Life of a Colossus

After nearly a year on my bookshelf and three weeks of public transportation, I finished Adrian Goldsworthy's amazing biography of Julius Caesar. On the most recent Ides of March, I decided that this particular tome had spent far too long on the shelf and I had heard far too many good things about it. Naturally, I decided to dive into Grapes of Wrath first...

I could easily present a blow-by-blow extended review, but instead I want to have a discussion. Fortunately for me, Julius Caesar is one of the few figures from antiquity that still provokes thought and discussion among mainstream historical and political thinkers. If I wanted to discuss the contraction of the Roman Empire under Hadrian, I might have a hard time finding an audience, but Caesar is too much fun to not have an opinion.

As I closed up the book and tucked it into my bag, my brain started wrestling with the influx of new information. First and foremost, what do I think about Caesar, in general? My view has shifted over time. After reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (in high school, if you want to judge my level of maturity), I sympathized with Caesar and thought the tyrannicide was unjust. Frankly, I was pretty happy when the conniving Brutus and Cassius wound up on the wrong end of the sword. In college and up to, more-or-less, the present, I gravitated more towards the conspirators' camp. I still love Shakespeare, but it is important to remember that the events that Julius Caesar presents do not exist in a vacuum. A lot of stuff happened before the curtain opens and a lot happened afterwards.

That brings me to my conundrum: in a system as corrupt and decrepit as the Roman Republic was in the 1st century BC, was it such a bad thing that one man overthrew the system in favor of something more effective at peaceful governance? In a system where individual ambition was poorly capped, it was an inevitability that one man would eventually rise to the top (see the Gracchi, Sulla, Marius, Pompey). What made Caesar stand out, at least for me, was his political savvy and tendency towards clemency for political rivals. Essentially, the system was broken, Caesar thought he knew how to fix it.

Compared to other "tyrants" in Roman history, Julius Caesar's rise was bloodless (at least for the Romans, the Gauls and Germans weren't so lucky). Proscriptions were never undertaken under Caesar's regime and political opponents were typically offered clemency the first time Caesar beat them. Many probably pined for the days of Caesar once the Second Triumvirate started their bloodletting. This brings me to my second interesting thought: do nice guys actually come in last place every time?

When attempting to implement massive social changes on a short time table, maybe bloody/destructive means are the only way of achieving your ends. Case one: Caesar plays nice with the Roman aristocracy and winds up dead on the floor of the Senate - more civil war, more civil strife, political changes (good or bad) tabled. Counter-cases: Caesar kills and enslaves hundreds of thousands in pacifying Gaul, Octavian takes part in one of the bloodiest Roman proscriptions and becomes the first emperor, General Sherman's "March to the Sea" scorched earth tactics delivers a crippling blow to the Confederacy, Allied forces indiscriminately bomb (conventional, incendiary, nuclear) German and Japanese cities to end fascism. Was Caesar doing it wrong?

42.195 Kilometers

In 492 BC, Persian King Darius I was not a happy man. Seven years earlier, a number of Persian satrapies in Ionia (modern-day west coast of Turkey) revolted. With the support of the mainland Greek city-states of Athens and Eretria, the Ionian Greeks set fire to the regional capital of Sardis. Both Athens and Eretria withdrew their forces shortly thereafter, leaving the Ionians to their fate against the might of the Persian Empire.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote of Darius' reaction:

"[W]ord reached Darius that Sardis had been burned by the Athenians and Ionians and that the man who led these combined forces and had designed its course of action was Aristagoras of Miletus. It is said that when Darius first heard this report, he disregarded the Ionians, since he knew that they at least would not escape punishment for their revolt; but he inquired who the Athenians were, and after he had been told, he asked for a bow. He took the bow, set an arrow on its string, and shot the arrow toward the heavens. And as it flew high into the air, he said: 'Zeus, let it be granted to me to punish the Athenians.' After saying this, he appointed one of his attendants to repeat to him at least three times whenever his dinner was served: 'My Lord, remember the Athenians.'" (Histories 5.105)

Needless to say, Darius did not forget and in 492 BC, he launched a series of military campaigns against Greece culminating with a showdown against Athens on the fields of Marathon...



The Athenians had plenty of time to prepare for the Persian forces. On the way to Athens, Persian commander Datis had taken the liberty of sacking two other supporters of the Ionian revolt: Naxos and Eretria. Athens needed to gather allies if it was going to survive.

Pheidippides was dispatched to Sparta to request assistance. Herodotus claims that the Spartans were anxious to get into the fight, but were held back because of a religious festival. A similar fate would befall the Spartans in 480 BC when Xerxes threatened to invade Greece. Another theory that might explain the Spartans' reluctance to involve themselves in major land battles is the threat of a helot revolt. The helots were the people from the areas conquered by Sparta in the Peloponnese, typically Messenia (southwest corner of the Peloponnese). They were a poorly-treated slave caste that also constituted a majority of the population under Spartan control. Every so often, discontent or outright rebellion would stir the helots and the Spartan army would be called in to ensure/restore order.

The only other Greek city-state that sent troops to aid Athens was Plataea (a bit under 50 miles northwest of Athens). All together, the Athenians and Plataeans deployed around 10,000 hoplites for the battle while the Persians brought about 19,000 infantry along with 1,000 cavalry. Oddly enough*, Herodotus doesn't spend much time discussing the number of troops involved with this battle, so the numbers are a rough average from a number of estimations delivered by scholars.

The armies spent a couple days on opposite sides of the plain before the ten Athenian polemarchoi (generals) finally agreed to attack. When Miltiades' turn as commander arrived, he gave the order to attack...



In an attempt to match the length of the Persian line, Miltiades stretched the middle ranks to only a couple rows of depth, but concentrated his phalanxes on the flanks.

One of the great questions still unanswered about this battle is why the Persian cavalry did not play a significant role. The plains of Marathon are wide and flat, making it perfect terrain for lightning-fast cavalry maneuvers. Some scholars have speculated that the Persian cavalry had been loaded back onto the ships in preparation to move, or the Persians did not bring more than a token contingent to serve as scouts. Despite the heavy armor and long reach of Greek hoplites, they were no match for a cavalry force that could out-flank them and run them down. The Persian infantry would get their first taste of well-trained, massed hoplite warfare...



Herodotus writes:

"After the troops were in position and the sacrifices had proven favorable, when the Athenians were let loose and allowed to advance, they charged at a run toward the barbarians. The space between the two armies was about a mile." (Histories 6.112)

Herodotus had a penchant for exaggeration. Hoplites, despite what you might have seen in the film 300, were heavily armored. Standard equipment was a large (three feet in diameter), round shield made of wood and bronze (held at chest level and away from the body), a bronze helmet, bronze greaves, a bronze breastplate (solid or scaled lamellar in construction), a nine-foot spear with bronze head and butt, and a small sword. One can easily imagine that hot and cold days made the work of a hoplite very difficult. In his book, The Western Way of War, Victor Davis Hanson also mentions that modern testing of Herodotus' claim shows that an average hoplite could only make it 200 yards or so at a 5-6 mile per hour pace. One of the tactical challenges that hoplite armies faced against one another was timing the charge so that you hit your opponent's line with more momentum without overly exhausting your troops.

When the Greek and Persian lines met, the center of the Greek line was quickly broken. However, on the flanks, the superior equipment and tactics of the Greek heavy infantry routed the Persians.

With the Persian flanks in full retreat, the triumphant Greek flanks stopped pursuing and turned to the Persian center. Suddenly under threat from two sides, the Persian center collapsed and began a hasty retreat to their ships.



Now filled with the excitement of victory, the Greeks mercilessly pursued the Persians to their ships and drove them into the sea. Herodotus states that the Persians lost 6,400 men in the battle while the Greeks suffered only 192 losses. For once, Herodotus' numbers seem reasonable considering the initial dispositions of the armies and the course of the battle.

The legendary Pheidippides was sent to Athens to proclaim the victory. About 40 kilometers later, Pheidippides arrived, announced the victory, and quickly succumbed to exhaustion. For those of us keeping count, he ran 240 kilometers from Athens to Sparta, ran back to Athens, marched with the army to Marathon, fought in the battle, then ran 40 kilometers from Marathon to Athens - all in the span of about a week.


A bare-assed Pheidippides finally gets to deliver some good news.

The Spartan army showed up with 2,000 troops a few days later to see the carnage, give the Athenians a pat on the back, then return home.

The Battle of Marathon wasn't the last chapter of the First Persian War. The fleet sailing from Marathon attempted to round the southern tip of Attica and attack Athens before the Athenian army could return to the city, but were unable to outrun the army. The Persians laid anchor not far from Athens for a few days before abandoning the expedition and returning to Asia Minor.

Though this battle wasn't particularly decisive as far as convincing the Persian Empire to avoid the Greeks, it did demonstrate, for the first time, the superiority of Greek heavy infantry over Persian infantry. It's worth noting that the wealth and resources of the Persian Empire was many times that of the Greek city-states. Though the Persians did deploy some Ionian hoplites in later conflicts, their army was heavily invested in light infantry, cavalry and archers. The Greeks likely realized their fortune of not having to face cavalry at Marathon. In later encounters with Persia, the Greeks became highly adept at choosing their battles in order to deny the Persians the advantages that their diversity provided.


*Later in his Histories, Herodotus spends a very long time giving descriptions of the forces arrayed for battles. To someone who has read Herodotus, it seems downright bizarre that he would give up an opportunity to weave an overwrought tale concerning the state of two opposing forces.

Update: I felt a little guilty not fully citing all the sources I used for this post, so here are the credits. For creating the maps, I used the fantastic illustrations from Robert Morkot's Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece and Simon Anglim's [et al] Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World as starting points. The artwork is an 1869 piece done by Luc-Olivier Merson titled The Soldier of Marathon. I also feel the need to mention that the edition of Herodotus' Histories that I used is quite possibly the best version available. The Landmark Herodotus edited by Robert Strassler is not only an excellent translation, but it comes highly annotated, illustrated and contains a great series of appendices.

Muster the Hoplites, Alcibiades!

I've been pondering some ideas for a new blog post. Back in late September I was going to write about the Roman disaster in the Teutoburg Forest which occurred exactly 2000 years ago (in September) and how that marked the end of Roman expansionism even though the Empire would continue to thrive for centuries. Unfortunately, that post will have to wait for the next anniversary.

Since there were a lot of interesting news stories today, I felt that a blog post of miscellany would be appropriate.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Friday that once again, America would be a nation ruled by laws. Ten of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay will have their day in court. However, I might be giving the AG and the Obama Administration a little too much praise. True, criminal charges and trials are long overdue and I'm glad to see that the Justice system finally found the WD-40 to get the gears turning. The fact remains that Guantanamo Bay remains an open wound in America's credibility and a rallying cry for Muslim extremists.

Furthermore, I still have doubts that the prisoners at Guantanamo will receive fair trials. Are confessions or evidence given under duress really admissable in a court (military or civilian)? Granted, the current Administration is in a tough situation that they themselves didn't create, but the fact remains that no fair, legal structure exists to deal with this situation. Five of the prisoners mentioned by Mr. Holder will be tried in a civilian court while the others will face a military court. Who determines which prisoner is tried where?

I definitely do not envy what the Administration has on its plate. I won't even touch the issues of the executions likely to result from these trials or the irrational fear of just keeping these prisoners on U.S. soil instead of limbo.

About a month ago, NASA smashed a probe into the south pole of the Moon to see if there was anything interesting (water). Apparently, they found a fair bit of water. This is an interesting discovery, but not terribly surprising and does very little to convince me that the Moon is a prime location for colonization. The fact remains that the Moon is a very dead and unexciting place. The Moon would be a great location for the second human colony or a huge observatory. If NASA/America wants to push manned exploration, Mars remains the most promising destination. It has an atmosphere and liquid water and low gravity which make it far more interesting that the Moon. Propellant can be produced on site and the low gravity makes Mars an ideal hub for human exploration (it's easier to get from Mars to the Moon than from the Earth to the Moon).

Unfortunately, the American space program is having an identity crisis, Russia and Europe are content with low orbit and China is looking for a nationalistic statement with their prospective Moon mission. Meanwhile, the weaponized Ebola and Von Neumann machines are desperate to make us regret not having a backup planet.

This week I started reading a book called "Tides of War" by Steven Pressfield. It's a bit of historical fiction about Alcibiades and the fateful Sicilian Expedition. Naturally, whenever I read it, I am reminded of the Sicilian Expeditions undertaken by the latest Bush Administration and continued by the current Administration. I will be the first to admit that the historical parallels between the Peloponnesian War and today are fairly weak, but the lesson is no less relevant.

Athens was on the rebound during the Peace of Nicias which ended the war against Sparta (low level conflicts continued elsewhere, but they were proxy wars at worst). The depleted treasury began to recover and the plague subsided when Atticans returned to their towns and farms. Then some backwater town in Sicily with loose ties to Athens called for help and a demagogic Athenian named Alcibiades decided to use this as an opportunity to expand the Athenian Empire. Three years, thousands of talents, hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of troops later, the Sicilian Expedition was over and, for all practical purposes, annihilated.

Athens went in with no regional allies, a crooked, hubristic leader and emerged poorer, weaker and at war with Sparta once more. Alcibiades was tried, in absentia during the campaign, for holding sacreligious parties and decided to switch sides. Command of the expedition fell into the hands of one of the few Athenians who opposed Alcibiades adventurism, Nicias. Prior to the beginning of the ill-fated campaign, he pleaded with the Athenian assembly to reconsider. Once Athens was committed, no one thought to call the ships back when things went awry.

Athenians learned the truth about national exceptionalism the hard way. Probably a lesson about the limits to imperial expansion in there, too (Teutoburg Forest is another good one). For the folks averse to "irrelevant" ancient history, the Soviet Union learned this lesson not even 30 years ago in an all too familiar setting.

You Might Want to Sit Down for this…

I’ve been pondering a way to break the proverbial ice locking in my little corner of the internet. Sure I could’ve posted about my internship or how the Forcier is with Michigan [sic] at last or my extreme discomfort when the Metro train shrieks like a banshee when going fast through dark tunnels, but that would be the same self-centered drivel I usually shovel onto the pile. It just so happens that a more noble and interesting topic found its way to me this week.

First some background information is required. As some may not yet know, I am now living in Alexandria, VA and I have an interesting job, with fantastic hours, but the financial compensation leaves much to be desired. I work as an intern at the National Security Archive at George Washington University in downtown DC. My boss is a research professor who works for the archive on a number of projects dealing with the history of nuclear weapons. I will admit that the topic of nuclear weapons policy is a morbid one and the more I read about it – it becomes a sordid subject. Nevertheless, I am always intrigued by the policy making process regarding nuclear weapons and its evolution throughout the Cold War.

I get to do all kinds of cool things like submitting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to government agencies and digging through the National Archives for relevant documents (often for the purpose of sending more FOIA requests). Like any job, there are some downsides. For one, the intern room also serves as a storage room and the intern chairs are uncomfortable. So I lack some creature comforts, the real downside is what I ran across this week: too much information.

One of the things I get to do is sift through excessively redacted government documents and try to find out what was excised. The best way to go about this is going through relevant published academic books and papers and, occasionally, other government documents. Very rarely do you come across something from 1945-1985 that is truly classified. Most weapons systems and diplomatic relationship have changed dramatically since then and full disclosure is hardly a threat to national security. So I was going through a batch of documents this week that were really tough cases. They were heavily redacted and fairly obscure.

One particular document was a 1971 hypothetical timeline of a nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the U.S. The timeline assumed a Soviet first strike, but it was oddly different from the typical timelines. Most civilian and military policy analysts agree (and plan) that a first strike would be opened with strikes from submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). SLBMs can best take advantage of the element of surprise since detection of launches is usually too late to mitigate damage. Most modern estimates predict that coastal command and control centers (a.k.a. Washington, D.C.) would have less than 15 minutes warning. More significantly, SLBMs also would be responsible for setting off EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) blasts that would disable most of the power grid. Strangely, the 1971 timeline excluded this element.

Anyway, this timeline was missing the timeframes (easy to find information, pointlessly redacted), moment-by-moment casualty estimates (pure speculation, but final estimates are also easy to find) and certain weapon systems (most prominent or secret 1971 weapons systems are mainstream or decommissioned today). While I was digging around for some answers I came across a report issued by the Office of Technology Assessment in response to a request from Congress for an assessment of the effects of a nuclear war. The report is aptly titled “The Effects of Nuclear War”. Usually when I read stuff like this, I’m able to stay pretty unemotional, but this one just hit me like a truck. It is a slightly long-ish read, so if you want the stuff that inspired me to write, read pages 15-39 and Appendix C. The whole thing is very well written and downright sobering.

Using Detroit as a case study was a bolt out of the blue and definitely hit close to home. Since most of the readers here have some familiarity with Detroit, I felt the urge to share. The cold discussion of the effects produced by varying the altitude and yield really hurts when dealing with a place that you know. The story in Appendix C is also a great read. It reminded me of The Road, minus the disturbing imagery.

Speaking of The Road, I really enjoyed the book, but I don’t know if I can go see the movie this fall. The imagery in the book was really intense and downright unsettling. I don’t know if I could handle that kind of stuff in a movie. Still, I think The Road is a great book to transfer onto film.

Fortunately, a lot has changed since that 1979 report came out. The chance of an all-out nuclear war is pretty slim for the foreseeable future. The U.S. has an administration that has shown limited interest in pursuing new nuclear weapons and is dedicated to stabilizing diplomatic relations with countries that possess large nuclear arsenals (thanks Kevin!).

Edit: I apologize for the hideous text formatting. My html knowledge is very basic and I guess trying to use a real word processor to write an 840 word blog post is a terrible idea. I doubt I will find the patience to fix this, hopefully the content makes up for the disheveled appearance.