For over 400 years, Sassanid Persia was the greatest state in Asia. To the east, the Kushan Empire was already in decline. The only strong opponent of Iran was the Roman Empire in the west. Military competition for influence in northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and the Caucasus region dominated Iranian–Roman relations, orienting the strategic activities of the early Sassanids to the western fringes of the empire. The breakthrough came in the mid-fourth century, with the emergence of the Kidara Huns in the east. Iran faced a ‘strategic dilemma’: it was crucial to avoid wars on multiple fronts. The Hephthalites or White Huns, became the most important enemy of the Sassanians until the end of the following century; the adoption of such a strategic paradigm enforced the maintenance of peace with the Roman Empire in the west. However, the Sassanian ruler, having secured the eastern territories, was able to move against Iran’s age-old enemy, Rome, this way beginning a period of wars in the west that, with few interruptions, lasted almost until the collapse of the Persian state. Defending such an enormous area was a challenge, as was preventing it from centrifugal tendencies, typical for multi-ethnic states. Despite these factors, the Iranian state managed to assure the territorial integrity of its core areas for four centuries. The tool to achieve this was the army – mobile, efficient, disciplined and motivated.

From the sixth to fourth centuries BCE, the Persian empire under the Teispid and Achaemenid dynasties ruled most of western Asia and neighbouring regions, from the Indus river to Egypt and the coasts of the Aegean Sea. Despite the sources’ disproportionate emphasis on the failures of military expeditions against the overseas Greeks, the Persians enjoyed a lengthy period of military success and overall stability due in part to their rulers’ skill in the formulation of strategy. In the initial conquests, Persia absorbed peer competitors such as Babylon and Egypt; most subsequent conflicts pitted the empire’s superior forces against localised rebellions. Persia’s control stretched to vital subject communities in frontier zones and they also projected influence over external allies and clients. Persian kings rarely campaigned in person after the early expansionist phase, but relied on an exemplary communication system to manage satraps and other delegates tasked with provincial and frontier operations. To carry out military objectives, they relied on networks of provincial recruitment, supported as necessary by elements of a standing army associated with the royal court. Persian military activities were augmented by diplomatic outreach, most notably in Persia’s Greek relations after the failed invasion of mainland Greece. Persia’s strategic capabilities remained formidable until they were caught off guard by the tactical superiority of Alexander’s Macedonian invaders.

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.

The rise and the survival of the Ottoman Empire for six centuries is one of the most important event of the European and Middle Eastern histories. At the apex of the Ottoman conquests in the mid-1500s, Süleyman the Magnificent pushed deep into Hungary and Mesopotamia, as well as making the empire the master of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Later sultans advanced into southern Russia, Caucasia, Persia and north Africa. In concert with these military successes, the empire transformed itself into a sophisticated administrative entity of great strength, which encouraged diversity, culture, learning and religious activity. The Ottoman high tide reached the gates of Vienna in 1683, only to fail because of faulty command decisions and internal deficiencies. While the Ottomans were trying to counter the military reverses, the forces of the socio-economic revolutions in the West and rapidly evolving market economies added new stresses to it. A new generation of sultans and members of the governing elite evolved, who were convinced of the need for modernisation and westernisation (both terms have been used synonymously and interchangeably) and were committed to change in order to keep the empire intact. They did achieve some results but they failed to stop the interventions and machinations of the Great Powers, which sought to benefit from the empire’s collapse. The Ottoman Empire gained notoriety as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ and additionally became a target for the forces of ethnic nationalism that fought to dismember it. The First World War became the swan song of the empire. For the first time since the 1680s, the Ottoman Army consistently defeated its European enemies. But it was too late. The empire, bankrupt and blockaded, could not match the resources of its enemies and surrendered.

Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, despite coming to power in similar circumstances, approached their rule in very different ways. In particular, it suggests that along with a contrast of style, in Keegan’s terms Alexander being a ‘heroic’ leader, his father an ‘unheroic’, one their approach and, as a consequence, the aims and practice of their strategies were quite different. While it could be argued that Philip’s was simply one of survival exacerbated by ever more ‘mission creep’ towards the south of Greece, here it is suggested that instead Philip had from very early on a firm proactive vision of ruling all Greece and used an integrated strategy of diplomacy, financial subversion, and military force to achieve that end and on its success established a firm method of retaining his rule. In contrast, Alexander, while tactically brilliant, unlike his father was a reactive rather than a proactive strategist and his campaigns are best seen as a series of micro-strategies responding to specific circumstances as opposed to an overarching vision. This approach explains the lack of a firm political strand to his strategy and the subsequent collapse of his empire on his death.

Chapter 9 focuses in on the 100 plus illustrations in Olearius’s 1656 edition. It explores visual precedents for illustrated books (including illustrated Bibles and psalters) in his time, but finds none so copiously illustrated, with illustrations carefully keyed to the text. The chapter analyzes how Olearius curated his illustrations, packing them with scenes, costumes and architecture as mentioned in the adjacent text. Olearius strove for eyewitness representation, and yet elements of trope and borrowed images inevitably crept in to such a large engraving project. The chapter undertakes a careful analysis of the sources of his image of the embassy’s audience with Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, linking his imagery with borrowed templates from the famous de Bry family of engravers. The chapter concludes by exploring how the illustrations complement Olearius’s textual argument about the European, Russian and Persian civilizations.

Chapter 8 introduces Adam Olearius, resident scholar at the court of Schleswig-Holstein in the first half of the seventeenth century. His account of travels through Russia to Persia, published first in 1647 and revised and enlarged for an edition of 1656, supplanted Herberstein and continued to be the most influential resource on Russia for a century. This chapter explores how Olearius designed his copiously illustrated book and how he conducted his research, personally visiting sites, collecting material objects and interviewing anyone and everyone in the many languages he mastered. It concludes by analyzing his lengthy travel account as a “Baroque novel” and a morality tale.

This chapter explores the role of Antioch as a military base for centuries, from the days of the Seleucid kings to the campaigns against the Persians.

Chapter 2 surveys phrases with the verb boulomai that describe the ability to do “whatever one wishes” or to live “however one wishes” as freedom in order to demonstrate that democratic freedom was understood as the ability to bring one’s will to fruition. These phrases are found in a wide range of genres, including history, philosophy, oratory, drama, and epigraphy. By defining themselves as free in contrast to slaves, Athenians perceived their actions and decisions as emanating from themselves rather than a master. Freedom was thus defined as not simply a prerequisite status for citizenship, in contrast to birth or wealth, but a personal capacity for action. This positive freedom was a central aspect of citizen identity, rendering scholarly accounts focused on negative freedom incomplete. The distinctive feature of democratic freedom was the insistence on the self as master of action; as a citizen, one did what one wished. Positive freedom gave rise to procedural components in Athenian administration and law, notably voluntarism and accountability, as well as served as a distinctive core marker of identity in contrast with other states, such as Sparta and Persia.

Alexander continues to be a subject of military as well as historical or cultural interest. In modern times, he began as the greatest of Great Captains, then became the inventor of modern mobile warfare, the model for romantic military genius, and, in recent decades, the unlikely precedent for leaders as different as Hitler and Mao Tse Tung. The writers promoting him include both Clausewitz and the contemporary Israeli writer, Martin Van Creveld; his detractors include Frederick the Great of Prussia and the most influential modern British military writer, B. H. Liddell-Hart. Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Montesquieu are among the civilians who join military men in giving opinions of Alexander as both a strategist and a fighter of battles. This chapter begins, however, with Julian, whose dialogue, Caesares, is the first extended comparison of great generals in the Western literary tradition. From there it moves to Machiavelli and thence to Italian as well as French writers, before going on to recent literature dominated by writers in German and English. The chapter ends with speculation as to why Alexander remains an authoritative yet iconoclastic figure in military history.

The Macedonia Alexander left in spring 334 BCE was principally the making of his father Philip II, though Philip’s ‘Macedonia proper’ had been largely a recovery of the Argead realm of Alexander I more than a century earlier. Early expansion from Pieria into the central plain of Bottiaea established a core of Argead control in Lower Macedonia. Following the retreat of Xerxes’ army after 479, Alexander I took full advantage of a power void to expand into the eastern region, conquering eastern Mygdonia, annexing Crestonia and Bisaltia eastwards to the Strymon valley and gaining control of rich supplies of mineral deposits and timber. Most of the eastern territory was lost after 450 BCE, but Philip II, in addition to recovering the old kingdom and consolidating Upper with Lower Macedonia, through conquest and diplomacy more than doubled the politically controlled territory of Macedonia. His transformation of Macedonia included the subjugation of Paeonians, Illyrians, Thracians and Triballians, the opening up of trade and securing of mining, control of Epirus, domination of Thessaly and the uniting of the southern Greek poleis under his hegemony. Alexander inherited a stable kingdom, a tested army of Macedonians, subordinate allies and a secure supply line to Asia.

A study of Agesilaus and his Penhellenism and mission to "free the Greeks" of Asia. Agesilaus wanted to be commemorated as a liberator well outside of Sparta, which was a major contributor to Sparta’s decline as increased wars weakened Sparta irreparably.

The author first addresses the contents and the nature of the proems of the Histories, secondly the arrangement of Ephorus’ work and, thirdly, the main contents of each of the thirty books that formed it.

This chapter explores the depictions of the barbarians, and indeed the very concept barbaros, in Plutarch’s works. It reviews Plutarch’s rhetoric dealing with non-Greeks, which was circumscribed on the one hand by the Roman imperial political reality and on the other by memories of the old Hellenic valor, which was filtered only through texts and oratory. The chapter examines Plutarch’s play with the established stereotypes in a way that shows ethnic labeling to be elusive. It studies Plutarch’s ethnic taxonomic schemes (i.e. a twofold arrangement of barbarians vs. Greeks/Romans and a threefold scheme of Greeks vs. Romans vs. barbarians), and the subtle moral and political implications thereof. It also looks into the literary significance of the use of barbarians in the narrative and of the mismatch between Greek and barbarian practices as presented mostly in the Lives.

This chapter looks at the broader contemporary significance of declamation, focusing on (Macedonian) imperialism, and taking as its major case study Aristides' To the Thebans: concerning the alliance I–II (Orr. 9–10), in which Aristides recreates Demosthenes' speech urging alliance between Thebes and Athens before Chaeronea. The image of an attack by a despotic and barbaric king echoed some presentations of the Parthian menace, potentially ennobling a contemporary conflict. But the image of the greedy despot also echoed discourses about 'bad' emperors, thereby offering a negative exemplum to heed. Finally, Macedon in these texts further recalls the Roman empire more generally: accordingly, these texts make available an unusually negative attitude to the empire, but also, I argue, a celebration and a justification of Rome's power over Greece. I compare the discourses present in a fragment of Pollux's declamation On the Islanders, where the Persian court recalls Lucian's denunciation of the vulgarity of rich Romans in his De mercede conductis. In closing, I note the particularly high number of potentially meta-exemplary remarks in Aristides' declamations, encouraging audiences to ponder these texts' meaning deeply.

This chapter traces the gradual unwinding of the Notitia system in response to the shifting strategic needs of the east Roman empire. Anastasius began the process by deploying the praesental armies to the east, first against the Isaurians and then against the Persians, but it was Justinian who fully dismantled them. Beginning with his creation of a new military command for Armenia and continuing through the establishment of a standing field army for North Africa and Italy, Justinain cannibalized the praesental armies and dispersed the striking power of the armies of Oriens, Thrace, and Illyricum. The consequences of Justinian’s decisions were keenly felt by his successors who struggled to defend the empire against escalating threats in the Balkans and the east. By the time Herakleios came to the throne, the Romans could barely muster three field armies, those for Thrace, Armenia, and Oriens, and it was these depleted armies that Herakleios used to defeat Persia and lay the basis for the thematic armies of Byzantium.

How do the virtues of toleration and hospitality manifest in early-modern drama? This chapter defines the virtues of toleration and hospitality through their intimate association with Ancient Persia, its rulers and foundational Zoroastrian ideology of promoting order and unity in diversity in the kingdom for communal harmony and felicity. Although an unexpected parallel, early modern writers call upon the locale of Persian as a concept with the capacity to inspire English monarchs to model themselves on paradigms of intercultural hospitality found in vignettes of Persia’s rulers, such as Cyrus and Artaxerxes, in Greek texts. These stories of cooperation between Persians and Greeks provide the context for Shakespeare’s enigmatic reference to Persian clothing in Act 3 when Edgar momentarily inhabits a Persian persona from Lear’s delusional perspective. Shakespeare’s use of ancient Persian virtues draws attention to the subtle forms of intercultural cooperation that hover in the background of his tragedy and radically contribute to a form of historical revisionism that privileges the forces of cooperation over conflict between oppositional groups such as Persian and Greeks of antiquity.