On The Importance Of Studying Historical Wars

The wars of the past have had impact reverberating down the ages to the present. Patterns of behavior we see today went along then, and that is one of the reasons everyone ought to be familiar with the great men and events of days long past. You can get off to a good start with a well-annotated edition of Classical history, and this edition of Herodotus' Histories (and the two companions suggested to go with it) are good places to start- including if you are a father teaching your children at home.

Especially if you are a father educating your children at home.

Connecting these ancient events to more recent echoes is a thing for another post; suffice here to say that the Athenian expansion into Syracuse and the Persian incursions into Greece are good places to start. (On a related note, do take the time to ensure that your child doesn't mistake Frank Millar/Zack Snyder's 300 for the real events.) As these are meant to hold up over time, and given that the events covered are long gone, if you do your part to take care of these books then you'll be teaching your great-grandchildren with them 50-75 years later.

The entire period that began with Persia's two big invasions of Greece and ended with Alexander's sacking of Persia describes a sequence of events whereby one imperial power, in its hubris, underestimated the resilience of the nation it targetted for conquest. That pair of failed invasions would then lead to the two leading cities each succumbing to the same curse in turn, before a heretofore ignored backwater rose to power, conquered and unified Greece before enacting revenge upon Persia and destroying that empire before itself overextending and collapsing.

That's a pattern that's played out more than once since. (Specific examples I leave to readers to discuss.) These are patterns manifest by means of war, war conducted up close and person by men stabbng and slicing each other to death while avoiding getting smashed by boulders or trampled by beasts. Only recently did we extend that hellscape to include firearms, cannons, and air-dropped bombs. Those men that survived would come home and pass on what they learned--and earned--to their sons, making them ready for when war came yet again.

It is one thing to honor our own veterans. It is another to forget what put them in the field, and by connecting the chains from past to present we can detect the patterns behind them (as well as the men that use them to their benefit and the detriment of common men) so we may forecast the future with reasonable accuracy- and decide what to do accordingly. That this is not done in our schools, save for those in the elite--and to the end, as we learn, of exploiting we common men--is unacceptable; we cannot rely on enemies within to do good for us, so we must--as we did before--do for ourselves.