Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

ALEXANDER.I.IN GENERAL.All early history is a record of wars. Peace was too uneventful to call forrecord. But mere record cannot fashion a science. The art of war has heencreated by the intellectual conceptions of a few great captains ;it has heen reducedto a science by the analysis of their recorded deeds. Strategy is war onthe map ; tactics is battlefield manoeuvring. Both depend less on rules thanon the brain, courage, and activity of the captain. Strategy has been of slowgrowth, and was, as a science, unknown to the ancients ; tactics was highlydeveloped, as were, within given limits, logistics and engineering. No study isso fruitful to the soldier as that of the history of great captains. From theirdeeds alone can the true instinct of war be gleaned. These pages propose tosketch briefly the typical events and the status of armies antedating Alexander,to show what then was already known of war ;and, by a relation of Alexander'scampaigns, to illustrate his influence upon the art.The earliest histories are but a record of wars. The seasonsof peace were too uneventful to call for historians.Thesharply defined events which arrest attention, because followedby political or territorial changes, have always beenwars, and these have been the subject-matter of nearly allearly writings. The greatest of poems would never haveseen the light had not Homer been inspired by the warlikedeeds of heroes ; nor would Herodotus and Thucydides havepenned their invaluable pages had not the stirring events ofthe Persian and Peloponnesian wars impelled them to thetask. Xenophon, Arrian, Caesar, are strictly military historians; and the works of the other great writers of ancient