Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
By one estimate, humans have fought wars in ninety-four out of every hundred years for the past 5,000. Despite radical differences in the prosecution of warfare between ancient and modern societies, there remains a linear connection to the ways that Greco-Roman cultures thought about war--its conduct, aims, tactics, and ethics. This is epitomized most obviously in the Greek and Latin derivatives that dot our language of war--"army,"military, "strategy." Combining astute analyses of the logistics of conflict with the ethics of war, Alfred Bradford offers fascinating parallels between warfare in ancient and contemporary societies. After a brief prelude that discusses the Greeks' first descriptions of battle in the Iliad, Bradford outlines the changes in warfare from the earliest records through the fall of the Roman Empire to contemporary wars of counterterrorism. The second half of the book turns to discuss more holistically the study of war, the writing of war, and images of war, drawing on a diverse range of texts and images. Fundamentally, Bradford shows that despite massive differences in weaponry and firepower, the basic principles of warfare have remained unchanged over thousands of years, and even as we move further from antiquity, war in the modern age is persistently illuminated by our Greek and Roman forbearers.
Synopsis
Over 2600 years ago the Parian poet Archilochus wrote we chased seven and killed them.. the thousand of us. In all parts of the world, and in all civilizations, the history of warfare, as well as the ironic humour of those who fight and die, can be traced back to the earliest records. But the vocabulary of modern warfare - army, military, strategy, tactics - derives from Greek and Latin, while metaphors of conflict similarly evoke ancient times. Such expressions and phrases as Live by the sword and die by the sword, Pyrrhic victory, and arms and the man are commonplace, and all come from the classical age. Wilfred Owen, famous soldier of the Great War, could write the bitter line the old lie: Dulce et decorum est/pro patria mori while expecting his readers to understand both Latin and allusion. Combining astute analysis of the logistics of conflict with the ethics of war, and drawing on a diverse range of cultural texts (from the Iliad to Hugo Grotius and von Clausewitz), Alfred S Bradford draws fascinating parallels between warfare and battle in ancient and modern societies.
He shows that despite huge differences in weaponry and firepower, the basic principles of warfare have remained unchanged over thousands of years. War in the modern age is persistently illuminated by antiquity.