A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

This is the second half of the second part (I, IIa, IIb) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. While I hope this will be of great interest to the history nerds out there, I’ve opted to structure this specifically as a … Continue reading Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, …

This is the second part (I, IIa) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. While I hope this will be of great interest to the history nerds out there, I’ve opted to structure this specifically as a service for the worldbuilders out … Continue reading Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for World…

Hey folks! I had a few other projects that I really needed to get finished this week, which left me with limited time to put a blog post together. My plan for next week is something for the worldbuilders out there, a sort of ‘guide’ to different kinds of army structures, drawing on a number … Continue reading Gap Week: May 29, 2026 →

This is the fifth and last part of our series (I, II, III, IV, V) looking at how Carthaginian armies were raised and constituted. Over the last four parts, we’ve looked at the larger components of Carthaginian armies: the relatively small role of Carthaginian citizens, the more prominent role of North African conscripts, of Numidian … Continue reading Collections: Raising Carthaginian Armies, Par…

Hey folks, fireside this week! Next week we’ll cap off our look at the Carthaginian army by covering some of the ‘odds and ends’ components (slingers, elephants), before looking at how that mixture of troop-types was employed in battle during the third century. For this week’s musing, I figured I would answer a question that … Continue reading Fireside Friday, May 15, 2026 →

This is the fourth part of our series (I, II, III) looking at how Carthage’s complex, multi-ethnic armies were raised and structured. Last week, we looked at Carthage’s unusual system for raising vassal forces: long-serving Carthaginian generals could inhabit positions within the personalist, non-state mobilization systems of Numidia and Iberia, enabling them to access military … Continue reading…

This is the third part (I, II) of our series looking at how Carthage’s complex, multipart armies were raised and constituted. Last time, we looked at the backbone of Carthage’s armies: North African troops levied out of Carthage’s subject communities in North Africa. These fellows seem to have been directly employed by the Carthaginian state, … Continue reading Collections: Raising Carthaginian A…

This is the second part (I) of our series looking at the structure of the Carthaginian army. As we discussed last time, while Carthage has an unfair reputation for being an ‘un-military’ society, its military system was one of the highest performing in the ancient Mediterranean, able to produce vast and effective armies waging war … Continue reading Collections: Raising Carthaginian Armies, Part …

Hey folks! Fireside this week; next week we’ll be back to seperating out the components of Carthaginian armies, looking at the real backbone of those armies, which are Carthage’s North African subjects. But for this week’s musing, I wanted to talk a bit about how different historians approach our craft when the evidence is both … Continue reading Fireside Friday, April 17, 2026 →

This is the first part of a series looking at the structure of the Carthaginian army. Although Carthage has an (unfair!) reputation for being a country of “peaceful merchants who tended to avoid wars,” Carthage was, I will argue, without question the second greatest military power the Mediterranean produced – eclipsed only by Rome. If … Continue reading Collections: Raising Carthaginian Armies, P…

Hey folks! I was traveling this week to give an invited talk at Western Michigan University, so I don’t have a blog post ready for you. That’ll also probably be the case for next week (where I will be at the annual meeting of the Society for Military History), though at least there I will … Continue reading Gap Week: March 20, 2026 →