7 - Ancient Rome

Summary

Evidence for discussing grand strategy in the Roman Empire is extremely limited. In reaction to Luttwak’s thought-provoking book, ancient historians have tended to focus on limitations in the information available to emperors and hence their capacity to determine priorities. Kagan’s reformulation of Luttwak’s thesis to use troop movements as a proxy for strategic decision making does not adequately take into account the personal and cultural considerations that often influenced rulers, and in particular that suppression of internal rivals took priority over external threats. That said, grand strategy remains a useful tool for investigating imperial decision making, especially for emperors such as Augustus and Diocletian, both of whom had to stabilize the empire after protracted bouts of civil war and enjoyed long reigns. It is also relevant to the later empire (after AD 300) when rulers regularly had to balance threats and opportunities on different frontiers against the more limited resources that were available.