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

Makers of Ancient Strategy

This page intentionally left blank

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 Cornel 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

University of Tasmania, Australia. He is author or editor of fourteen

books and more than eighty articles. His most recent publications

include the biographies
Alexander the Great: Man and God
(Pearson,

2004) and
Philip II of Macedonia
(Yale University Press, 2008), and

the
Blackwell Companion to Greek Rhetoric
(Oxford University Press,

2006). He is currently writing a book on Demosthenes, editing the

Blackwell Companion to Ancient Macedonia
, and serving as editor-in-

chief of Brill’s
New Jacoby
. In 2005 he won the Chancellor’s Award

for Outstanding Research and Creativity in the Humanities and in

2007 the Student-Athlete Advisory Council Most Inspiring Professor

Award, both at the University of Missouri.

x Contributors

Makers of Ancient Strategy

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Introduction: Makers of Ancient Strategy

From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome

Victor Davis Hanson

Makers of Strategy

Makers of Modern Strategy:
From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
, edited by

Peter Paret, appeared as a 941-page volume comprising twenty-eight

essays, with topics ranging from the sixteenth century to the 1980s. The

work was published by Princeton University Press in 1986, as the cold

war was drawing to a close. Paret’s massive anthology itself updated

and expanded upon the classic inaugural Princeton volume of twenty

essays,
Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to