Rating: 
Summary: Anything But Modern Warfare!
Review: Victor Davis Hanson is by trade apparently both a California viniculturist and an academic scholar of classical Greek history. So John Keegan says in his introduction to this new edition of an established minor classic. The improbable combination of such disparate occupations has shaped his conception of ancient Greek warfare: he argues that the ritualistic hoplite battle formalized during the "golden period" of Greek antiquity was inextricably linked to the nature of Greek agriculture. To avoid devastating loss of food (particularly wine) production and desolation of invaluable land, the seemingly ceaseless wars between Greek city states and their various shifting alliances had to be short, rapidly decisive, and--necessarily as a result--brutally sanguineous. Greeks deliberately fought according to a set of mutually acknowledged rules that limited wartime injury to the participating infantrymen themselves, and kept intact the soil and farms from which they came. In his book Hanson takes us step by step through the violent clash of opposing Greek armies and reveals in remarkably technical detail just what was involved. Perhaps even more important, he recreates the personal experience of individual participants during such a battle. Following in the footsteps of many modern (post-World War II) historians who are more interested in the private soldier than the commanding general, he gives us a gritty sense of what it was like for Greek farmer soldiers to undergo combat in traditional phalanx formation. (Consequently, Steven Pressfield acknowleges that Hanson was one of the sources he referred to when writing his engrossing "Gates of Fire", a fictional treatment of the famous Battle of Thermopylae.) In this sense there is a firm connection between ancient and modern warfare: ultimately it was--and is--fought by men who must deal with their own personal fears of wounding, dismemberment, and death. This has not changed, and so long as there is still a human element to war, will not change. But Hanson takes a step beyond simple individual motivation; and in the closing pages of the book he discusses the implications of modern total warfare, where the ritualized, bloody (but still carefully limited) battle of ancient Greece has given way to the usually uncontrolled, all-destructive (rather than fundamentally conserving) combat of today. It makes for thoughtful, stimulating reading. (Those who find this subject matter interesting might find other Hanson books worth looking at. His more recent "Soul of Battle" devotes its first third to a discussion of war between Thebes and Sparta. "The Wars of the Ancient Greeks" is one volume of a slick series of popular histories which have John Keegan as their editor; aimed at the uninitiated general public, this title nonetheless is a good introduction to warfare in classical Greece.)
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Subject Through Modern American Eyes
Review: Why read a book about ancient Greek warfare? Perhaps, because "classical Greece still offers us the best - perhaps the only intellectual - explanation for how the pragmatic concerns of our own daily existence in Western society have been addressed and solved" (page 7). As you may guess, overall, I enjoyed this book. Professor Victor Davis Hanson is knowledgeable of his subject, writes fairly well and provides some insightful comments. Exactly what one would expect from a good work of military history, however there is something of a bad aftertaste to the work. To start he takes the famous German historian Hans Delbrück to task for not being "merely wrong, but also misleading" (page 23). He quotes Delbrück as to numbers of troops engaged in ancient battle, but seems to misunderstand the German historian's point. He believes that Delbrück thinks that mass always decide a battle, that the biggest battalions always win, but that is not the point that Delbrück is trying to get across. Rather he is interested in questioning the numbers that are quoted by the ancients. For example, Herodotus records that the Persian army under Xerses numbered 2,641,610 fighting men and at least as many crew members, servants, and camp followers. Delbrück concluded, based on the actual size of the plain of Marathon and the contemporary estimates of the population of ancient Greece that the Greek army numbered 12,000 men and the Persians, a professional army emphasizing quality, even less. So contrary to Herodotus, the Greeks were not greatly outnumbered, but more numerous, which goes against Hanson's thesis of the overwhelming nature of the Greek phalanx. It should be pointed out that Delbrück is consistent in his questioning of numbers given in the original ancient sources. He also proved rather decisively that Caesar inflated the numbers of his opponents in Gaul for political reasons. Questioning numbers is a part of what is known as Sachkritik, since as Delbrück wrote, "a movement that a troop of 1,000 men executes without difficulty is a hard task for 10,000 men, a work of art for 50,000, an impossibility for 100,000". In all Hanson unjustly criticises Delbrück, fails to mention, let alone answer, the valid questions he brings up concerning Marathon and then misleads his readers as to Delbrück's true attitude and the quality of his contribution to ancient studies. He then goes on to use Sachkritik, that is Delbrück's own method, in his own historical analysis. As I said, bad aftertaste. . . Many of the Hanson's own attitudes come out clearly in the work as well, as when he seems to lament that the Greek hoplites may have gone into battle "drunk", that is having had wine with their meal before the battle. This almost caused me to laugh out loud as I was reading the book. Having worked in Europe for almost 20 years I think poor Professor Hanson would be shocked, SHOCKED, to know that hundreds of thousands of Europeans also have wine with their meals and function very well afterwards thank you. Finally he fails to mention the influence of the rise of the Athenian navy on democracy in ancient Athens, since is was the growing importance of propertyless Athenian sailors, unlike their propertied fellow citizens serving as hoplites who supplied their own expensive weapons and armor, that made Athenian democracy something trully different. This is taken pretty much as a given in historical sociology, but Hanson seems to prefer the hoplites as the limit of his elitest view of ancient democracy, and fails to mention this rather important influence of military technology on social development. In short, we see influence of highly subjective attitudes and politics in his work which leaves this reader with a bad aftertaste. In all a good book with some interesting comments on the nature of Greek infantry battle, but marred by the author's own rather obvious blindspots.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Subject Through Modern American Eyes
Review: Why read a book about ancient Greek warfare? Perhaps, because "classical Greece still offers us the best - perhaps the only intellectual - explanation for how the pragmatic concerns of our own daily existence in Western society have been addressed and solved" (page 7). As you may guess, overall, I enjoyed this book. Professor Victor Davis Hanson is knowledgeable of his subject, writes fairly well and provides some insightful comments. Exactly what one would expect from a good work of military history, however there is something of a bad aftertaste to the work. To start he takes the famous German historian Hans Delbrück to task for not being "merely wrong, but also misleading" (page 23). He quotes Delbrück as to numbers of troops engaged in ancient battle, but seems to misunderstand the German historian's point. He believes that Delbrück thinks that mass always decide a battle, that the biggest battalions always win, but that is not the point that Delbrück is trying to get across. Rather he is interested in questioning the numbers that are quoted by the ancients. For example, Herodotus records that the Persian army under Xerses numbered 2,641,610 fighting men and at least as many crew members, servants, and camp followers. Delbrück concluded, based on the actual size of the plain of Marathon and the contemporary estimates of the population of ancient Greece that the Greek army numbered 12,000 men and the Persians, a professional army emphasizing quality, even less. So contrary to Herodotus, the Greeks were not greatly outnumbered, but more numerous, which goes against Hanson's thesis of the overwhelming nature of the Greek phalanx. It should be pointed out that Delbrück is consistent in his questioning of numbers given in the original ancient sources. He also proved rather decisively that Caesar inflated the numbers of his opponents in Gaul for political reasons. Questioning numbers is a part of what is known as Sachkritik, since as Delbrück wrote, "a movement that a troop of 1,000 men executes without difficulty is a hard task for 10,000 men, a work of art for 50,000, an impossibility for 100,000". In all Hanson unjustly criticises Delbrück, fails to mention, let alone answer, the valid questions he brings up concerning Marathon and then misleads his readers as to Delbrück's true attitude and the quality of his contribution to ancient studies. He then goes on to use Sachkritik, that is Delbrück's own method, in his own historical analysis. As I said, bad aftertaste. . . Many of the Hanson's own attitudes come out clearly in the work as well, as when he seems to lament that the Greek hoplites may have gone into battle "drunk", that is having had wine with their meal before the battle. This almost caused me to laugh out loud as I was reading the book. Having worked in Europe for almost 20 years I think poor Professor Hanson would be shocked, SHOCKED, to know that hundreds of thousands of Europeans also have wine with their meals and function very well afterwards thank you. Finally he fails to mention the influence of the rise of the Athenian navy on democracy in ancient Athens, since is was the growing importance of propertyless Athenian sailors, unlike their propertied fellow citizens serving as hoplites who supplied their own expensive weapons and armor, that made Athenian democracy something trully different. This is taken pretty much as a given in historical sociology, but Hanson seems to prefer the hoplites as the limit of his elitest view of ancient democracy, and fails to mention this rather important influence of military technology on social development. In short, we see influence of highly subjective attitudes and politics in his work which leaves this reader with a bad aftertaste. In all a good book with some interesting comments on the nature of Greek infantry battle, but marred by the author's own rather obvious blindspots.
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