#487： Leadership Lessons From the 3 Greatest Ancient Commanders
Episode Stats
Summary
Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar were three of the greatest generals of ancient history, but what made them great, and what can we learn from them about leadership? My guest explores these questions in his new book, Masters of Command: Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Alexander the
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Great, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar, three of the greatest generals of antiquity, but what made them
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great and what can we learn from them about leadership? My guest explores these questions
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in his book, Masters of Command, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership.
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His name is Barry Strauss, and he's a classicist and a military historian at Cornell University.
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Today on the show, we discuss the traits all three of these men possessed that made them
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such great military leaders, including audacity, ambition, and a little bit of luck. Barry walks
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us through the five stages of war that each of these legendary commanders navigated and
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where each thrived and floundered. Barry then makes the case that while Alexander, Hannibal,
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and Caesar each experienced success in the short term, in the long run, all of them failed
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to achieve their ultimate aims because they became victims of their own success. We end
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our conversation discussing what these commanders' shortcomings can teach modern leaders in any
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kind of field, and whether it's possible to be both a bold visionary leader and a great
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manager. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash mastersofcommand.
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So you are a classicist, military historian, and you've written this book, Masters of Command,
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Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership. And you use these guys, these
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great generals, to explore what makes a great military leader. How did you decide on these
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Well, it was kind of easy to choose them. They really are the big three of ancient military
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history, and the most famous generals, I would say. And also, they come as a set. Hannibal looked back
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on Alexander as his role model, and so did Caesar. Each of them, in a way, measured himself against
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Alexander. So the three of them really are a set of great generals. They're very famous. They have
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fantastic authors write about them from the ancient world. They're remembered today. They still influence
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generals today, soldiers. They're still studied. So it was kind of easy to choose them.
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And another thing that you did really well is, as you compare to contrast them,
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their military careers, there was a pattern to it that was very similar amongst all three of them.
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Yes. So I chose them because each of them was a risk taker. Each of them loved mobile warfare. Each
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of them started a war against an enemy who, in principle, was unbeatable. The enemy, in each case,
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outnumbered them greatly, had more financial resources, and had a much greater navy. They either
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had no navy or a much smaller navy. And yet, each of them defeated his enemy. In Hannibal's case,
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of course, in the end, he lost, but he won some spectacular victories. Alexander and Caesar did
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indeed defeat his enemy. And each of them, in spite of great military success and a certain amount of
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political success, none of the three of them was able to achieve his final goal. None of the three of
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them was able to achieve the settlement that he wanted. So there's something sad about them as
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well. And we'll get into why they didn't achieve their final goal. But let's kind of do just some
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rough thumbnail sketches of these guys, because we've heard lots about them. I mean, they're sort
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of icons of Western history, Western culture. We have cultural references to them, Caesar crossing the
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Rubicon, Hannibal, the elephants through the Alps. So let's talk about Alexander. So all these guys
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were risk-takers. But what else about Alexander that we often get overlooked about him?
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So Alexander was a king, and he was the son of a great conqueror. His father was Philip of Macedon,
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the man who really put Macedon on the map, and took Macedon from being kind of a wreck,
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a messed up, chaotic state with a lot of potential on the outside of the Greek world. He brought it to
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the center. He unified it. He created a new military system, conquered all of the Greek city-states,
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and prepared Macedon for what he saw as his life's work, which is to be going to war against the
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Persian Empire, this giant to the east of Macedon, but one that seemed to have been past its prime.
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So Alexander inherited this as a young man at the age of 20 when his father was assassinated.
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And not many people were convinced that Alexander was up to the task and could equal what the great
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man had done. But in fact, he was every bit up to the task and did what his father wanted to do,
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and then some. So he'd been prepared all his life for war. He'd already commanded the Macedonian
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cavalry in a battle when he was 18. And now he showed himself to be every inch a king and ready to take
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his country to the next step. So he had a great preparation. Also, his father had prepared him all the
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way he had given him, the greatest tutor imaginable. His tutor was none other than Aristotle, the premier
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philosopher of the ancient world. Alexander was highly intelligent. His mother was a stormy,
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brilliant woman named Olympias who convinced her son that he was unstoppable. He believed that through
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his mother, Alexander believed that he was descended from none other than the Greek hero Achilles,
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the hero of Epic. Alexander took Achilles as his role model in a way, in some ways a great role
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model. Achilles was Greece's greatest warrior and the hero of its most important literary work,
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the Iliad. But Achilles was also a tragic figure, somebody who died young and never succeeded in
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conquering Troy. So a somewhat paradoxical choice on Alexander's part. But like Achilles, he was
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geared for greatness. And so why did he, why did his father and why did he decide to conquer the
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Persians? Like what was it that they hoped would happen after they conquered the Persians? And then
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not only did Alexander want to conquer the Persians, but like he also wanted to go on and conquer the
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rest of Asia. Like why? So the Persian empire was the greatest empire that not only the Greek world,
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but the world period, the greatest empire that the world had ever seen. And it controlled an empire
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that stretched about 3,000 miles from what is nowadays Western Turkey, all the way to what is
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nowadays the Indo-Pakistani border. So enormous empire, enormous wealth, enormous power. But it was weak.
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You know, it had a series of revolts over decades. A Greek mercenary army had fought its way through
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the empire, defeated a Persian army and made its way home successfully. The Persians, by the same
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token, had interfered in Greek wars over the decades as well. So the two sides, the Greeks and the Persians
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had been at war with each other. I mean, for Philip and Alexander, it just looked like it was ripe
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for the taking. They believed that they could conquer this empire, or at least part of it,
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and bring it under their control. If you wanted to look at a more noble motive, well, the Western
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part of the Persian empire, much of it consisted of Greek speakers who were under Persian control.
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And Philip, Alexander, the Macedonians and the Greeks could have thought, well, we can liberate these
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people from the Persians. It's a bit more complicated because some of them were perfectly happy under Persian
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role and didn't want to be liberated. And some of the Greeks felt that they were the oppressed ones
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because now that the Macedonians controlled them. But mostly it was the power, the wealth,
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the glory, the possibility of expanding, being a great conqueror. This was something that for kings
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in the ancient world was a no-brainer. Conquest, you wanted to be a great conqueror.
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Okay. And that will come back also to bite him in the butt, possibly later on. We'll talk about that.
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But let's move on to Hannibal. Hannibal's an interesting character because he is from
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Carthage. And a lot of people, they know of Carthage in the ancient world, but they don't
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know really what role it played in the ancient world. It's in Africa. So tell us about Hannibal
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Like Alexander, Hannibal was the son of a great general. His father, Hamilcar Barca,
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was Carthage's leading commander. He successfully commanded Carthaginian forces in the First Punic
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War. Although the Carthaginians lost that war to Rome, Hamilcar himself was undefeated. Then he came
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back to North Africa and put down a rebellion by the mercenary troops in Carthage's army. And then he
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left Carthage, left North Africa, went to Spain and carved out a new empire for Carthage in the south
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of Spain. He brought his young son, Hannibal, with him to Spain and raised him to be a great
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soldier. He also raised him to hate Rome. There's a story, we don't know if it's true or legend,
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that at the age of nine, his father made Hannibal swear on an altar to not rest until he won revenge
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on Rome. Carthage and Rome were the two greatest military and political powers of the central
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Mediterranean. And they clashed in the middle of the third century BC in a war for control of the
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island of Sicily. For centuries, Carthage had controlled the western part of Sicily and was
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eager to take over the eastern part. Rome jumped into the Sicilian waters in the middle of the third
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century and decided to try to push Carthage out of Sicily. It was a very audacious thing to do. But
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the Romans succeeded in a war that lasted a generation. They finally succeeded by winning this
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war on sea. And as I said, Hamilcar, Hannibal's father, bounced back, undefeated himself in this war
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and bounced back by winning Carthage, a new empire in the south of Spain. Now he's killed in battle
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when Hannibal's still a young man. He's succeeded, replaced by Hannibal's brother-in-law. When Hannibal's
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brother-in-law in turn is killed, the army turns to Hannibal as their new commander. And Hannibal has
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been groomed by his father to be a great general. And he himself is a brilliant, talented, charismatic,
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visionary leader who is utterly up to the task.
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And so give us some background here, some context. So this was Rome. They were fighting
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Okay. And this was not too long after Alexander. I mean, one thing that was interesting is that
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these guys were within just a few hundred years of each other.
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Yeah. So Alexander dies in 323 BC and Hannibal takes, Hannibal's born in 247 BC, so less than a
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century later. The first war between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginian Republic, they're
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both republics, takes place in the years 264 to 241 BC. And then in 218, the new war between Rome and
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Hannibal. The second Punic Wars is called, or Hannibal's Wars is sometimes called, that's when
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that war breaks out. So a little over a century after the death of Alexander.
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And what was Hannibal's military aim by taking on the Romans?
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Hannibal's military aim was twofold. First of all, the Romans threatened Carthage's new empire
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in Spain. Hannibal wanted to secure that empire and get the Romans out of his hair. Secondly,
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he wanted to destroy the Roman Confederacy. So Rome's power rested on its alliance system in central
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Italy. Carthage's power rested on its alliance system as well. But the Roman alliance was particularly,
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particularly formidable, particularly strong. And what Hannibal wanted to do was to break this
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alliance up, to drive a wedge between Rome and its allies, to pry them apart, and to deprive Rome
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of the ability to threaten Carthage ever again in the future. He didn't want to destroy the city of
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Rome. That wasn't his plan. That was beyond him, he knew. He simply wanted to break Roman power. I say
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simply, it was a huge undertaking. But he wanted to make sure that Rome could no longer threaten
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So let's move on to Caesar. And this, again, Caesar wasn't too long after Hannibal. So Caesar's
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interesting case because he was an individual who actually invaded his home country. Tell us about
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Yes. So Hannibal dies in 183 BC and Caesar's born 83 years later in 100 BC. Caesar was a member of the
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Roman aristocracy. Unlike Hannibal Alexander, he didn't have a father who was a great general.
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His father was a politician and a commander, but not absolutely of the first rank. But Caesar burned
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with ambition. Even as a young man, he was a soldier and he won a very high military honor. And he
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started a political career early on. And he wanted to become top dog in Rome. And he wanted to succeed
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both in politics and in the military. And his career is successful in both of those areas. In his
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40s, he takes on a great undertaking. He decides he wants to conquer Gaul. And Gaul is basically France
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and Belgium in our terms. He undertakes a war against the various peoples of Gaul. They are warlike,
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but disorganized, and they don't have the discipline or the managerial skill or the political skill that
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the Romans have. Nonetheless, it is not an easy thing to conquer them. And Caesar carries it off
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in a series of lightning campaigns that take about a decade. He becomes the conqueror of France and
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Belgium, as well as a little bit of Germany, and even invades Britain, although he doesn't conquer it
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for Rome. He's not able to keep it. It makes him one of Rome's greatest generals ever in all the
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history of the Roman Republic. It also makes him the wealthiest man in the Roman world. His ambition
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is to go back to Italy and to win every honor there is and to win the height of political power and to
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be recognized by the other members of the nobility that govern the Roman Republic, to be recognized
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as the first man in Rome. His political enemies think that Caesar is just too much. They think he's
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too ambitious, too egotistical, that he will never respect them and share power with them equally.
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So they decide to try to get rid of him. The Roman Senate actually takes his command away from him.
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They fire him as general and say, put down your arms. Caesar instead decides to go to war against his own
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country. He begins a civil war to defend what he says, both of all the rights of the Roman people,
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because he is a champion of the poor, but also to defend his own status, his own dignity, his own rank,
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and his own honor. So one thing that's already popped out to me as you describe these three guys
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and their aims, it was both a mixture of just personal ambition, personal glory, but they also,
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I don't know, presented it as they were doing something for something larger, for the greater
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good for everyone else. Absolutely. That's absolutely true. Alexander said that he was
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invading the Persian Empire. Actually, he said he was doing it to get revenge for the Persian invasion
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of Greece 150 years earlier when the Persians had taken the city of Athens for time and burned
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the temples of the gods on the Athenian necropolis. And he also said he was going to liberate the
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Greeks under Persian rule. Hannibal wanted to get revenge for his own country, for what Rome had
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done, bring the country national security. And when he got to Italy, he also said he was there
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to liberate the Italians. Italy for the Italians was Hannibal's motto. And Caesar, of course,
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said that he was fighting both for the rights and freedom of the Roman people, but also for the rank
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and honor that were important to him and that were actually the cement of the Roman political system.
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Just as Americans today might, for example, fight for freedom more generally, so a Roman might fight
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for honor and rank. So let's talk about these attributes these guys shared and that led to their
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success and also their failure. So you mentioned already that all three of them were incredible
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risk-takers, but you also say there's other attributes they all shared in varying degrees.
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Sure. Well, you know, they were all immensely ambitious. In ancient Greek, the word for ambition
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is love of honor. And I think that really works for all three of them. They were also what the
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ancients called great-souled men. They had enormously high opinions of themselves, and they aimed at great
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things. Abraham Lincoln spoke about these kind of men as members of what he called the tribe of the
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eagle. And he said that members of this tribe achieve great things, but they can be destabilizing
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to their own society. And I think that's true of all three of them. They had some other qualities as
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well. First of all, they had great leadership skills, both in politics and in war. They had very
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good judgment, and they were able to make decisions on the fly. That's also tremendously important for
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them. They did not need to take a lot of time or to agonize over their decisions. Risk-takers, as I
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mentioned, they also showed great agility. They were flexible. They were able to roll with the
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punches. They excelled in more than one form of warfare, for instance. They were all great commanders
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in set battles, but they also had the ability to engage either in unconventional warfare or in
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sieges. They all had access to great infrastructure, to great resources, money and manpower. None of them
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could have done what he did without access to great military. They were strategists, both in the
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literal sense of the term in ancient Greek. A strategos is a general, but they also had the vision
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thing, as the late George Bush put it. They were able to think big, and they had a grand strategy as
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well. Sad to say, they were all capable of terror. They were all capable of killing innocent people in
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order to make their point, and they all engaged in terror. On a lighter note, they were geniuses at
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branding, at marketing, at selling themselves, and taking simple themes, putting them forward so that
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the mass of their soldiers could understand it, and the masses at home could understand it as well.
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And they were all lucky. Napoleon said that he wanted to have lucky generals. I would say that
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their luck was so extraordinary that we have to call it something else, fortune, or if you will,
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divine providence. Nothing else can explain the way things just broke right for each of them at various
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points in his career. I mean, what are some examples of that, of things breaking right for
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them just because of dumb luck for these three guys? So Alexander had a very dangerous enemy whose
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name no one has ever heard of. His name is Memnon of Rhodes. He was a Greek general who was a mercenary
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in service of the Persians. And Memnon came up with the brilliant strategy of taking the war home to
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Greece. The Persian king gave him the resources to have an enormous navy that outclassed Alexander's
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puny navy. And Memnon launched an offensive to cross the Aegean islands to island hop the Aegean
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and land a large army back in Greece that would have forced Alexander to turn around early in his
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campaign and go fight in his homeland. Immensely successful strategy. And then suddenly,
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Memnon dies in the midst of the campaign. It's really unexpected, so unexpected that a modern
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novelist claims he was poisoned by a Macedonian plot. But in fact, he probably dies of a stroke or
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heart attack, natural causes. But that's just immensely lucky for him to happen at this particular time.
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Caesar has a number of moments when he is almost killed in battle, but he survives it. And that's
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lucky as well. Hannibal's immensely lucky in that the Romans play exactly into his strategic hands.
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Hannibal wants the Romans to fight pitched battles against him. Wiser heads tried to prevail in Rome and
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got them to say, we can't do this. Instead, we should adopt the scorched earth policy and not give Hannibal
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what he wants for fighting in the battle. But instead, in the end, they lose out in the political
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debates in Rome and the Romans decide to field the biggest army they've ever put onto the battlefield
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and use this to fight Hannibal. He couldn't have asked for something better. It's playing exactly into
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his hands. So that's an example of dumb luck really helping him.
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So all these guys had these attributes in varying degrees, but did some of them possess more of them
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than the other? For example, was someone more ambitious or more willing to take risk than others?
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I think they were all equally ambitious and risk takers. I would say that Caesar has a remarkable
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ability to be strategic about his risk taking. In strategic terms, Caesar was actually fairly cautious
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strategically. One of the reasons he's so successful is that he balances tactical risk with strategic
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caution. For example, after crossing the Rubicon and conquering Italy, he was tempted to cross the
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Adriatic and follow his leading enemy, Pompey, and his army to the east to fight a battle in Greece. But
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he knew that Pompey had tremendous allied armies in Spain on Caesar's western flank. So instead of doing
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the ultra risky thing and crossing onto Greece, Caesar instead decides to march against Pompey's armies in
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Spain and protect his flank before turning eastward for the climactic battle. So Caesar
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is really good at balancing risk with calculation. In other terms, I would say that Hannibal is by far the best
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battlefield commander. All three of them are really great battlefield commanders, but nobody quite has
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the really amazing agility that Hannibal shows on the battlefield. The ability to know just how to calculate the use of force.
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For example, so the Battle of Gettysburg famously begins when Robert E. Lee loses control of his army. He tells them
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don't start a fight with the Union army, but they don't listen to him, and they do, and so Lee is forced into this
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battle. Hannibal faces a similar situation in northern Italy when his men disobey his command. They try to
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provoke a battle with the Romans. Hannibal pulls them back, and Hannibal punishes them and manages to
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make sure that he doesn't have to fight a battle on favorable terms. It's that kind of fingertip control of
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his military that really makes Hannibal outstanding. And as far as branding, well, Alexander really is the
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great master of branding. He makes sure that he has the greatest sculptors of his day, present his image
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to the other Greeks in a series of statues, and these statues of Alexander are still immensely famous. We see
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them in all the great museums of the world. On top of that, he has himself proclaimed a god, and this has
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some resonance. He comes up with a new title for himself, the king of Asia. Persian kings had never
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called themselves the king of Asia before, and his men expected him to be the mere king of Macedon.
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And finally, when he gets into Persian lands, he strategically takes on certain items of Persian
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dress in order to appeal to his new subjects. So he's able to look both ways, to both be a Greek hero,
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but also be someone who would appeal to Persians. He's very flexible when it comes to marketing,
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Maybe I remember incorrectly. Didn't Alexander go visit the grave of Achilles, or where they thought
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Yes, he did. So the Greeks had set up a colony at what they thought was Troy. They called it Ilium. It was a
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Greek city. And one of the first things that Alexander did when he crossed the Hellespont and went into
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Persian territory was he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of his ancestor, Achilles. This was also
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something that would resonate well with the Greeks and show how much he respected Greek culture.
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There were some Greeks who said that as a Macedonian, Alexander wasn't even a Greek,
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and he had no claim to Greekness. But this was a way for Alexander, shrewdly, to show that he was
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every inch of Greek. Thanks for bringing that up.
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Yeah, the branding, the personal branding there. We're going to take a quick break for your words
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from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So throughout the book, besides highlighting these
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different attributes that all these guys had, you also talked there's five stages of war that
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all three of them saw, and that each stage has its own dangers to it. So what are these stages? And
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then we can talk about where these guys excelled at or floundered at afterwards.
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Sure. So what I call the five stages of war, the first is attack. You have to have a battle plan,
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and you have to have a way of beginning. The second is resistance. As the saying goes,
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no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. And so they had to decide what to do when the enemy
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struck back. The third is clash. They had to come up with a way to force the enemy to confront them
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on the battlefield and to win. But it's not enough to win a battle victory or a series of battle
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victories. That brings us to the fourth stage, which is closing the net or sealing the deal,
00:27:23.080
if you will, getting the enemy to admit that he has been defeated and to be willing to make terms for
00:27:28.920
peace. And then finally, the last stage, knowing when to stop, knowing when to stop. And this is in
00:27:37.360
some ways the most difficult stage for a conqueror, because the same reasons that make men join the
00:27:43.220
tribe of the eagle makes it very difficult for them to step down and go into a cage, as it were.
00:27:49.840
Well, let's walk through these five stages with, say, Alexander, so we can see that in action there.
00:27:55.100
So Alexander's plan is to take the Macedonian army and to cross the Hellespont with the help of his
00:28:03.760
small navy, and then to get the Persian army to agree to fight him in the thing that he's really
00:28:11.160
good at, which is a pitched battle. The Macedonian army is the greatest army in the world when it comes
00:28:16.820
to battlefield confrontation. Luckily for him, the Persians play right into his hand. Instead of doing
00:28:25.480
what would have been wiser for them to do, to engage in a scorched earth policy and not fighting,
00:28:30.680
they agree to fight a battle. In fact, a series of battles against him. Three great battles in which
00:28:38.460
Alexander is able to defeat the resistance and to carry out the clash, which is defeating
00:28:45.580
the Persian army in set battles. But Persia still is a very strong country and it still has
00:28:52.140
military resources. Alexander has to know how to close the net, which he does by invading Iran
00:28:59.580
going after the remaining Persian army and defeating them. Now comes a more difficult stage. The Persians
00:29:08.980
retreat until their Central Asian redoubts. He decides to convince his army that they now have to march
00:29:17.580
into the Stans, if you will, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, even Kyrgyzstan, in order to defeat the Persian army
00:29:25.540
and to engage in unconventional tactics and asymmetric warfare. They're no longer fighting
00:29:32.880
pitched battles. They are engaging hit and run raids. They're fighting in terrain that Alexander's
00:29:39.980
not used to. And he has to retool his army to fight in these conditions. And he also has to accept
00:29:47.360
rather large casualties. But he pulls all that off. Then unfortunately, Alexander decides this is not
00:29:53.960
enough. He wants more. He wants to cross the Hindu Kush and to invade what the Greeks called India. For us,
00:30:02.740
that's Pakistan as well as India. This is dragging his men much further than they want to go into
00:30:09.360
climactic conditions, the monsoon that they don't want to deal with. And although Alexander does win a
00:30:15.420
pitch battle there, his men mutiny, and he is forced to go back to what has now become his base,
00:30:23.260
which is Babylon, the Persian capital in Mesopotamia, in southern Iraq. At this point,
00:30:31.060
you would say, okay, Alexander, you've conquered the Persian empire. You're in your early 30s.
00:30:36.640
You've had your fun. It's time to settle down, to put your stamp on this empire and to create a
00:30:44.140
dynasty that can succeed you. But Alexander does not agree. Instead, he is planning a new military
00:30:53.160
expedition to conquer Arabia, which would probably mostly be the coast of Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula.
00:31:00.520
It's a joint land-sea operation. And he is hatching plans to turn west and go to war both against
00:31:09.800
Carthage and against the Roman Republic. So for Alexander, there is no limit. He wants to carry a
00:31:17.340
war without end. But just before he launches the Arabian expedition, he dies unexpectedly, just before
00:31:26.700
his 33rd birthday in June of the year 323 BC. Probably he died of a virus, a virus that might
00:31:38.380
have been made worse by the fact that he had had seven battle wounds in his years of fighting,
00:31:44.420
some of them serious. But there is a minority opinion in ancient sources that says that he was
00:31:50.360
Persian, that he was poisoned. Minority opinion in ancient sources that says that he was poisoned
00:31:55.280
by his own men because they were terrified of him and they didn't want to keep fighting.
00:32:02.240
There's an outside chance that that's true. So Alexander is a supreme example of somebody who
00:32:09.500
And also the other thing that upset his men, talk about, is that he was becoming too much of a Persian.
00:32:14.200
That upset he's taking Persian wives, Asian wives, dressing like a Persian, kind of thinking
00:32:19.740
himself as a Persian. He's like, everyone's like, wait, you're a Macedonian. Why are you doing that?
00:32:23.780
Right. Yeah. This is a problem that conquerors often have. It's not just Alexander. When you conquer
00:32:29.340
a new territory, you can't simply crush the new people that you've conquered. You need to somehow
00:32:36.480
make your peace with them. This is especially true of ancient armies because they don't have the
00:32:41.100
technology, either communications, military, anyway, to control these areas without getting
00:32:46.600
some degree of cooperation from the people that they have conquered. They need to get buy-in.
00:32:53.020
And Alexander's way of getting buy-in was to be able to say to his new subjects,
00:32:57.600
I'm one of you guys. I'm not just a Greco-Macedonian who's come in to make your life miserable,
00:33:02.760
but I respect your customs. I'm going to meet you halfway. Alexander meets them halfway and then some.
00:33:10.900
As you said, he takes Persian wives or Iranian wives. He takes wives who come from the east and
00:33:18.620
he also recruits Iranians to serve in his new army and he forces his men to take Iranian wives as well
00:33:27.660
who are going to give birth to sons who, from the point of view of Macedonians, are half-breeds,
00:33:34.480
they would have called them. They were racists and they would have looked down on them. Many people
00:33:38.560
in the ancient world were racists. It's not specific to the Macedonians or the Greeks. But Alexander
00:33:43.840
is looking at a broader canvas and in a way, he's remarkably un-racist. He wants to create this new
00:33:53.080
army, this new ruling group that will be a mixture of Greeks and Macedonians. He actually famously gives
00:33:58.420
a banquet in which he prays for peace and harmony between the Macedonians and the Persians. To us,
00:34:08.180
this looks like a noble ideal. To the Macedonians, this is, whoa, we went to war for Macedon to conquer
00:34:16.240
these people. We didn't go to war to make friends with them or to mate with them or to create sons who
00:34:22.460
will be half Persian. Alexander is taking his men farther than they want to go.
00:34:28.760
And so this is a great example of, you know, Alexander, he was successful in the short term
00:34:33.400
with his military games. He did invade Persia and conquered most of Asia, a lot of Asia. But after
00:34:39.260
he died, that thing just collapsed because he was so busy conquering and expanding that he didn't really
00:34:45.000
spend time building infrastructure for the newly acquired territory that he got.
00:34:48.800
No, exactly right. Yeah. I mean, Alexander, what he needed to do was to create a dynasty
00:34:55.440
and to ensure that he would have heirs who would follow him, who would be able to keep this new,
00:35:02.400
vast new empire together. And he also needed to work on the ideology of the empire, the rationale for
00:35:10.280
it. He needed to build up a ruling group that was going to be loyal to him. Instead, he dies just
00:35:17.520
before his 33rd birthday, supposedly on his deathbed when asked who he wanted to leave
00:35:23.560
his empire to. Supposedly, he said to the strongest, meaning that he knew that there was going to be a
00:35:30.360
civil war. And there was. And those civil wars last for 50 years. They're very bloody. By the time
00:35:37.540
they're done, the Persians haven't come back. His empire is in Greco-Macedonian hands, but it's split up
00:35:44.360
into a series of successor kingdoms. No one is able to hold together this thing that Alexander had
00:35:50.840
conquered. And that paved the way for the Roman Republic to rise. And let's talk about Hannibal
00:35:57.200
first. Where did he flounder out in those five stages? Because he did well, it seemed like, in a lot
00:36:01.760
of them. Yeah, he did. I mean, the attack was brilliant. He marched a land army 900 miles from
00:36:08.560
southern Spain, over the Pyrenees, over the Rhone River, including taking elephants over the Rhone
00:36:13.920
River, and then over the Alps in the winter, and lands in northern Italy. He loses most of his army.
00:36:22.480
So to desertion, to the weather, to resistance from tribes he meets along the way. So he's not there in
00:36:30.660
northern Italy with a big army he wanted. But he immediately gets new allies and wins a series of
00:36:35.900
victories over the Romans. And he defeats them in a cavalry battle in northern Italy, then a combined
00:36:42.820
arms battle in northern Italy, then a crushing defeat in central Italy at Lake Trasimene. And
00:36:48.640
finally, his greatest victory of all, the one that went down in history books, the Battle of Cannae,
00:36:54.700
August 2nd, 216 BC, in which he crushes a Roman army in the plains of southern Italy. And he's convinced
00:37:02.080
that the Romans are now going to give him what he wants, that they're going to surrender. There's
00:37:06.680
northern Italy and southern Italy have risen in revolt on the side of Hannibal against the Roman
00:37:12.680
Republic and against the Roman alliance. But as one of Hannibal's commanders says to him afterwards,
00:37:19.340
you know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but you don't know what to do with it. You don't know how to
00:37:23.720
use a victory. Hannibal, for instance, refused to march on Rome after the victory at Cannae,
00:37:29.520
as one of his advisors wanted him to. He said his army was too battered, too bruised, they needed
00:37:34.880
time to recover, and that the defenses of Rome in any case were too strong. But in later years,
00:37:40.100
he looked back on this as a mistake, that he should have stuck the knife in, that he should
00:37:44.040
have marched on Rome, however difficult it was, and that he might have terrified the Romans into
00:37:48.980
surrender or terrified some of their allies into leaving them. The problem for Hannibal is that the
00:37:56.080
Romans are a bit like Britain in 1940 against the Germans after Dunkirk. They say, well, we've lost,
00:38:02.880
it's true, but we don't announce that we've lost. We don't acknowledge it because we believe that
00:38:08.960
strategically, the odds are pretty good for us. We've got the British Navy, there's potential of
00:38:14.560
allies, particularly in the United States, so we're going to keep on fighting. The Romans are
00:38:19.520
somewhat similar. They say, yeah, well, we've lost really great battles, but we still have all our
00:38:25.000
allies in central Italy. We still have our fleet, so come and get us, and we still have our walls.
00:38:30.860
You can't win. And they go on to rebuild. The Romans have gone to rebuild. The allies in central
00:38:36.420
Italy are tied to the Romans very closely. The Romans have not only defeated them, but they've used
00:38:41.300
a combination of carrots and sticks to bring those allies into the Roman alliance and to make ties
00:38:47.240
with the ruling classes of all these cities. In some cases, they're blood ties because the ruling
00:38:52.120
classes intermarry with the Roman elite. Hannibal's not good at breaking these bonds that hold central
00:39:00.880
Italy into the Roman alliance. To do so, he would have had to lay siege to the cities of central Italy.
00:39:07.400
Hannibal's not a siege craft kind of guy. His sieges in Spain have not gone well. They've been
00:39:13.900
frustrating. He was badly wounded. He's a mobile warfare kind of guy. So Hannibal wants to take the
00:39:21.340
war to Sicily, to Sardinia. He wants to recapture the cities. He wants to get new allies in the Greek
00:39:29.720
world where he does have an alliance with the Macedonian king, but not much comes of it.
00:39:35.640
And the Romans are able to rebuild. They rebuild their army. They defeat the Carthaginians in
00:39:42.520
Sicily. And worse for him, all along, the Romans have been wanting to open a second front in Spain
00:39:47.940
with limited success. But they finally pull it off because the other problem that Hannibal runs into
00:39:55.620
is that in warfare, if you have a brilliant new way of doing things and you don't defeat the enemy,
00:40:01.260
if the enemy is any good, the enemy is going to figure out how to do this brilliant new way as
00:40:06.000
well. Case in point, the Second World War, the Germans have blitzkrieg, and their enemies eventually
00:40:11.940
figure out how to do blitzkrieg of their own. So Hannibal's worst nightmare is a Roman survivor of
00:40:19.200
the Battle of Cannae. It's a man named Scipio, a general named Scipio, who comes from one of the first
00:40:25.940
families of Roman warfare. And Scipio understands that Hannibal is able to run rings around the
00:40:33.300
Roman army because of the professionalism of his troops and the ability of his troops to carry out
00:40:39.920
combined arms tactics in which the infantry and the cavalry work well together, something the Romans
00:40:46.000
were never good at. Scipio rebuilds the Roman army to be able to do this sort of thing. Hannibal is also
00:40:52.800
good at tricks and ambushes, and Scipio is as well. And Hannibal portrays himself as kind of a god,
00:41:00.780
or at least someone who is the favor of the gods, in particular of Hercules, who is a god for the
00:41:07.960
Carthaginians as well as for the Greeks and Romans, and Scipio does something like this as well. He leads
00:41:14.180
an army to Spain, and through an ambush, he captures the Carthaginian capital city of New Carthage, modern
00:41:23.120
Carthaginia in southeastern Spain. And then he goes on to defeat the Carthaginians in battle and force
00:41:30.640
the Carthaginians out of Spain. So they lose the jewel in the crown of their empire. Hannibal's still in
00:41:38.940
Italy, but he's not able to get the Romans to admit defeat. He's not able to dislodge the Romans
00:41:45.020
from their alliance in central Italy. The attempt to reconquer Sicily fails. The Romans inflict a
00:41:53.820
bloody defeat on the Carthaginians there. The Carthaginian home government, which has never been
00:42:00.100
without its suspicions of Hannibal and suspicions of his family and what they want to do, is not giving
00:42:06.140
him the kind of support that he would absolutely want either. At this point, Scipio proves that he
00:42:14.800
is truly a master of warfare because he's not just a great battlefield general, but he is also a great
00:42:21.740
diplomat as well. And he now launches his most impressive coup. It's years in the making. It takes
00:42:29.340
years of cajoling. One of Hannibal's aces was his alliance with Numidia. Numidia is the equivalent
00:42:37.880
of what is today Algeria. The Numidians are superb horsemen. They've got one thing that the
00:42:44.100
Carthaginians absolutely need. They've got a light cavalry. This light cavalry is incredibly fast and
00:42:50.380
mobile. It's absolutely key to Hannibal's battlefield victories. What Scipio is able to do is he is able to
00:42:58.620
convince the Numidians to defect from Carthage and to join Rome. It is not an easy process. It's very
00:43:06.180
long. It's very complicated. It's got its own set of plots and almost operatic connections involving a
00:43:14.960
Numidian princess who tries to save the day for Carthage but is forced in the end to commit suicide.
00:43:21.420
But with the help of Numidia, Scipio is able to bring the war back to North Africa to force Hannibal
00:43:30.160
to leave Italy and force him to roll the dice on one final great battle in Tunisia. A battle that
00:43:39.060
because Scipio now has his Numidian ally, because he's pried this away from Carthage, that Scipio is able
00:43:46.880
to win and finally force Hannibal and the Carthaginians to win defeat. So this is an epic
00:43:53.040
war that goes back and forth. It's got these two stunning commanders, Hannibal and Scipio,
00:43:59.380
if you will, to Napoleon and Wellington of the Second Punic War. It finally ends in a Roman victory.
00:44:06.100
So it sounds like for Hannibal, he was a fantastic combat commander, but long-term strategy,
00:44:12.140
even the politics, the diplomacy, that was a slight blind spot for him?
00:44:17.120
Yeah, I would say maybe not a blind spot, but he didn't have the absolute mastery of it
00:44:22.620
that Alexander and Caesar had. I think that was his difficulty. I mean, there are those who would say
00:44:30.380
Hannibal's problem was that he should never have started the war in the first place.
00:44:34.180
This was a bit of vanity on his part to think that he could have defeated the Roman Republic.
00:44:37.820
I'm not sure. I think that, I think there's a lot to be said for his decision to go to war
00:44:43.800
against Rome. Rome really was threatening Carthage's empire in Spain. But I think that
00:44:48.680
after having defeated, after having inflicted great defeat on Rome, I think Hannibal should
00:44:53.380
have gone back to Spain, declared victory, and built up his resources there.
00:45:03.200
He got defeated. Alexander, he won, but lost in the long run. The same thing happened with Caesar.
00:45:09.580
So this is a man who climbed up the ranks of the Roman military, conquered his home country,
00:45:17.260
became the first man of Rome, the first Caesar. But it seemed like a victory, but it also didn't
00:45:23.020
last for him either. I mean, he ended up getting killed.
00:45:25.880
He ends up getting killed. He's assassinated, of course, on the odds of March, March 15th,
00:45:32.180
44 BC. And he's assassinated in a way because he wins too much. I mean, he wants to become the
00:45:41.420
first man in the Roman Republic, but instead he destroys the Roman Republic and he proclaims
00:45:49.100
himself dictator for life, a position which was completely illegal. He couldn't be dictator for
00:45:54.820
life. It's a new constitutional position. On top of that, you know, he's a famous lover,
00:46:01.960
a Latin lover, if you will. And his most famous conquest happens to be a queen, the queen of
00:46:07.300
Egypt, Cleopatra, by whom he has a son, at least she claims it's Caesar's son, Ptolemy XV,
00:46:14.920
the next king of Egypt to everybody calls Caesarian or little Caesar. And he himself flirts with
00:46:23.760
royal affectations. He wears royal robes and gets honor such as no Roman had ever had.
00:46:31.300
On top of that, he has a problem similar to Alexander. He's trying to balance the loyalty
00:46:37.240
of his old supporters with the new ones who he brings into his army. Like Alexander, he says,
00:46:43.700
you can't just crush the people you conquer. You need to win their loyalty. So Caesar famously,
00:46:49.100
after winning the Roman civil war, instead of executing his former opponents, he pardons them.
00:46:55.740
He gives them clemency, as he calls it. But this doesn't work for two reasons. First of all,
00:47:02.280
it offends and alienates his old supporters who say, hey, wait a minute. What about us? Why are you being
00:47:07.840
so nice to these new guys? And secondly, the way he gives them clemency is kind of offensive. He makes
00:47:13.020
them beg for it. Please, oh great Caesar, please forgive me for what I have done. As if there was
00:47:18.500
something wrong with defending their country against a would-be dictator. So Caesar just, you know, sets up
00:47:23.880
a sea of enemies against him. And they decide to plot against him. Caesar's not doing well in the city
00:47:31.920
of Rome. He doesn't really like Roman politics. He's more successful in the battlefield. And so he plans
00:47:38.860
to leave Rome yet again after the civil war and start a new war, this time against the enemy in
00:47:45.900
the east, the Parthian Empire, a revived Iranian empire that controls Iran. Iraq is extending into
00:47:55.460
the Roman province of Syria. They've clashed in the past. The Parthians have won. Caesar says he wants
00:48:02.040
to go now back to the east and avenge former defeats. But before he can leave Rome, he is of course
00:48:10.140
assassinated on the Ides of March. To add to the mix, Caesar was not a healthy man. He was suffering
00:48:18.020
either from epilepsy or perhaps a series of mini strokes. It's not entirely clear. That might have
00:48:26.200
weakened him on the Ides of March and probably did not bode well for his long-term longevity. He was a
00:48:33.600
man in his mid-50s. But he thought he was going to be able to pull off this military campaign and at
00:48:40.380
least win some victories. Who knows what would have happened in the end? But his opponents were convinced
00:48:45.020
that he was a threat both to his old supporters and to his former enemies who defended the Roman
00:48:52.900
Republic. So they joined together in a conspiracy and managed to take him out in the Senate on the
00:49:00.160
Ides of March, 44 BC. What happened to Rome after that? So what happened to Rome after that? Caesar had
00:49:08.820
an eye for talent. He already had begun the process of concentrating power in the Republic that used to
00:49:16.740
belong to the nobility, concentrating power in his own hands and that of his family. He didn't have any
00:49:22.820
legitimate children of his own. He had a daughter, but she had died. But he had some nephews and cousins
00:49:28.960
and he began to share power with them. The most promising was an 18-year-old grandnephew, the son of
00:49:39.120
his sister's daughter. This is a guy named Gaius Octavius. Gaius Octavius had been brought to Caesar's
00:49:47.420
attention by his mother and his grandmother. And Caesar had paid a lot of attention to him while
00:49:52.580
the kid was growing up. He was fatherless. His father had died when he was young. And Caesar has
00:49:57.760
sent young Gaius Octavius to the East to be part of this new campaign. But when Caesar dies, in his
00:50:04.620
will, it turns out that Caesar has adopted him posthumously, which is not something he did in Rome,
00:50:10.120
by the way, as heir, and left most of his enormous fortune to him. This young man was incredibly clever
00:50:17.620
and talented. He comes back to Rome and he starts a campaign to capture all of the honors and power
00:50:24.580
that Caesar had. It is a long struggle that lasts almost a generation and leads to a new civil war.
00:50:32.680
To make a long story short, this young Gaius Octavius, who becomes another Julius Caesar,
00:50:40.000
ultimately defeats everyone and becomes Rome's first emperor. We know him as Augustus. So Caesar
00:50:47.660
does leave a dynasty behind him, not in the way that he had planned. And it's a very iffy thing. But in
00:50:56.340
the end, he leaves behind him another civil war, just as Alexander had, leaves behind him another civil war.
00:51:02.020
But in the case of Caesar, one man manages to win the whole thing. The Roman Empire might have split
00:51:09.740
up into a series of smaller realms, just as Alexander's empire did. But young Gaius Octavius,
00:51:17.300
the future Augustus, is so successful, so competent, and so fortunate that he wins the whole thing.
00:51:23.920
And the Roman Republic becomes what we call the Roman Empire, the Roman monarchy, in fact.
00:51:28.760
I mean, one of the big takeaways I got from this book was that all three of these men,
00:51:33.980
crazy ambition, crazy audacity, brilliant. But that idea that none of them knew when to stop.
00:51:43.140
I'm curious, do you think it's possible to be a part of the tribe of the Eagle, like Abraham Lincoln
00:51:48.080
said, and know when to stop, like, have that balance? Has there ever been a military leader or
00:51:54.820
a common, a military leader has been able to do that? Or do you have to have like a, like two people
00:52:01.580
It's a great question. It's really hard to do. And most people, most of us are good at one thing.
00:52:07.180
And we're not immensely versatile. That's why it's really important, by the way, to have
00:52:11.020
a second in command. And one of the reasons that Augustus wins is that he's not a great warrior.
00:52:17.280
And he has a second in command, he's a great warrior, and he doesn't want to
00:52:20.400
knock him off. Agrippa, Marcus Agrippa. So when you got that situation, then you can have
00:52:25.860
someone who knows how to stop, as Augustus knows how to stop. George Washington is somebody who knew
00:52:32.020
how to stop. He didn't become king after winning the American Revolution. In fact, he goes home and
00:52:39.360
retires. There you, it takes a really remarkable personality who has a kind of modesty and humility
00:52:47.680
that allows him to stop. Another person who knows how to stop is William the Conqueror.
00:52:53.080
After conquering England, he doesn't say, hey, this was just the beginning. Let's keep on going.
00:52:58.400
He knows when to stop. He figures, hey, this is a great thing to win. I'm going to spend the rest of
00:53:03.520
my life trying to absorb it. So it's possible, but it's really rare, really difficult to do.
00:53:11.160
Yeah. And what I loved about this book, I mean, while it's about military history,
00:53:14.640
you can see this, this can transfer over the same ideas to like business. You see businesses that are
00:53:19.320
just so hell-bent on growing and growing and growing, that in the end, it bites in the rear,
00:53:24.960
and they collapse like immediately and fast. Yeah. And also in business, you often see someone
00:53:30.760
who's the genius who figures out how to start a new business, but rarely is that person also going
00:53:37.300
to be the manager and administrator who can bring it to the second generation. So it's really common.
00:53:43.220
You have a founder. Great. Bye. See ya. Now we have somebody who is going to codify the whole thing
00:53:49.560
and do the hard, you know, the slog of making it work. These guys didn't like doing the slog work.
00:53:55.020
They really didn't. I mean, I think that's something they have in common.
00:53:59.620
So you got a new book out. I'm curious, how's this continuation of this book,
00:54:03.140
Masters of Command, or is it a continuation or is it something different?
00:54:05.380
It is a continuation. Thank you. So the new book is called 10 Caesars, Roman Emperors from Augustus to
00:54:11.120
Constantine. So it takes the story through Caesar's successor, Augustus, and asks,
00:54:16.820
how does he win the whole thing? What's his ambition? What makes him so successful? And then
00:54:23.120
how does he pull it off? Caesar can't get the Romans to accept him as dictator for life.
00:54:29.620
How does Augustus pull it off? And having done so, what kind of government, what kind of regime
00:54:37.740
does he leave? And how are the Romans able to continue it? Particularly because they continue
00:54:44.800
with the fiction that it's still the Roman Republic. We call it the Roman Empire, but they never did.
00:54:49.600
And we said they have emperors, but they never said that at all. They said, oh, no, no, no, no,
00:54:53.740
no. It's just a republic. Nothing has changed. Who are you going to believe? Me or your lion eyes?
00:54:59.960
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Nothing has changed. How do they pull it off? And
00:55:04.940
in fact, not only is it not true that nothing has changed, but the Romans have this problem that
00:55:10.160
the world doesn't stand still. The world keeps changing enormously in big ways. And in a way,
00:55:16.720
the Romans are the victims of their own success. Because they have a successful empire,
00:55:21.560
the empire starts changing. How are you going to adapt when that happens? How do you make change
00:55:28.000
your friend, which you need to do if you want to stay in power? Nobody stays in power by saying,
00:55:32.100
I'm not changing anything. I can keep everything the same because you can't keep things the same. So I'm
00:55:36.840
really fascinated by this question. How do the Romans have this balance in change, in continuity?
00:55:43.700
And they do. And they managed to keep the empire for a very, very long time. And I think it's partly
00:55:49.340
because of this flexibility. It sounds like there's a lot of lessons there that can transfer over to
00:55:53.620
other areas of life as well. Indeed. Well, Barry, where can people go to learn more about your work?
00:55:58.480
People can learn more about my work in two places. First of all, I have a website,
00:56:01.620
barrystrauss.com. But also, I have a podcast, which I started in the fall, and I'm really excited
00:56:07.780
about. It's called Antiquitas, Leaders and Legends of the Ancient World. And you can find it on all the
00:56:14.100
major podcast platforms, on iTunes, for instance, or Google Play or Stitcher, as well as on my website.
00:56:21.080
And the first season is called The Gods of War. And it takes you from Achilles to Julius Caesar.
00:56:27.540
And the second season, which just recently launched, is called The Death of Caesar. And you can read
00:56:32.300
about that. You can hear about that as well on the podcast. I encourage you to listen to it. And if
00:56:37.460
you like it, please rate it on iTunes. Well, Barry, this has been a great conversation. Thanks so much
00:56:42.720
for your time. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's really been a
00:56:46.360
great pleasure for me as well. My guest name is Barry Strauss. He's the author of the book Masters of
00:56:50.600
Command. We discussed that book today. It's available on Amazon.com. Also, check out his new book,
00:56:54.820
10 Caesars. Also available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Find out more information
00:56:58.920
about his work at his website, barrystrauss.com. And while you're there, check out his podcast,
00:57:03.000
Antiquidus, Leaders and Legends of the Ancient World. You can also check out our show notes at
00:57:06.920
aom.is slash mastersofcommand, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:57:12.180
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIN podcast. Check out our website,
00:57:28.040
artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives. Got over 480 podcasts up,
00:57:32.560
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00:57:36.500
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00:57:39.360
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00:57:42.800
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00:57:53.960
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00:57:57.220
this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the AWIN podcast, but put what you've heard into