Winning, despite themselves

On deck in the LOCKDOWN List: Daniel Varga, The Roman Wars in Spain (and in Lusitania). This is a Pen & Sword imprint; military history.

Now: I like military history. I am happy a publisher is still working this field. I remain unsold on this publisher. They are AuthorHouse-bad in editing their content. I mean, seriously: what's with affectations like "Livius" for Livy. I get the impression that Varga is not an Anglophone which is why we have editors.

This aside, Varga starts his book as an up-to-AD-2015 summary of up-to-AD-1 events in this peninsula. He goes on to how Rome improved its tactics and logistics to fight there. He implies, meanwhile, that Rome might not have had to change everything, if her Senate had been smarter about how to run the place.

You know all that talk about "fourth generation war" and Plan David / Plan Goliath, making the rounds in the aftermath of the Iraq war pre-Surge/-Sahwa? Apparently the Romans weren't privy to much of that, and had to learn the hard way like Bush did. Rome up to the third century BC had engineered an army and a culture capable of grinding down a similar army. They used this army to good effect in eastern Spain to oust Carthage, to say nothing of rousting Carthage from Italy herself. Well, in Spain the Romans had become Carthage. Now they had to deal with the same tribes which Carthage had failed at. They made the same mistakes, and more.

It got particularly bad over there in the 150s BC when the Numantines rebelled and Fluvius Nobilior failed to breach their citadel. The Senate sent over Marcellus, who came to an agreement; but the Senate deemed that pact "disgraceful" and sent Licinius Lucullus and Suplicius Galba instead. These two idiots broke treaties Rome had signed, and even some treaties they'd signed themselves. They guaranteed that no Spaniard would trust a word they'd say afterward.

Varga leads his readers to understand that there was no reason Rome could not have come to a decent accord with the Hispanian peoples a century or more before she, in fact, did. He makes a good case. Maybe one day he'll get an editor worthy of helping him present that case.