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Philippi 42 BC: The death of the Roman Republic (Campaign, 199) Paperback – August 19, 2008

by Si Sheppard (Author), Steve Noon (Illustrator)

33 ratings

Part of: Campaign (376 books)

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Immortalized in Shakespeare's play on the life and death of Julius Caesar, the battle of Philippi was the final battle between the forces of Mark Antony and Octavian against the forces of Caesar's assassins Brutus and Longinus during the Roman civil wars that took place in the 40s and 30s BC. Si Sheppard takes a detailed look at the campaign that was waged around the Macedonian city of Philipi. The first engagement on the 3rd of October was indecisive as Octavian's forces were routed by those of Brutus, but Cassius' camp was captured by Mark Antony's men; wrongly fearing that Brutus was dead and that all was lost for his cause, Cassius committed suicide - depriving the Republicans of their most gifted commander. In the meantime, the Republicans' naval forces had managed to intercept and destroy the supply ships of the Triumvirs in the Adriatic, a serious blow to Octavian and Mark Anthony. Expertly detailing the changing fates of the opposing sides, their successes and failures illustrated in a range of maps, the book then turns to the final stages of the campaign. As the Triumvirs' forces slowly moved their fieldworks towards their enemies' positions, Brutus, ignorant of the destruction of Calvinus's fleet and seeing few other options available to him, decided to give battle. In the bloody and close combat, legionary fought legionary amid great slaughter, until Brutus' forces were finally routed and his camp overrun. Brutus fled and committed suicide the following day. The Republican movement crushed, Rome now rested in the hands of the Second Triumvirate. This is the history of the Philippi campaign that sounded the final death knell for the Republican movement.

From the Publisher

Full colour battlescenes

Beautifully illustrated battlescenes are included to bring the narrative of the conflict to life.

Three-dimensional ‘bird’s-eye-views'

Each three-dimensional 'bird's-eye view' is meticulously researched to recreate the actual battlefield at that point in history with accurate contour detail, scaling, landscaping and terrain features.

Maps

Detailed historical maps frame each battle or campaign, and provide the key historical context.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[The book] is superbly illustrated using artwork from the ages and ... coins to show the people involved ... there are the superb illustrations and artwork of Steve Noon to add some color to things. I have to say that this is really an excellent book on this pivotal series of events. One that shaped this section of the world for a very long time to come. A book I know you will enjoy reading.” ―Scott Van Aken, modelingmadness.com (September 2008)

About the Author

London-born Si Sheppard completed his Bachelors and Masters degrees in New Zealand before receiving his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in the United States. He is currently an associate professor of political science and international relations at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, and has written several titles for Osprey focusing on the interrelationship between geography, technology, and strategy.

Steve Noon was born in Kent, UK, and attended art college in Cornwall. He's had a life-long passion for illustration, and since 1985 has worked as a professional artist. He has provided award-winning illustrations for the publishers Dorling Kindersley, where his interest in historical illustration began. Steve has illustrated over 70 books for Osprey.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Osprey Publishing
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 19, 2008
Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 96 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1846032652
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846032653
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.2 x 0.25 x 9.75 inches
Part of series ‏ : ‎ Campaign

Best Sellers Rank: #1,101,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,513 in Ancient Roman History (Books)
- #1,906 in Military Strategy History (Books)
- #4,718 in Great Britain History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
33 ratings

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Customers praise the book's pictures and thorough battle descriptions.

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4 customers mention "Picture quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the pictures in the book, describing them as great and beautiful.

"...A great book with beautiful art - Mr. Si Sheppard, please, keep doing a good job." Read more

"...Not only are the color plates of higher quality (quite frankly, beautiful)..." Read more

"...The author is able to go into much more detail and give the reader a clearer picture of what actually happened...." Read more

"Wonderful book, great pictures, very accurate." Read more

3 customers mention "Description"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's thorough descriptions, particularly of battles, with one customer noting how it reveals all the details of these conflicts.

"...The big pluses of Philippi 42 BC are that the battle itself is very well described and all of the events leading up to the battle and everything..." Read more

"...Both battles of Philippi are very well described, with detail and emotion, analyzing both ancient and modern sources...." Read more

"...described the book, but it is a worthy purchase, revealing all the details of these battles and the movements leading up to them, from the weapons..." Read more

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Stephan Bullard
Lots and lots of Info. . .
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2020
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Philippi 42 BC is another great (if very dense) Osprey Roman book by Si Sheppard. Sheppard seems most interested in telling the WHOLE story of his respective campaigns (see for example Pharsalus 48 BC). This is great! Up to a point. On the one hand, I really appreciate the amount of detail included in Philippi 42 BC. On the other hand, it makes reading the book really hard.

The big pluses of Philippi 42 BC are that the battle itself is very well described and all of the events leading up to the battle and everything after it are covered. The big downside is that the Introduction and (especially) the Aftermath sections are very challenging to read. Sheppard does his absolute best to cover everything that happened in the time around the battle of Philippi. Unfortunately, he only has 96 pages to do it in. With all the ins and outs of the complex strategic situation, the myriad of people involved, and the fact the major players frequently switched allegiances, this is very challenging. The end results is that many sections are very dense. You get sentence after sentence like, “In Africa, X, an ally of Y, handed most of his command over to A, a rival of B. Then X, on the authority of G, marched his remaining legions out to ambush H hoping to win greater recognition from Y.” If you want to know what happened in and around 42 BC, it’s there. All of it. Understanding it becomes a bit of a problem. Even after reading passages over and over again, I wasn’t always sure I knew what happened or why.

I do highly recommend Philippi 42 BC. The actual battle is well explained and easy to follow. And, if you can tackle it, there’s a very thorough description of everything that happened in the years following Caesar’s death.

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Anibal Madeira
The end of the Roman Republican Oligarchy
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2009
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
The voting system of the roman republic led to certain citizens being much more politically important than others, creating a true oligarchy where the equites and patricians ruled over the masses (although there was a certain social mobility)- This was the political system defended by the conspirators/republicans; not some romantic democracy like certain authors try to convince their audience.

The author is unbiased in this aspect, not taking sides. Although with different visions of Rome, Marcus Antonius, Octavianus, Cassius and Brutus, they where all warlords! Commanding powerfull personal armies loyal to them and not to the state. There was an huge revolution: the army realized its political power, even refusing to fight or demanding and mediating truces.

This book summarizes with excellence the chain of events leading to the battle, with Mutina, Forum Galorum (with maps for both the versions of Sulpicius Galba and Appian) and the alliance of the second triunvirate. Impressive how the senate was dependent of certain privatus.

Also interesting is the description of training and organization of the belligerent forces and the impressive number of mobilized personnel at the time! The recruiters (conquistores) must have had a hell of a job.

Both battles of Philippi are very well described, with detail and emotion, analyzing both ancient and modern sources. Although somewhat similar with the situation at Pharsalus, the author states very clearly the differences between them and the necessity of Brutus to attack at the second battle of Philippi.

The aftermath could lead to two great Osprey books: The Perusian War and the trashings that Ventidius gave the Parthians at Taurus Mountains, Amanus Gates and cyrrestica, pacifying the East and inverting the political leverage that the Parthians had won after Carrhae.

Good photos and maps. Absolutely gorgeous paintings by Steve Noon (a mixture of realism and expressionism that conveys a sense of movement and "you are there" feeling that is difficult to express).

This book has only one small mistake: The image on page 23 is not of a tribune; that stellae is of a centurion of legio martia named Minucius.

A great book with beautiful art - Mr. Si Sheppard, please, keep doing a good job.

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5 people found this helpful

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K. Murphy
The Death of the Roman Republic
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2009
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
The two battles fought at Philippi, Greece, in the fall of 42 BC marked the end of the Roman Republic, and of the last great conspirators against Julius Caesar. I will not go into detail here since other reviewers have already excellently described the book, but it is a worthy purchase, revealing all the details of these battles and the movements leading up to them, from the weapons of the rank-and-file legionaries to the strong personalities that led them.

Visually speaking I found this volume more impressive than the author's earlier work on the Battle of Pharsalus. Not only are the color plates of higher quality (quite frankly, beautiful) but the photographs and artworks throughout the book apply more to the classical era. Virtually every page of his previous work had one or several Rennaisance-era paintings on it, hardly a realistic source on the appearance of Roman soldiers and generals.

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m ziemann
Philippi
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2013
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I always enjoy reading a book on a specfic battle or campaign. The author is able to go into much more detail and give the reader a clearer picture of what actually happened. Of course history is always written by the victors. If you like this time period you will enjoy this book.

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David Eric Christopher
... again I am elated with the quality of the like new book
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Once again I am elated with the quality of the like new book. I have 55 and counting and will triple that.

Kudos.

Sincerely,
David Christopher

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Mr. Martin J. Owen
Good book - recommended.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 18, 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A Good Book for non-academic readers who have an interest in Roman History but want it explained in everyday language.

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JPS
Much more than suggested by the title
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2012
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This campaign book, coming after Pharsala which dealt with Caesar's Civil War and not only the battle he decisively won over Pompey, presents good overview of the years between the assassination of the Dictator to around 38 BC.
Just like the previous volume, this one provides the reader with a lot of background and quite a bit of information on the aftermath, with the battle taking centre stage. This is necessary to understand the political and military events that form the context of the battle itself. Even if it might seem superfluous to some and although it does take up a good third of the book, the months that followed Caesar's murder but also the first clash between Marc Antony and Octavius do need to be presented so as to explain Philippi.

I found that the "cast of characters", the two mentioned above plus Brutus and Cassius, was rather excellent. Marc Antony is depicted as "constantly at his best in a crisis" but prone to disaster when given executive office, not exactly a diplomat and not gifted for playing politics. He has also been described as a "soldier's soldier" and a charismatic, tough but sometimes rash leader whose ultimate station was that of "a loyal subordinate to a dominant personality." Octavius was much the opposite. He was no soldier. His health was poor, but he was intelligent, ambitious, cunning and ruthless and perhaps even better at politics than Marc Antony was at soldiering. On the other side, the respective characters of Cassius Longinus and Junius Brutus have often been opposed and almost caricatured. As the book shows very well, Brutus was no wimp, not necessarily the "romantic idealist" he has been made out to be and proved that he could be quite ruthless, despite his - largely posthumus - reputation of being virtuous and noble. His main flaw as a general was that he did not command the respect of his men. Cassius, however, was respected, feared and obeyed and he certainly had much more military experience than Brutus, with the author presenting him as "a resourceful commander in a succession of losing causes".

Another - related - strongpoint of this volume is, as another reviewer mentioned, to show that behind both sides' propaganda, what was really at stake was the domination of the Roman world by one pair of warlords or the other. In other terms, the claims to "avenge" the murder of Caesar and stay faithful to his "heritage" on one hand, and the claims to defend the "Republic and the Senate" (or rather the oligarchic regime of the leading families to which both Brutus and Cassius belonged) were also rather self-interested, to say the least.

A third interesting and less well known point was for the author to show that the time spent by Octavius to successfully assert himself against Marc Antony - meaning win politically and be recognized as "Caesar's heir" and then defeat Marc Antony militarily, allowed Cassius and Brutus to build up their forces. It should also be remembered how richer the East was at the time, compared to the West. In addition, the East had been Pompey's power base and both Brutus and Cassius used this to extract money and recruit troops while their adversaries were busy fighting each other.

Finally, there is the battle itself, or rather the two battles - a story that is generally not well known but which the author tells rather well. The first double battle was followed 20 days later by a second battle. In both cases, Antony rather excelled. In the first battle, his bold tactics allowed him to defeat Cassius who committed suicide whereas Octavius, incapacited by illness, was defeated by Brutus although many of his troops took refuge in their camp. In the second battle that Brutus was forced to seek, it is again Antony who played the decisive role and defeated his opponent. The diagrams illustrating the battles are rather helpful in understanding what happened.

I also very much liked the plates, and in particular the one illustrating the disaster at sea when the Triumvirs' reinforcement were annihilated, including the Martian legion which was never reformed afterwards. I do have one mild reservation, however, and this is about the rather huge armies - allegedly over 100 000 on each side, according to the sources. These numbers seem extravagantly high and hardly plausible but the author has chosen to accept them. In addition to the logistical nightmares that such huge forces would have created, they would have been hardly possible to command. Also, it should be remembered that each of these armies is more than double the size of the forces that Pompey lined up at Pharsala. He also had ample time to prepare and the whole of the East to draw upon.

A solid four stars.

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Peter airley
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Great book for reference purposes
Delivery first class

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Percy
Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I didn't know much about the battle before and this book gave all the information.

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Philippi 42 BC: The death of the Roman Republic (Campaign, 199) Paperback – August 19, 2008

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5.0 out of 5 stars Lots and lots of Info. . .

5.0 out of 5 stars The end of the Roman Republican Oligarchy

4.0 out of 5 stars The Death of the Roman Republic

5.0 out of 5 stars Philippi

5.0 out of 5 stars ... again I am elated with the quality of the like new book

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book - recommended.

4.0 out of 5 stars Much more than suggested by the title

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars

Lots and lots of Info. . .

The end of the Roman Republican Oligarchy

The Death of the Roman Republic

Philippi

... again I am elated with the quality of the like new book

Good book - recommended.

Much more than suggested by the title

Five Stars

Four Stars