Every war, from the kings to Justinian

The wars, campaigns, armies and battlefields of Rome, from the foundation traditions to the age of Justinian

Historical frame: traditional 753 BC–AD 565.
Edition: 30 October 2026.
Contents: 100 war and campaign dossiers; 12 regional plates; 8 campaign-route diagrams; 12 tactical and technical diagrams; 26 incorporated battle illustrations; 64 additional campaign maps and educational plates; 8 newly generated interpretive plates; 102 gazetteer entries.

The subject of this compendium is the conduct of war: why armies were raised, where they could move, how they fought, what sustained them, and what their victories and defeats did to states and communities. Its dossiers join the political history to the campaign narrative, the battlefield to the supply route, and the famous commander to the people who experienced the war.

• Reading the compendium
• Regional atlas
• Armies, weapons and campaign systems
• Chronological register
• I. The making of Roman Italy
• II. Carthage and the connected Mediterranean
• III. Mediterranean hegemony and its resistance
• IV. The Republic at war with itself
• V. The early Principate: conquest and provincial war
• VI. The high empire and the third-century emergencies
• VII. The fourth-century empire
• VIII. The western imperial system under pressure
• IX. The eastern empire and Justinian's wars
• Battle and siege finder
• Gazetteer and uncertain locations
• Historical sources and critical register

The numbered dossiers are the main body. Each begins with a concise account of the conflict, identifies the leading belligerents and military problem, then develops the campaign through detailed narrative, operational study, maps or contemporary testimony as the surviving record permits. Some large conflicts have linked theater dossiers; these are components of the same war, not additional independent wars.

Use the chronological register to follow time, the regional plates to follow geography, and the battle finder or gazetteer to find a particular engagement or place. The individual dossiers are also supplied as separate Markdown documents for reading and annotation.

Dates and numbers. There is no year zero. Conventional opening dates, last battles, treaties and provincial settlements can differ. Early Roman dates and some late-war dates remain disputed. Numerical strengths and losses preserved in the extended narratives are reported historical claims, not verified headcounts; where the account gives a firm-looking number, its literary and transmission context still applies.

Evidence and reconstruction. The edition combines edited narrative studies, newly written synthesis and, in selected later dossiers, substantial passages of the contemporary campaign chronicle translated by H. B. Dewing. Those passages are visibly attributed and retain ancient book/section numbers. Ancient speeches, divine explanations, motives and judgments of peoples are testimony to the account, not independent modern findings. The depth of a dossier follows the evidence: a well-documented siege can support much more detail than an early traditional battle.

Images. Regional plates use modern simplified coastlines and ancient-place locators. Route lines connect campaign stages schematically; they are not surveyed marching or sailing tracks. Tactical diagrams explain reconstructed relationships without asserting exact unit strengths, distances or timing. Inherited tactical illustrations preserve modern interpretations, with disputed labels corrected in captions. Generated scenes and equipment plates are interpretive illustrations, not archaeological evidence or portraits of specific individuals.

Additional campaign maps, provincial context maps and educational plates accompany the individual war dossiers. Their captions distinguish the date of a map from the date of the war, identify schematic or disputed details, and explain the military problem each figure illuminates. A graphic's printed strength, casualty total or confident reconstruction is not an additional independent witness. Original visual credits are retained.

Scope. The core volume covers antiquity through Justinian. It includes conquest, revolt, civil war, provincial resistance, siege and negotiated settlement, and continues after the removal of the western emperor in AD 476. It is a substantial account of the principal conflicts within that frame, not a claim that every raid or skirmish is independently recoverable. The later eastern Roman centuries are a distinct continuation, not silently treated as non-Roman history.

Keep the maps, illustrations, battle_illustrations and library_plates folders beside this document. The complete text remains readable as Markdown; the image folders supply its visual plates.