Military History: The Lasting Influence of the Ancient Greeks on the Modern Military

Written more than two thousand years ago, texts by ancient Greeks still have a major impact on the modern militaries of today in numerous ways.

At the start of the Cold War, the then US secretary of state, George Marshall, read the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, convinced that the events of the Peloponnesian War and the fall of Athens were worthy of review in those unprecedented times when the United States and Russia— the Athens and Persia on the contemporary age, faced each other in conflict.

Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War is still studied at many military academies, including West Point, the Command and Staff College of the US Marine Corps, and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Recruits at army and naval colleges are encouraged to study what the text has to say about strategic leadership, garnering support in a protracted war and the impact of biological warfare.

The “Melian Dialogue” is considered particularly important, containing the Athenians’ justification for conquering Melos in what was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the late 5th century BC.

Also known to have studied Greek military texts are Colin Powell and David Pet­raeus, whose fall from grace in 2012 after the revelation that he had leaked classified information to his mistress has often been noted in Sophoclean terms. It did not go unnoticed at the time that “Petraeus” was the name of a centaur, a half-man, half-horse figure of Greek myth, renowned for his sexual appetite.

But Greek text also have a therapeutic nature for the military, as well as victims on the other side of the conflict.

The Greek tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides continue to provide a powerful lens through which soldiers heal after returning from conflict. In his recent book, The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today, Bryan Doerries describes his work with Theater of War, a traveling drama collective that performs Sophocles’s most intense explorations of the psychological impact of war for US soldiers and veterans.

In Amman in 2013, a group of female refugees from Syria performed a version of Euripides’s Trojan Women as a way of collective catharsis for the women who were impacted by the war.

Read the Original Article at PappasPost

The Battle of Salamis: Themistocles and the Birth of Strategy

The dichotomy of strategy and tactics in war did not solidify as a concept until the publication of Carl von Clausewitz’ On War in 1832. Since then the relationship between the two has been hotly debated, along with the subsequent interjection of the operational level of war. What is not debated are the concepts themselves. Tactics and strategy are related but they are not the same thing. Strategy, of course, comes from the word ancient Greeks used for their generals, strategos. Clausewitz’s ideas were intended to be applicable for all of military history so it can be instructive to look into the past — at the genesis of strategy itself.

A tactician would never abandon key terrain without a fight; it makes little tactical sense.

A strategos was not solely concerned with winning battles — the tactics. He was, in the later words of Clausewitz, concerned with the use of battle to further the political ends of his city. In other words, the strategos had to keep the long-term goal in mind and ensure that the tactics work to further that goal. A tactician would never abandon key terrain without a fight; it makes little tactical sense. But strategy may demand that very thing and tactics must be subordinated. This exact situation occurred during the Persian Wars in Fifth Century Greece. The first major Greek strategist, and perhaps the most gifted, was Themistocles.

If a strategist must have a gift for long-term planning, then Themistocles was a born strategist. As a child, he reportedly fostered friendships with well-born children despite rules against such liaisons in pre-democracy Athens. When Themistocles was born in 524 BC, there was little chance he would one day achieve political power or have any opportunity to make use of those friendships. Themistocles as a child could not have known exactly how such connections would benefit him.

Read the Remainder at Medium