Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (2 page)

Hitler,
edited by Edward M. Earle. The smaller, earlier book had ap-

peared more than forty years before the second, in 1943, in the midst of

the Second World War. It focused on individual military theorists and

generals; hence the personalized title, “Makers.”

Although the theme of both books remained the relevance of the

past to military challenges of the present, the 1986 sequel dealt more

with American concerns. Its chapters were built not so much around

individuals as on larger strategic themes and historical periods. Al-

though both the editors and the authors of these two books by intent

did not always explicitly connect their contributions to the ordeals of

their times, the Second World War and the cold war are unavoidable

presences in the background. Both books cautioned against assuming

that the radical changes in war making of their respective ages were

signs that the nature of conflict had also changed.

On the contrary, the two works served as reminders that the history of

both the immediate and more distant past deals with the same concerns

and dangers as exist in the tumultuous present. The study of military

history schools us in lessons that are surprisingly apt to contemporary

dilemmas, even though they may be largely unknown or forgotten—and

al the more so as radical y evolving technology fools many into thinking

that war itself is reinvented with the novel tools of each age.

Why the Ancient World?

In what might be thought of as a prequel to those two works,
Makers

of Ancient Strategy
resembles in its approach (not to mention its smaller

size) the earlier 1943 volume edited by Earle. The ten essays in
Makers

of Ancient Strategy
frequently focus on individual leaders, strategists,

and generals, among them Xerxes, Pericles, Epaminondas, Alexander,

Spartacus, and Caesar. The historical parameters, however, have ex-

panded in the opposite direction to encompass a millennium of history

(roughly from 500 BC to AD 500) that, even at its most recent, in the late

Roman Empire, is at least 1,500 years from the present. As a point of

modern departure, this third work on the makers of strategy appears

not merely in the second generation of industrial war, as was true of

the 1943 publication, or in a third era of high-tech precision weapons

of the nuclear age, as in 1986, but during so-called fourth-generational

warfare. The late twentieth century ushered in a baffling time, char-

acterized by instant globalized communications, asymmetrical tactics,

and new manifestations of terrorism, with war technology in the form

of drones, night-vision goggles, enhanced bodily protection, and com-

puter-guided weapons systems housed from beneath the earth to outer

space. Nevertheless, the theme of all three volumes remains constant:

the study of history, not recent understanding of technological innova-

tion, remains the better guide to the nature of contemporary warfare

As the formal lines between conventional war and terrorism blur,

and as high technology accelerates the pace and dangers of conflict,

it has become popular to suggest that war itself has been remade into

something never before witnessed by earlier generations. Just as no

previous era had to deal with terrorists’ communiqués posted on the

Internet and instantly accessible to hundreds of millions of viewers,

so supposedly we must now conceive of wholly new doctrines and

2 Introduction

paradigms to counteract such tactics. But as the ten essays in this book

show, human nature, which drives conflict, is unchanging. Since war

is and will always be conducted by men and women, who reason—or

react emotionally—in somewhat expected ways, there is a certain pre-

dictability to war.

Makers of Ancient Strategy
not only reminds us that the more things

change, the more they remain the same, it also argues that the classi-

cal worlds of Greece and Rome offer a unique utility in understanding

war of any era. The ancient historians and observers were empirical.

They often wrote about what they saw and thought, without worry-

ing about contemporary popular opinion and without much concern

either that their observations could be at odds with prevailing theories

or intellectual trends. So there was an honesty of thought and a clarity

of expression not always found in military discussions in the present.

We also know a great deal about warfare in the ancient Western

world. The Greek and Roman writers who created the discipline of

history defined it largely as the study of wars, as the works of Herodo-

tus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, and Livy attest. And while much

of ancient history has been lost, enough still survives to allow a fairly

complete account of a thousand years of fighting in the Greek and Ro-

man worlds. Indeed, we know much more about the battle of Delion

(424 BC) or Adrianople (AD 378) than about Poitiers (732) or Ashdown

(871). The experience of Greece and Rome also forms the common her-

itage of modern Europe and the United States, and in a way that is less

true of the venerable traditions of ancient Africa, the Americas, and

Asia. In that sense, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western prob-

lems of unification, civil war, expansion abroad, colonization, nation

building, and counterinsurgency all have clear and well-documented

precedents in both Greek and Roman culture.

Makers of Ancient Strategy
explores the most ancient examples of

our heritage to frame questions of the most recent manifestations of

Western warfare. The Greeks were the first to argue that human na-

ture was fixed and, as the historian Thucydides predicted, were confi-

dent that the history of their own experiences would still be relevant

to subsequent generations, even our own postmodern one in the new

millennium.

Makers of Ancient Strategy 3

The Essays

The contributors were encouraged to develop a topic close to their in-

terests rather than mold material to a thematic template. In general,

however, readers will find in each chapter an introduction that sets

out the particular historical landscape and its players, followed by an

analysis of the relevant ancient “maker”—statesman, general, or theo-

rist—or strategy and an assessment of his, or its, success or failure. The

discussion then broadens to consider the relevance of the strategy to

later warfare, and especially to the conflicts of our times.

The essays are arrayed in roughly chronological order, moving from

the early fifth-century Greco-Persian Wars (490, 480–479 BC) to the final

defense of the borders of the Roman Empire (ca. AD 450–500). Of note,

the era was one of empires. The extension of military power abroad,

and with it often the political control of weaker states, is usually ac-

companied by official self-justifications. To launch us on empires and

justification, in chapter one Tom Holland focuses on the first great

clash of civilizations between East and West, the Persian efforts at the

beginning of the fifth century BC to conquer the Greek city-states and

absorb them into an expanded empire that would reach across the

Aegean into Europe. Imperial powers, as Holland shows, create an en-

tire mythology about the morality, necessity, or inevitability of con-

quest. Their narratives are every bit as important to military planning

as men and matériel in the field. Such an imperial drive, he argues, is

innate to the human condition and is not culturally determined. Impe-

rial propaganda did not find its way into the later Western DNA merely

through the rise of the Athenian Empire or Rome’s absorption of the

Mediterranean. Instead, imperialism and its contradictions were pres-

ent from an even earlier time, as Greek pupils learned about the impe-

rial ambitions of their would-be Persian masters and teachers.

The defeat of the Persian Empire in the early fifth century BC opened

the way for the rise of the Athenian Empire. Today we assume that

empire is an entirely negative notion. We associate it with coercion and

more recent nineteenth-century exploitation, and deem it ultimately

unsustainable by the ruling power itself. But as Donald Kagan shows

in chapter two, rare individuals—and here he focuses on Pericles’

4 Introduction

thirty-year preeminence in Athenian politics and the contemporary

historian Thucydides’ appreciation of his singularity—occasionally do

make a difference. Empire, especially of the Athenian brand, was not

doomed to failure, if moderate and sober leaders like Pericles under-

stood its function and utility. For a brief few decades under his leader-

ship, Athens protected the Greek city-states from Persian retaliation.

It tried to keep the general peace, resisted imperial megalomania, and

fostered economic growth through a unified and integrated Athenian

system of commerce. The success of Pericles and the failure of those

who followed him are timely reminders that to the degree that imperial

powers can further the generally understood common interest, they

are sustainable. When they transform into an instrument only of self-

aggrandizement, they inevitably implode.

The physical defense provided by fortifications helped the Athenian

Empire retain its military supremacy for as long as it did. We assume

that in our age of sophisticated communications and aerial munitions,

old-fashioned fortifications are relics of a military past, if not always

of questionable military utility. But increasingly we see their reappear-

ance—though often augmented with electronic enhancements—in the

Middle East, in Iraq, and along the U.S.-Mexican border. Recent walls

and forts have often enhanced interior defense, in instances where

seemingly more sophisticated tactics have often failed. David Berkey

in chapter three traces the century-long evolution of walls at Athens,

from the initial circuit fortifications around the city proper, to the Long

Walls leading from Athens to its port city of Piraeus, 6.5 km distant,

to the fourth-century attempts to protect the countryside of Attica

through a network of border forts. These serial projects reflect diverse

economic, political, and military agendas over 100 years of Athenian

defense policy. Yet, as Berkey shows, they had in common a utility that

kept Athens mostly safe from its enemies and offered additional mani-

fest and ideological support for the notion of both empire and democ-

racy. Statesmen, policies, and technology all change; fortifications of

some sort seem to be a constant feature in the age-old cycle of offensive

and defensive challenge and response.

Preemption, coercive democratization, and unilateralism in the post-

Iraq world are felt recently to be either singularly American notions or by

Makers of Ancient Strategy 5

their very nature pernicious concepts that offer prescriptions for failure

and misery to al those involved. In fact, these ideas have been around

since the beginning of Western civilization and have proven both effec-

tive and of dubious utility. Thus, in chapter four I focus on the rather

obscure preemptive invasion of the Peloponnese by the Theban general

Epaminondas (370–369 BC), who was considered by the ancients them-

selves to be the most impressive leader Greece and Rome produced, a

general seen as a much different moral sort than an Alexander or a Julius

Caesar. At his death in 362, Epaminondas had emasculated the Spartan

oligarchic hegemony and had led the city-state of Thebes to a new posi-

tion of prominence. He founded new citadels, freed tens of thousands

of the Messenian helots, and changed the political culture of Greece it-

self by fostering the spread of democratic governments among the city-

states. How and why, through failure and success, he accomplished all

this reminds us that what we have seen in the contemporary Middle East

is hardly unique. Afghanistan and Iraq are not the first or the last we will

see of messianic idealism coupled with military force, perceived as part of

a larger concern for a nation’s national security and long-term interests.

Great generals
in the ancient world often became great public fig-

ures who forcefully changed the broader political landscape both be-

fore and after their military operations. More has been written about

Alexander the Great than about any other figure of classical antiquity.

Ian Worthington in chapter five reviews his creation of an Asian em-

pire and the difficulty of administering conquered Persian land with

ever-shrinking Macedonian resources. He offers a cautionary if not

timely tale from the past about the misleading ease of initial Western

military conquest over inferior enemy conventional forces, which soon

transmogrify into or are replaced by more amorphous and stubborn

centers of resistance. Even military geniuses find that consolidating