Shortly after Marcus Aurelius came to power in AD 161, the Roman Empire was racked by a series of military crises. While unrest in Britain 1 Parthia were swiftly dealt with, the invasion of he Chatti and Chauci peoples heralded a resurgent threat from the empire's European neighbours. Soon the Marcomanni and the Quadi, as well as the Dacians and the Sarmatian Iazyges, would attack the Romans in a series of savage conflicts that would involve the first invasion of Roman Italy since the beginning of the 1st century BC. This book asseses the two sides' objectives, weapons, equipment and fighting styles in the context of three battles: Carnuntum (170), where a Roman legion was vanquished and Italy invaded; the 'Battle on the Ice' (172), where the Romans fought their lighter-armed Sarmatian and German opponents on the frozen Danube; and the so-called 'Miracle of the Rain' (174), during which a trapped Roman force facing annihilation defeated numerically superior Germanic forces. With specially commissioned artwork, this is an authoritative and exciting account of warfare in the Roman world. Experience the Heat of Battle Insights into the realities of front-line combat, Innovative split-screen artwork, Expert analysis combined with gripping battle accounts, Strategic and tactical maps