Biography
I was born in Redwood City, California in 1955, raised in Sunnyvale, and
attended Homestead High School in Cupertino. My first year in college
was at U.C. Davis, but I left to travel in Europe for a year, then completed
my B.A. in Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley. I then spent a year
studying Assyriology at the Georg-August Universitaet in Goettingen,
Germany under a Fulbright scholarship. After my studies in Germany, I
moved to New York City where I worked for several years in publishing.

In New York I also enlisted in the New York Army National Guard, in
which I served six years, mainly with the 69th Infantry Regiment. I earned
my commission as a second lieutenant from the Empire State Military
Academy.

After a few years hiatus from the academy, I enrolled in Columbia Univ-
ersity's History program, where I earned my M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in
Ancient History. My dissertation "Logistics of the Roman Army in the
Jewish War, 66 to 73 A.D." was supervised by Prof. William V. Harris
and deposited in 1991.

I taught as a visiting professor at Tulane University in New Orleans for
one year, then spent three years as a Dorot Teaching Fellow at New York
University, before coming to San Jose State, in 1994.

My academic specialties are ancient military history, especially that of
the Roman Imperial Army, first century Judaism and Christianity from a
historical perspective, and race and ethnicity in antiquity. My book "Logistics
of the Roman Army at War", was published by Brill in 1999. "The Length of
the Siege of Masada, " appeared in Scripta Classica Israelica 14 (1995),
pp. 87-110 argues, on the basis of Josephus and archaeological evidence,
that the famous siege did not last some 7 to 12 months, as is commonly
held, but was much shorter, from four to six weeks. "The Size and Orga-
nization of the Imperial Roman Legion," came out in Historia 43/3 (1994),
pp. 346-362 and establishes the exact size of the legion as 4,800 soldiers and
1,200 non-combatant slaves (calones).

I have also contributed the translation and notes of two contracts for the
sale of donkeys from Roman Egypt: "P. Col. 263-264, Sales of Donkeys"
in R. Bagnall (ed), Columbia Papyri X, Columbia University Press. Other
forthcoming contributions include "Early Kingdoms of Western Asia and
Northern Africa" and "Greece," in P.N. Stearns (ed.), Langer Encyclopedia
of World History, Houghton Mifflin, which I rewrote and revised from the
previous edition, an article on the Columbia ancient historian George Willis
Botsford in M.R. Kornegay (ed.), American National Biography, Oxford
University Press and a review of Limits of Empire by Benjamin Isaac to
appear in the Journal of the American Oriental Society.

I teach the first half of the World History course, and the entire survey of
ancient history courses: Ancient Near East, Greece, Rome and the Byz-
antine World. I have also taught colloquia and seminars, as well as inde-
pendent studies, on ancient historical topics. In addition, I serve as the
Secretary-Treasurer of the Society of Ancient Military Historians, and the
editor of its newsletter, Res Militares.