Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome

278 Pages·2010·1.2 MB·English

by  Victor Davis Hanson

Makers of Ancient Strategy
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Makers of
Ancient Strategy
From the
Persian Wars to the
Fall of Rome
Edited and Introduced by
Victor Davis Hanson
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2010 by
Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom:
Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Makers of ancient strategy : from the Persian wars to the
fall of Rome / edited and Introduced by Victor Davis Hanson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-13790-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Military art and science—History—To 500.
2. Military history, Ancient.
I. Hanson, Victor Davis.
U29.M26 2010
355.409’014—dc22
2009034732
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Dante MT Std
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction: Makers of Ancient Strategy 1
From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome
Victor Davis Hanson
1. From Persia with Love 11
Propaganda and Imperial Overreach in the Greco-Persian Wars
Tom Holland
2. Pericles, Thucydides, and the Defense of Empire 31
Donald Kagan
3. Why Fortifications Endure 58
A Case Study of the Walls of Athens during the Classical Period
David L. Berkey
4. Epaminondas the Theban and the Doctrine of
Preemptive War 93
Victor Davis Hanson
5. Alexander the Great, Nation Building, and the
Creation and Maintenance of Empire 118
Ian Worthington
6. Urban Warfare in the Classical Greek World 138
John W. I. Lee
7. Counterinsurgency and the Enemies of Rome 163
Susan Mattern
8. Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 185
Barry Strauss
9. Julius Caesar and the General as State 206
Adrian Goldsworthy
10. Holding the Line 227
Frontier Defense and the Later Roman Empire
Peter J. Heather
Acknowledgments 247
Index 249
vi Contents
Contributors
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in
Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution,
Stanford University, and emeritus professor of Classics at California
State University, Fresno. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Dis-
tinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches
courses in military history and classical culture. He is the author
of many books, including A War Like No Other: How the Athenians
and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Random House, 2005);
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
(Doubleday, 2001); The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Pres-
ent Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny (Free Press,
1999); Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience (Routledge, 1993);
The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Knopf,
1989); Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western
Civilization (Free Press, 1995); and Warfare and Agriculture in Classical
Greece (University of California Press, 1983).
David L. Berkey is assistant professor in the Department of History
at California State University, Fresno. He received his doctorate in
Classics and ancient history in 2001 from Yale University and his
bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in international
studies in 1989.
Adrian Goldsworthy was educated at St. John’s College, Oxford, and is
currently Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University. His doctoral thesis
was published in the Oxford monographs series under the title The
Roman Army at War, 100 bc–ad 200. He was a Junior Research Fellow
at Cardiff University and subsequently an assistant professor in the
University of Notre Dame’s London program. He now writes full
time. His most recent books include Caesar: The Life of a Colossus
(Yale University Press, 2006) and How Rome Fell: The Death of a Super-
power (Yale University Press, 2009).
Peter J. Heather is professor of medieval European history at King’s
College, London. He was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland,
and educated at Maidstone Grammar School and New College, Ox-
ford. He was awarded a postdoctoral degree by the History Faculty
of Oxford University. He has since taught at University College,
London, Yale University, and Worcester College, Oxford.
Tom Holland is the author of three highly praised works of history.
The first, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic,
won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was short-listed for
the Samuel Johnson Prize. His book on the Greco-Persian wars,
Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, won
the Anglo- Hellenic League’s Runciman Award in 2006. His latest
book, The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise
of the West, was published in the spring of 2009. He has adapted
Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Virgil for the BBC. He is cur-
rently working on a translation of Herodotus for Penguin Classics.
In 2007 he was awarded the 2007 Classical Association prize, given
to “the individual who has done most to promote the study of the
language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome.”
Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale Uni-
versity. He has won teaching awards at Cornell University and at Yale,
and was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2002. He was
named the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Hu-
manities in 2004. Among his publications are a four-volume history of
the Peloponnesian War, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy,
and On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace. He is also co-
author of The Western Heritage and The Heritage of World Civilizations.
John W. I. Lee is associate professor of history at the University of Cali-
fornia, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in history from Cornell
University. He is the author of A Greek Army on the March: Soldiers and
viii Contributors
Survival in Xenophon’s Anabasis (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
He has also published on women in ancient Greek armies, on the
Persian army in Herodotus, and on ancient soldiers’ memoirs. Lee is
currently working on a new book that examines warfare and culture
in the eastern Aegean and along the west coast of Anatolia, from the
Ionian Revolt (499–494 BC) to the fourth century BC.
Susan Mattern is professor of history at the University of Georgia.
Her most recent book is Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2008), a study of the medical practice of
the ancient physician Galen, based on his stories about his patients.
She is also the author of Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the
Principate (University of California Press, 1999; now in paperback)
and co-author of The Ancient Mediterranean World from the Stone Age
to a.d. 600 (Oxford University Press, 2004). She is now working on a
biography of Galen.
Barry Strauss is professor of Classics and history and chair of the His-
tory Department at Cornell University, as well as director of the
Program on Freedom and Free Societies. He is the author of six
books, including The Battle of Salamis, named one of the best books
of 2004 by the Washington Post, and The Trojan War: A New History,
a main selection of the History Book Club. His most recent book,
The Spartacus War, appeared in March 2009. He is series editor of
Princeton History of the Ancient World and serves on the editorial
boards of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Historically
Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society, and the International
Journal of the Classical Tradition. He is the recipient of the Heinrich
Schliemann Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies
at Athens, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
for University Teachers, and Cornell’s Clark Award for Excellence
in Teaching.
Ian Worthington is Frederick A. Middlebush Professor of History at
the University of Missouri. Previously he taught for ten years in
the Classics Department at the University of New England and the
Contributors ix