Except that quote would never come up in the context of a classical education, unless the instructor happened to be taking a jolly detour, nose in the air, to attack a piece of legendary crap that no student of his must ever traffic in. And even I, right now, have been forced to attach weights to my own nose to prevent its springing upward. There it goes again: sniff. A few facts. The monkeys who wrote Die Hard did not invent that quote.
And let me tell ya something: the people who write the scripts for action movies are literally forbidden to invent anything. Their mandate is to regift whatever is known to have worked in the past. More on this another day. The quote, I was saying, is very old. It comes up in certain classic English poems from the seventeenth century. When for more worlds the Macedonian cried, He wist not Thetis in her lap did hide Another yet, a world reserved for you To make more great than that he did subdue ….
There it is. And a quick Google search turned up an even earlier item, printed in medieval Canada , I mean. My homely contribution to this fuss is my hypothesis as to why instances of the quote are unlikely to turn up before The quote is a hash of three passages in Plutarch, first century CE. Two of the passages were made available to English speakers most notably Shakespeare in , in the translation by Thomas North. The other passage has a more complicated history.
Both nations got bogged down in a long and costly war of attrition that in the end both chose to walk away from. The Soviet war was more bloody - it left 1. Moreover this time arguably less has been gained. Twenty-five years ago the Soviets withdrew leaving a relatively stable pro-Soviet regime in place - Najibullah's government collapsed only when the Soviets cut off supplies of weapons a full four years later.
But 13 years after the West went in to Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and oust the Taliban, America and its Allies find themselves about to withdraw with neither objective wholly achieved. That share can only increase later this year when the British and the Americans withdraw most of their troops.
There is another precedent to this war. For the last five years, I have been writing a history of the First Anglo-Afghan War which took place from The book tells the tale of arguably the greatest military humiliation ever suffered by the West in the East.
The entire army of what was then the most powerful nation in the world was utterly destroyed by poorly-equipped tribesmen. These musings can be applied to practical problems you may be trying to solve, and they can also be good starting points for more theoretical reflection.
Spanning topics from philosophy and wisdom to strategy and leadership, here are the most notable quotes from The Art of War. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Throughout history, many different kingdoms have risen and fallen; many empires have been born out of nothing and then collapsed to ruin.
Many have led large armies to the brink of death in order to wrestle power away from mighty rulers, while others have relied on their ability to rally the masses behind their cause, noble or otherwise. What is clear throughout history, from Julius Caesar to Genghis Khan, is that it takes a distinct personality to embark on a conquest and an even stronger desire to achieve some goal in order to overcome the difficult challenges that await. For example, the reason empires may expand is so they can grow both physically, culturally, or both.
From — B. He encouraged cultural exchange in his empire , remaining tolerant of the different lifestyles in his new territories. During the second century B. Over the course of the reign of the Gupta Empire between C. This physical expansion coincided with cultural growth for the Gupta Empire as well, and education and art flourished.
The spoils of war can be a significant motivation for conquest. In the 13 th century C. Julius Caesar was motivated by wealth as well, and in fact, it was this motivation specifically that led to his conquest of Gaul a region of Western Europe in 58 B. But perhaps a more sustainable motivation than plunder is control over trade. For the Mongols, controlling the Silk Road —a network of trade routes stretching across Asia, East Africa, and into Europe—was another attractive motivator for expansion.
Early on, attacks by Mongols targeted states that controlled parts of the Silk Road. Chandragupta I of the Gupta Empire strategically married the Licchavi princess in order to incorporate mines of iron ore, a valuable trade commodity , into his kingdom. Legendary conquerors, such as Alexander, Julius Caesar, and William the Conqueror, created and then expanded their lands because of a desire to rule, combined with great personal ambition. This ambition pushed them to continue to expand their influence and spread their empires to include more land, more people, and, by way of taxes and tribute , more wealth.
Alexander became king of Macedonia at just 20 years old, killing his enemies before they could challenge him and crushing rebellions.
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