Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (3 page)

and pacifying what has been brilliantly won on the battlefield proves

far more difficult than its original acquisition. Alexander discovered

that cultural sensitivity was necessary to win the hearts and minds of

occupied Persia. Yet as a professed emissary of Hellenism, Alexander’s

aims in introducing what he felt was a superior culture that might unify

and enlighten conquered peoples proved antithetical to his pragmatic

efforts at winning over the population.

6 Introduction

The twentieth century saw the superiority of most Westernized

conventional militaries. Their superior technology, industrialized sup-

ply, and institutionalized discipline gave them innate advantages over

most other forces. But when fighting was confined to the congested

terrain of urban centers, when it involved ideologies and tribal affini-

ties rather than the interests of nation-states, and when it drew civilians

into combat, the outcome was uncertain at best. John Lee in chapter

six shows there is also nothing new about contemporary urban fighting

and the problems it poses for conventional infantry forces. The same

challenges of gaining accurate local intelligence, winning the hearts

and minds of civilians, and finding appropriate tactics to use among

dense urban populations were of keen interest to Greek military think-

ers and generals alike, when fighting frequently moved from the battle-

field to inside the polis. Successful urban tactics in the ancient Greek

world often required as radical a change in accepted conventional mili-

tary thinking as the challenges of terrorism, insurgency, and sectarian

violence from Gaza to Falluja do today.

There is also nothing really novel in the various ways that power-

ful imperial states keep the peace among various subject peoples and

diverse provinces.
Susan Mattern in chapter seven analyzes the various

ways Rome kept together its multicultural and racially diverse empire

and dealt with serial outbreaks of insurrection, terrorism, and national

revolts. What made these events relatively rare in the half-millennium

life of the empire, and why they were usually put down, did not hinge

just on the superiority of the Roman army or its eventual mastery of

counterinsurgency tactics. Equally important was a variety of insidious

“hearts and minds” mechanisms that won over or co-opted local popu-

lations. Generous material aid, the granting of citizenship, education,

a uniform law code equally applied, and indigenous integration and as-

similation into Roman culture and life together convinced most tribes

that they had more to gain by joining than by opposing Rome.

Terrorism, insurrections, and ethnic or religious revolts often baffle

the modern nation-state. Its traditional forces certainly seem il -equipped

to fight on rough terrain or to root out nontraditional fighters amid

sympathetic populations. But the dilemma is often a two-way street. In

chapter eight Barry Strauss reviews slave revolts of antiquity—especial y

Makers of Ancient Strategy 7

the wel -known case of Spartacus’s first-century BC rebel ion against the

Roman state—to show that the problems can be even worse for the

chal engers of state authority. If the goals of insurrectionists evolve be-

yond terror and mayhem to include mass transit through flatland or

winning the hearts and minds of local populations, or even carving out

large swaths of permanently occupied or secured territory, then at some

point they must find parity with state forces in terms of conventional

warfare. Despite the romance we associate with Spartacus, his slave re-

volt was overmatched by the logistics, discipline, and generalship of the

Roman legions. His cal for mass slave liberation had no real political

resonance among Italians to rival the appeal of the Roman state. We

may live in an age of incomprehensible terror and insurrection, but we

too often forget that the military odds stil lie on the side of the nation-

state, especial y when war breaks out within its own borders.

Western democracies and republics are wary of the proverbial man

on the horse. And why not, given the well-known precedents of what

Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon did to their respective

consensual societies? Adrian Goldsworthy in chapter nine meticulously

shows how the upstart Caesar, through his conquest of Gaul, outfoxed

and outmuscled his far more experienced and better-connected Roman

rivals. The lesson Goldsworthy draws is that the use of force abroad

inevitably has political repercussions at home, and can prove as danger-

ous to republican societies that field superior armies as to the enemies

that fall before them. Any time the citizenry associates victory abroad

with the singular genius of one charismatic leader, then even in consti-

tutional states there are likely to be repercussions at home when such

popularity translates into political capital.

The Roman Empire—its formation, sustenance in the face of attacks

from outside and internal revolts, its generals—often serves as a histori-

cal shorthand for the mil ennium of strategic thinking discussed in this

book. Why, in the military sense, did Rome fal in the late fifth century?

Most argue over whether its frontier defenses were stationary or more

proactively aggressive, and whether such policies were wise or misguided.

Peter Heather in chapter ten makes the point that the forces of imperial

Rome, at a time when we sometimes think they were ensconced behind

forts, wal s, and natural obstacles, as a matter of practice ventured into

8 Introduction

enemy lands to ward off potential invasions. He also reminds us that

the so-cal ed barbarians on the borders of Rome by the later empire

were becoming sophisticated, more united, and keenly observant of the

methods by which Roman armies were raised and financed—and thus

could be circumvented. The result is that we learn not only about the

sophisticated nature of Roman border protection but, as important, how

adept less civilized enemies real y were. In short, military sophistication

is not always to be accurately calibrated according to our own cultural

norms, and Western states can lose as much because of adroit enemies

as through their own mistakes and ongoing decline.

As historians of ancient times, the contributors might be dismayed

by how little present makers of modern strategy and war making have

learned from the classical past, how much ignored its lessons. Yet, in

the spirit of the two earlier
Makers
, we avoid inflicting overt ideological

characterizations of a contemporary political nature.

The Burdens of the Past

Few formal strategic doctrines have survived from antiquity. No col-

lege of military historians wrote systematic theoretical treatises on the

proper use of military force to further political objectives. Although

there are extant tactical treatises on how to defend cities under siege,

the proper role of a cavalry commander, and how to arrange and de-

ploy a Macedonian phalanx or a Roman legion, there are no explicit

works on the various ways in which national power is to be harnessed

for strategic purposes. Great captains did not write memoirs outlining

strategic doctrine or military theory in the abstract.

The historian Thucydides informs us of Pericles’ strategic thinking,

not Pericles. We learn of Epaminondas’s preemptive strike against the

Peloponnese from what others said he did rather than from what he

or his close associates said he did. Caesar’s own commentaries were

about
how
he conquered much of Western Europe, not
why
its con-

quest would be beneficial to Rome, or the costs and benefits—and fu-

ture challenges—of its annexation. Ancient historians chronicled both

Alexander’s brilliance in taking Persia and the subsequent challenges

such occupation posed. Yet these dilemmas were not addressed in the

Makers of Ancient Strategy 9

abstract by Alexander himself or his lieutenants. We have a good idea,

not from Greek captains but from classical historians, ancient inscrip-

tions, and the archaeological record, of how Greek and Roman com-

manders dealt with insurrections, urban warfare, and border defense.

In other words, unlike makers of modern strategy, the makers of an-

cient strategy were not abstract thinkers like Machiavelli, Clausewitz,

or Delbrück, or even generals who wrote about what they did and

wanted to do, such as Napoleon or Schlieffen.

The result is twofold. First, strategy in the ancient world is more

often implicit than explicitly expressed. The classical military historian

has far more difficulty recovering strategic thinking than does his more

modern counterpart, and certainly the ensuing conclusions are far

more apt to be questioned and disputed.

Second, as a result of this difficulty of classical scholarship and its

frequent neglect, conclusions are often far more novel. We have thou-

sands of books on Napoleon’s or Hitler’s strategy but only a few dozen

on the strategic thinking of Alexander and Caesar. And if there are

dozens of book-length studies on the grand strategy of George Mar-

shall or Charles de Gaulle, there are almost none on Epaminondas’s.

If readers find in these chapters a great deal of supposition, a bother-

some need for conjecture, and sometimes foreign citations, they also

will discover much that is entirely new—or at least new manifestations

of familiar things that they now discover are in fact quite old. The an-

cient world is sometimes thought to be irrelevant because it is so dis-

tant. But in an age of confusing theories, rapidly shifting technologies,

and a cacophony of instant communications, the Greeks and Romans,

precisely because of their distance and clarity, loom more relevant

than ever. These essays are offered in the hope that the next time a

statesman or general offers an entirely new solution to what he insists

is an entirely new problem, someone can object that is not necessar-

ily so.
Rather than offering political assessments of modern military

leaders’ policies, we instead hope that knowledge of the ancient world

will remind us all of the parameters of available choices—and their

consequences.

10 Introduction

1. From Persia with Love

Propaganda and Imperial Overreach

in the Greco-Persian Wars

Tom
Holland

The invasion of Iraq, when it finally came, was merely the climax

of an ongoing period of crisis and upheaval in the international

order. The stand-off between the two sides had been a geopolitical fix-

ture for years. Both had surely long suspected that open conflict was

inevitable. As the invaders crossed into Iraqi territory, they would have

known that they faced a regime that was hardly unprepared for war. It

had been assiduous in stockpiling reserves of weaponry and provisions;

its troops, massed along the border, blocked all the roads that led to the

capital; the capital itself, an intimidating blend of grandiose prestige

projects and warren-like slums, was darkly rumored to be capable of

swallowing up a whole army. Yet all the regime’s defenses, in the final

reckoning, might as well have been made of sand. What it confronted

in its adversary was nothing less than a superpower, the most formi-

dable on the planet. The task force brought to bear by the invaders was

a quite devastating display of shock and awe. Those of the defenders

who were not left corpses by the first deadly impact of the enemy on-

slaught simply melted away. Even in the capital itself, the population

proved signally unwilling to die for the sake of their beleaguered leader.

A bare few weeks after hostilities had begun, the war was effectively

over. So it was, on October 12, 539 BC, that the gates of Babylon were

flung open “without a battle,”1 and the greatest city in the world fell

into the hands of Cyrus, the king of Persia.

To the Babylonians themselves, the capture of their metropolis by

a foreign warlord was only readily explicable as the doing of Marduk,

the king of their gods. Over the centuries, Babylon’s peerless glamour

and pedigree had served to burnish the conceit of its inhabitants to a

truly lustrous sheen. Although long subject to the rule of Assyria, a rival

kingdom to the north, Babylon had always chafed at its subordination,

and in 612 BC, when its armies took the lead in sacking the Assyrian

capital of Nineveh, the city had exacted a splendid and bloody revenge.

From that moment on, it had found itself positioned to play the role

that its people had always seen as its right: as the very fulcrum of world

affairs. Although the col apse of the Assyrian Empire had left the Near

East divided between Babylon itself and three other kingdoms—Media

in northern Iran, Lydia in Anatolia, and Egypt—there had been little