Warlords publishes the results of the 2013 ICREA Conference on Multipolarity and Warlordism in the Ancient Mediterranean, cent. 4-1 BC, held at the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya (Barcelona). In the first chapter, the editors explain the contributors’ employment of social science lenses. The first, multipolarity, recognizes that various states contend with one another in largely anarchic interstate systems. The second, warlordism, is, it turns out, much harder to define, although “a ruler who draws on military force and somehow lacks legitimacy,” (Coşkun’s definition, 204), might be the most inclusive, even if most open-ended option. With varying conclusions (discussed below), each individual contributor dealt with the problems associated with the definitions of these concepts as well as their applicability. The editors, meanwhile, set the volume within its historiographic context, especially in regards to William Harris’ forceful critique of the Realist school in his 2016 survey Roman Power. Harris, like others before him, feared (or recognized) a modern “political science doctrine” that tended to relieve states of the consequences of violent and imperial actions. What makes the present volume so thought-provoking is that the emergence of warlords as an analytical concept challenges the strict Realist interpretation of the multipolar world that tends to view states equal in motivation, even if unequal in capabilities. In other words, Warlords forces us to reconsider our understanding of the ancient state and the complexity of interstate relations in the ancient world.