extent that Roman predominance and "peace" (Pax Romana, always on Rome's terms in theory) had to be enforced, at any cost. The words that Tacitus puts in the mouth of Calgus, the Pictish leader, and which Sheldon quotes, sums it up: "they create a wasteland and call it peace." While there might be some exaggeration, if only because considerations such as glory and enrichment were also of considerable importance, even if officially they may have been frowned upon, the quote does capture neatly Roman ruthlessness and relentlessness.
The origins of this mind set are identified as coming from a mixture of arrogance, relentlessness, ignorance and what we would term today a "superiority complex" or even racism against the "soft, cowardly and effeminate" Easterners. This, in turn, derived in back from Greek culture (the theme of the "barbarian") but was self-reinforcing by Roman victories and Rome's political (and imperialist) ideology. However much one may be tempted to compare the United States, its citizens and its wars overseas to Rome and Romans, the States' ideologies, the political regimes and the mind sets of their respective populations are simply NOT comparable, not even superficially.
The author's thesis seems to be that conquering Mesopotamia may be possible over the short term, both during Roman times and modern ones but that holding on to it is not. This is, again, based on a rather superficial and simplistic comparisons and a number of (mostly implicit) assumptions that at times contradict some of the author's other statements.
Painting the Romans as being the invaders whereas the Parthians wanted peace is incorrect and may even be misleading. There were two instances where it was the Parthians who invaded and tried, just like the Romans, to take advantage of circumstances (for instance the accession of a young new and untested Emperor such as Nero). Assuming that because all Roman invasions ultimately failed, their renewed and relentless efforts were hopeless and doomed to fail anyway may be reading too much into and distorting the historical evidence. This is because the causes for the failures varied. Trajan's Parthian wars were ultimately a failure because the Emperor died and his successor (Hadrian) decided to cut his losses, rather than persist. The expedition of Lucius Verus (as a figure head) and Avidius Cassius (as the operational commander) pulled out because it was struck by the plague.
However much these efforts might have overstretched the Roman Empire's (limited) forces and resources, it was not the impossibility to conquer and hold the conquered territory which explains these two failures. The point here is that while it is certainly true, for the Romans as in modern times, that the "easy part" is the conquest, and the harder part to hold the conquered country over the long-term, the later was not necessarily impossible for the Romans. This is, after all, how the Roman Empire was build: through conquest, military occupation and assimilation over time, with revolts being brutally and ruthlessly crushed even if it meant genocide and mass deportation with tens of thousands of "natives" being sold as slaves throughout the Empire.
While the purpose of this review is not to discuss in detail all of the parallels that the author draws between the Roman and the modern invasions of Mesopotamia, her "lessons learned" section where she concludes that "both made the mistake of not planning well for the peace after the war" sums up rather well the main flaw of this book. First, and as the author acknowledges, "the Romans did not care what happened after they left". A modern democracy where Human Rights and the importance of human life are essentials components of the moral fabric of society does not have this kind of luxury. Second, the author's assumption that the Romans did not intend to stay and "only wanted to raid Parthia and make it weaker and dependent on Rome" is a bit of a stretch which the author is not fully ready to recognize. In addition to Trajan's wars, which Rose Mary Sheldon identifies as the "exception", the campaigns of Septimius Severus were certainly not merely large scale "raids". Both intended to conquer, and to keep what they had conquered. It is also doubtful as to whether the expeditions of Crassus and of Marc Antony, with both seeking to emulate Alexander the Great were only "raids".
Finally, the claim that Parthia was not a "strategic threat" to Rome and that both "modern superpowers and the Romans can act irrationally" and wage "wars of punishment and revenge" were also somewhat problematic for me. For the Romans at least, their repeated decisions to attack Parthia and attempts to conquer Mesopotamia may not have felt as "irrational" as the author portrays them with her 21st century mind set. Whether the author agrees with the Romans' point of view or not and regardless of whether she believes it is "rational" or not, they may have perceived Parthia as a threat, and that was enough for them. Moreover, for "Roma Aeterna", expanding continuously through conquest and endless military victories was part of parcel of what Rome was, however difficult it may be for us to understand this nowadays, and however "irrational" we might believe it to be with the benefit of hindsight.
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Top reviews from other countries
Splisbury
Solid history into a little researched area
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2010