Bret Devereaux

Hall's main point: that 'state'-ness is necessarily a fuzzy set is valid and well made. Was Rome a 'state' in 477 when the Fabii fell against Veii? Probably not. The state is defined as an entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force... 2/21

...for the Fabii to fight this way suggests that the Roman Republic itself didn't yet have that monopoly. And of course even in the modern period we have developed terms to express some of the fuzziness of the 'state' set. We thus talk about 'failed states' for... 3/21

Moreover, we need to caveat that the ancients often don't speak in terms of states: not Athens, but the Athenians, no the Seleucid Empire, but Antiochus or Seleucus does things. And Hall makes these arguments very well, and they are worth making. 5/21

But there are other points I don't fully follow. First off, I think it's probably a bit overeager to talk about the 'dismissal' of the notion of a hoplite army in early Rome. The irony here is that I am myself somewhat skeptical about an early hoplite Roman army... 6/21

...and I tend to avoid making any kind of pronouncements prior to Polybius kicking in because the evidence is really But early Italian hoplite-esque combat is still regularly asserted, e.g. @DrMichaelJTayl1 "Panoply and Identity During the Roman Republic" PBSR (2020). 7/21

I think it is a bit premature to call a position 'dismissed' which is still standard in narratives for the early republic and continues to appear in the scholarship of specialists in the field. Maybe that's coming, but it doesn't seem to be here yet. 8/21