Ancient languages have no word that maps onto modern 'strategy'; strategia is generalship, the art of the man in command. That does not mean ancient states had no strategic thought, and the sources show it repeatedly: Pericles' argument that Athens should abandon Attica and fight as a sea power is strategic reasoning of a high order, and Thucydides records the argument as well as the decision.
Fabius Maximus's refusal of battle after Trasimene is the other classic case: a deliberate decision to trade territory and reputation for time, unpopular enough to earn him the name Cunctator, the delayer, and vindicated by the outcome.
Whether the Roman empire had a 'grand strategy' is one of the sharpest disputes in ancient military history. The proposition that a coherent, centrally-directed defensive system existed was argued influentially in the 1970s and has been extensively criticised since, on the grounds that Rome lacked the maps, the intelligence apparatus and the institutional continuity such a system requires.
What the evidence supports
Periclean strategy is explicitly articulated in the sources.
Thucydides gives Pericles' reasoning about sea power, resources and the futility of defending Attica, and then narrates the strategy's execution and its collapse under plague.
Attrition was a recognised and controversial option.
The Fabian strategy and the political pressure against it are well attested, and the pressure to fight at Cannae is its direct consequence.
Whether Rome had a grand strategy is disputed.
Luttwak's thesis of a systematic defensive strategy has been widely challenged by ancient historians who argue the required institutions did not exist. The debate is live.
Open questions
Did Rome have a grand strategy?
One position holds that the frontier systems, road network and force dispositions reveal deliberate long-term design. The other holds that Rome lacked accurate maps, a general staff and continuity of policy across reigns, and that apparent system is the residue of ad hoc decisions. Neither has prevailed.
Primary sources
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.140-144, 2.13, 2.65
Periclean strategy stated, executed and assessed.
Plutarch, Life of Fabius Maximus
Attritional strategy and the politics of refusing battle.
Polybius, Histories
Roman decision-making at the level of war rather than battle.
Battles
216 BCE
Cannae
Hannibal destroyed the largest army Rome had ever put in the field by allowing his own centre to be pushed back, and produced the model double envelopment of European military history.
480 BCE
Salamis
A naval battle fought in the straits between Attica and the island of Salamis, and the engagement that broke the Persian campaign.
331 BCE
Gaugamela
The decisive battle of the Persian war, fought on ground Darius had chosen and prepared, and after which the Achaemenid empire had no field army left.
48 BCE
Pharsalus
Caesar defeated a larger Pompeian army in Thessaly with a fourth line held back specifically to defeat the cavalry manoeuvre he had predicted, and effectively ended the Republic.
How to read the evidence labels
- Evidence level: Documented
- Supported by a named primary text or by excavated material evidence.
- Evidence level: Probable
- Supported by strong inference that most specialists accept.
- Evidence level: Disputed
- Substantial specialist disagreement exists; competing readings are stated.
- Evidence level: Literary
- Belongs to poetic or mythological construction rather than to history.
- Evidence level: Mythological
- Belongs to shared religious or mythic tradition rather than to any single text.
- Evidence level: Unknown
- The available evidence is insufficient to decide.
These labels describe the status of the evidence, not our confidence in a conclusion. A claim marked Literary is not a claim we doubt; it is a claim about what kind of thing a poem is.