The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire – Edward Luttwak

Synopsis:

Military historian and strategist Edward Luttwak traverses late Roman history as well as Byzantine history in order to examine the overarching schema, notions, and prevailing strategic outlook that maintained the Byzantine Empire for nearly a thousand years following the demise of the Western Roman Empire. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, and not having the manpower dominance of Republican Rome, the Byzantines were adept at remaining powerful by other means.

Excerpts:

“The Huns and all their successors inevitably used their tribute gold to buy necessities and baubles from the empire – special arrangements were negotiated for border markets – hence the gold exported to the Huns returned to circulate within the empire rather quickly, except for the minute fraction retained for jewelry.

“Much of what they did was calculated to preserve and enhance the prestige of the imperial court even as it was being exploited to impress, overawe, recruit, even seduce. Unlike troops or gold, prestige is not consumed when it is used, and that was a very great virtue for the Byzantines, who were always looking for economical sources of power.

“It might be said, therefore, that the loss of Syria and Egypt, unlike Latin speaking and Chalcedonian North Africa, was a mixed curse for the empire: it brought the blessing of religious harmony, and increased cultural unity.

“It is by that same logic in dynamic action and reaction that the victories of an advancing army can bring defeat once they exceed the culminating point of success, indeed victory becomes defeat by the prosaic workings of overextension.

“It starts with the simple, static contradiction of sivis pacem para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war) and proceeds to dynamic contradictions: if you defend every foot of a perimeter, you are not defending the perimeter; if you win too completely, destroying the enemy, you make way for another; and so on.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, Edward Luttwak, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Against the Galileans – Julian the Apostate

Synopsis:

The Roman emperor Julian attempted a pagan revival during his brief reign in the 4th century AD. Having been raised a Christian, he embraced the organizational structure of Christianity while endeavoring to manifest a new universal Hellenistic paganism. In Against the Galileans, Julian bids to refute some of the fundamental assumptions of Christian doctrine such as monotheism as well as the universality of Christ. The work was preserved during the Middle-Ages by Christian monks as a teaching mechanism for counter-refuting claims made by Julian.

Excerpts:

“For if there were to be no difference between the heavens and mankind and animals too, by Zeus, and all the way down to the very tribe of creeping things and the little fish that swim in the sea, then there would have had to be one and the same creator for them all. But if there is a great gulf fixed between immortals and mortals, and this cannot become greater by addition or less by subtraction, nor can it be mixed with what is mortal and subject to fate, it follows that one set of gods were the creative cause of mortals, and another of immortals.

“Therefore, as I said, unless for every nation separately some presiding national god (and under him an angel, a demon, a hero, and a peculiar order of spirits which obey and work for the higher powers) established the differences in our laws and characters, you must demonstrate to me how these differences arose by some other agency.

“The philosophers bid us imitate the gods so far as we can, and they teach us that this imitation consists in the contemplation of realities.

“Our writers say that the creator is the common father and king of all things, but that the other functions have been assigned by him to national gods of the peoples and gods that protect the cities; every one of whom administers his own department in accordance with his own nature.

“Therefore men’s works also are naturally perishable and mutable and subject to every kind of alteration. But since God is eternal, it follows that of such sort are his ordinances also. And since they are such, they are either the natures of things or are accordant with the nature of things. For how could nature be at variance with the ordinance of God? How could it fall out of harmony therewith?

*All excerpts have been taken from Against the Galileans, Julian, Acheron Press.

On Moderation – Seneca

Synopsis:

In letter #5, Seneca examines a middle-road of moderation for philosophers vis-à-vis human action. According to Seneca, moderation ought to project externally via an exemplary lifestyle which embraces a synthesis of individual and public virtues.

Excerpts:

“The mere title of philosophy, however modestly worn, is invidious enough; what if we should begin to except ourselves from the ordinary uses of mankind?… Our endeavor must be to make our way of life better than the crowd’s, not contrary to it; else we shall turn from us and repel the people we wish to improve.

“This I hold is the correct mode: life should be steered between good mores and public mores; men should respect our way of life, but they should find it recognizable.

“Will there be no distinction between us and them? A very great distinction. Anyone who looks closely will realize that we are unlike the crowd. Anyone who enters our home will admire us rather than our furniture.

“Beasts avoid the dangers which confront them, and when they have avoided them they stand at ease; we are tormented alike by the future and the past. Our superiority brings us much distress; memory recalls the torment of fear, foresight anticipates it. No one confines his misery to the present.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters, W.W. Norton.

Diplomacy and War in Livy – Niccolo Machiavelli

Synopsis:

Niccolo Machiavelli’s discourses on Titus Livy’s history of Rome offers a full spectrum examination of Roman statecraft. In book two, Machiavelli submits his analysis of war and diplomacy vis-à-vis Rome’s interaction with its allies – as well as enemies. Proximity, clarity, and swift resolve are features recognized as desirable for an ally.

Excerpts:

“Leagues made with rulers who lack either the means to help because they are too far away, or the power to help because they are disorganized or for other reasons, bring rather repute than assistance to those who trust in them.

“The advice which Hannibal gave to Antiochus, when this monarch was contemplating a war with the Romans. The Romans, he argued, could only be beaten in Italy, for others might there be able to avail themselves of their arms, their riches and their allies… he ended by saying that Antiochus had better first try to take Rome before attacking the empire, and Italy before attacking the other provinces.

“The Cimbri broke up a Roman army in Germany, and the Romans had no way to repair their defeat. But, when the Cimbri arrived in Italy, and against them the Romans could bring all their forces to bear, they were undone.

“I say again that a ruler who has his people well armed and equipped for war, should always wait at home to wage war with a powerful and dangerous enemy, and should not go out to meet him; but that one who has ill-armed subjects and a country unused to war should always meet the enemy as far away from home as he can.

“Slow and tardy decisions are no less harmful than are ambiguous decisions, especially when the point at issue is whether support is to be given to an ally; for by such slowness nobody benefits and to oneself it does harm.

*All excerpts have been taken from Machiavelli: The Discourses, Penguin Books Ltd.

Old Age – Seneca

Synopsis:

In letter #12, Seneca wrestles with the idea of aging. On balance, Seneca decides aging is a positive good – but only for those who recognize it.

Excerpts:

“In the first place, old and young alike should have death before their eyes; we are not summoned in the order of our birth registration. In the second place, no one is so old that he cannot legitimately hope for one day more, and one day is a stage of life.

“Every day must therefore be ordered as if it were the last in the series, as if it filled our measure and closed our life.

“What he did out of perverted motives we should do out of good, and as we retire to our beds we should say, cheerfully and contentedly, ‘I have lived; I have finished the course Fortune set me.’

“We should welcome old age and love it; it is full of pleasure if you know how to use it. Fruit tastes best when its season is ending; a boy is handsomest at boyhood’s close; and it is the last drink which brings the toper delight, the one that submerges him and polishes off his jag. Every pleasure saves its most agreeable scene for the finale.

“Life as a whole consists of parts, with larger circles circumscribed about smaller. One circle encompasses and cinches the rest; it extends from our first day to our last.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters, W.W. Norton.

On Presentism – Augustine

Synopsis:

Augustine dedicates room in his Confessions for a discussion of the essence of God vis-à-vis time. Within such a context, Augustine analyzes how time interacts within human perception – and advances a thesis of presentism. God, Augustine decides is beyond space time – but humanity exists within a third dimensional space of three dynamic presentisms.

Excerpts:

“It will see that a long time is long only because constituted of many successive movements which cannot be simultaneously extended. In the eternal, nothing is transient, but the whole is present. But no time is wholly present. It will see that all past time is driven backwards by the future, and all future time is the consequent of the past, and all past and future are created and set on their course by that which is always present.

“You created all times and you exist before all times. Nor was there any time when time did not exist… you made time itself. No times are coeternal with you since you are permanent. If they were permanent, they would not be times.

“When a true narrative of the past is related, the memory produces not the actual events which have passed away but words conceived from images of them, which they fixed in the mind like imprints as they passed through the senses. Thus my boyhood, which is no longer, lies in past time which is no longer. But when I am recollecting and telling my story, I am looking on its image in present time, since it is still in my memory.

“What is by now evident and clear is that neither future no past exists, and it is inexact language to speak of three times – past, present, and future. Perhaps it would be exact to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things to come. In the soul there are these three aspects of time, and I do not see them anywhere else. The present considering the past is the memory, the present considering the present is immediate awareness, the present considering the future is expectation.

“A long future is a long expectation of the future. And the past, which has no existence, is not a long period of time. A long past is a long memory of the past.

*All excerpts have been taken from Confessions, Oxford University Press.

Julius Caesar – Plutarch

Synopsis:

Plutarch’s biography of Julius Caesar examines the moral, and intellectual dimensions of Caesar’s character. Context is a pronounced component of Plutarch’s analysis – which utilizes the underlying Roman political culture of the era as a bedrock feature of the narrative. Further, Plutarch uses biographical anecdotes to advance an image of Caesar as a world historical individual.  

Excerpts:

“Sulla, without openly objecting, took measures to see that he was not elected and discussed the question of whether or not to have him put to death. When some of his advisers said that there was no point in killing a boy like him, Sulla replied that they must be lacking in intelligence if they did not see that in this boy there were many Mariuses.

“Cicero, who is thought to have been the first to have seen beneath the surface of Caesar’s political program and to have feared it as one might fear the smiling surface of the sea, and who understood how powerful a character was hidden behind Caesar’s agreeable, good-humored manners, said that, in general, he could detect in everything that Caesar planned or undertook in politics a purpose that was aiming at absolute power.

“For the cause of the civil wars was not, as most people think, the quarrel between Caesar and Pompey; it was rather their friendship, since in the first place they worked together to destroy the power of the aristocracy and only when this had been accomplished quarreled amongst themselves.

“For when Pompey, for some reason or other (possibly over caution), instead of putting the finishing stroke to his great success, retired as soon as he had driven the routed enemy inside their camp, Caesar, who was with his friends, remarked to them as he was leaving them: ‘Today the enemy would have won , if they had a commander who was a winner.’

“Brutus fancied that he heard a noise at the entrance to the tent and, looking towards the light of the lamp which was almost out, he saw a terrible figure, like a man, though unnaturally large and with a very severe expression. He was frightened at first, but, finding that this apparition just stood silently by his bed without doing or saying anything, he said: ‘Who are you?’ Then the phantom replied: ‘Brutus, I am your evil genius. You shall see me at Philippi.

*All excerpts have been taken from Fall of the Roman Republic, Penguin Books.