Hannibal crossing the Alps and Julius Caesar the Rubicon; Augustus becoming Emperor and founding a dynasty, Alexander, Spartacus, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great and other 'masters of command'... this course will explore how these figures continue to fascinate historians today.
The course begins with Barry Strauss addressing the question of that fascination - his own as well as that of historians ancient and modern - with the three greatest generals, three greatest leaders of the ancient world - Alexander, Hannibal and Julius Caesar. Tom Holland’s passion is with the founding of the ever-intriguing Augustan Dynasty. Both address the re-examination of the iconic events of Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon, and of his death.
Uniquely, this course draws upon the first-hand experience of these authors, to question what it is to write history: how to represent, re-contextualise and illuminate the great figures, iconic events of the past. The course leaders share their experience of what it is to write history from the perspective of, for example, a rower at the Battle of Salamis - the smells, the sounds - or that of a rebel gladiator in the Spartacus War.
Barry Strauss’s Battle of Salamis, combines scholarship and storytelling, expertise as a historian and – uniquely - as a rower, to re-imagine that decisive naval battle: the clash of East against West that Herodotus wanted to record, so that the ‘great deeds of both Greeks and Persians might not be forgotten’. Both Herodotus and Strauss deploy compelling narrative and expert military analysis: both use stories to illuminate the scenes.
Michael Wood - drawing on his research, writing and travels in the late 1990s from Greece to India through the Near East and Central Asia will re-visit the story of Alexander the Great. More recently he had the opportunity to revisit a number of the key sites in the story, notably in Northern Iraq and Syria, just before the current crisis. With close attention to the conflicting sources on Alexander, Michael will take a fresh look at some of the main events and turning points in the story, including the battle of Gaugamela, Alexander’s greatest victory, whose site, Michael proposes, may be identified for the first time with certainty.
Michael will conclude the course with a look at the post-Roman world of the ‘Barbarian West” describing how kings like Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, and Athelstan were not only great war leaders but engaged in a thorough-going cultural project to remake Romanitas through Christianity, law, assembly politics and Latin culture in Europe’s first Renaissance, the Carolingian ‘renovatio’. In these centuries, Michael argues, the Roman Christian legacy was transformed as the foundation of modern Europe.
Both writers talk about the challenge and importance of drawing parallels between the ancient world and our own. At the core of the course are crucial questions: how does this interpretation inform our understanding of the discipline of History? (Herodotus, ‘the Father of History’ used 'historia', which can be translated more widely as ‘story’, ‘inquiry’, ‘investigation’, or ‘learning’). If we don't learn from the past are we, indeed, doomed to repeat it? And, what can such ‘Masters of Command’ tell us about leadership - political as well as military - today?
