Victor David Hanson

Hanson, Victor David. The Western Way of War. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1989.


"The origins of Western warfare lie in classical Greece, on the battlefields of Marathon and Delion, and in the strange, terrible headon collision of Thebans and Spartans at Koroneia. Instead of the ambush, skirmish, or single combat between heroes, the Greeks of the classical age devised a ferocious, brutal, brief, and very destructive form of combat that used armed men of all ages. With this technique, they invetlted the central act of Western warfare-the' decisive infantry battle. In this bold and original study, Victor Davis Hanson's compelling account of what happened on the killing fields of the ancient Greeks raises new issues and questions old assumptions about the raison d'etre for war. "