The Levels of Warfare, Part 2: The Birth of Tactics and Strategy
dispatch.bazaarofwar.com
We left off in part 1 in late antiquity with the Strategikon, which marked a shift in ancient military thought. Classical antiquity held tactics to mean the arrangement of soldiers for battle, one of the skills which made up strategy, meaning generalship more broadly. By the end of the 6th century, these words took on more precise definitions: tactics referred specifically to the art of forming a single battleline, while strategy was the art of disposing and employing the entire army; tactics and strategy were comparable concepts, differentiated only by scale. Thus we see two separate traditions at the opposite ends of antiquity: the classical and the proto-Byzantine. Both would influence modern thought.
The Levels of Warfare, Part 2: The Birth of Tactics and Strategy
The Levels of Warfare, Part 2: The Birth of…
The Levels of Warfare, Part 2: The Birth of Tactics and Strategy
We left off in part 1 in late antiquity with the Strategikon, which marked a shift in ancient military thought. Classical antiquity held tactics to mean the arrangement of soldiers for battle, one of the skills which made up strategy, meaning generalship more broadly. By the end of the 6th century, these words took on more precise definitions: tactics referred specifically to the art of forming a single battleline, while strategy was the art of disposing and employing the entire army; tactics and strategy were comparable concepts, differentiated only by scale. Thus we see two separate traditions at the opposite ends of antiquity: the classical and the proto-Byzantine. Both would influence modern thought.