Trajan's Parthian War and Arrian's Parthika

Reconstructing the great wars of Trajan's reign is not easy. The Dacian wars have always come in for much attention due to the fame and attraction of Trajan's Column. The emperor's Parthian War, which extended the empire to its largest size yet, has never been easy to reconstruct due to the paucity of written sources. Frank Lepper's analysis, first published in 1948, discusses the chronological problems, ancient sources, strategy, topography and causes of the war with painstaking care and as far as the sources allow. The book also contains a translation of the remaining fragments of Arrian's <em>Parthika</em>, preserved through various Byzantine authors, but still an important source for Roman-Parthian relations in the early second century AD.