Restraining Rome: Lessons in Grand Strategy from Emperor Hadrian

摘要

For many scholars of international relations, ancient wisdom seems to begin and end with Thucydides. His History of the Peloponnesian War is regularly read, dissected and plumbed for insights applicable to modern problems. Requiring aspiring strategists to study the contest between Athens and Sparta made sense during the Cold War, when it seemed to echo modern times. Once the USSR imploded, however, the quest to understand the geopolitics of the bipolar Greek city-state system lost a bit of its urgency. While few would suggest that scholars stop reading Thucydides, it may be time to expand the canon, to seek advice from other sources more relevant to the current era. There is an obvious, under-appreciated, more appropriate analogue from the ancient Mediterranean. Today's strategists would be better served by studying the wisdom - and occasional lack thereof - of the Roman emperors, whose system and security environment more resembled our own.