Peter Robinson: It may not happen often, but
sometimes, sometimes, entire civilizations die in a single day. Historian Victor Davis
Hanson on Uncommon Knowledge Now. Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
Peter Robinson: I'm Peter
Robinson, a fellow at the Hoover Institution here at Stanford. Victor Davis Hanson is
a classicist and military historian. Dr. Hanson has published more than two dozen major
works of history, including A War Like No Other, his classic work on the Peloponnesian Wars. Victor
Davis Hanson's newest book, The End of Everything, How Wars Descend into Annihilation. Victor, thanks
for joining me.
Victor Davis Hanson: Thank you for having me, Peter.
Peter Robinson:
First question, The Destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great, The Obliteration
of Carthage by the Romans, The Defeat of Constantinople by the Turks, and The Destruction
of the Aztecs by Cortez. Those are your four case studies in this book. All those happened a
while ago. Why write this book now?
Victor Davis Hanson: I was curious, most of my career,
I've been curious why Thebes, or I can go into the details, but why these...
Peter Robinson:
We'll come to it.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, we'll come to it.
Victor Davis Hanson: Why
these civilizations were not just defeated, but were annihilated.
And there were others. I
had, there's a wide array in the ancient world, the island of Milos, towns in the Peloponnesian
war like Schioni, et cetera. And this is very different than natural disasters like the
Mycenaeans, et cetera. But I was wondering if there was a typology, a repeating pattern, and
if it would be applicable to any of the value. And I found that there was, both on the part
of the attacker, certain a mindset, and on the part of the defender, and that those situations
that we think could not happen today, because we're supposedly a postmodern moral world.
Peter Robinson: We're more advanced than they were, Victor.
Victor Davis Hanson: That's what
we think. And it's there...So in the epilogue, I just did a brief survey. Well, not a brief
survey, but I did a survey of countries that are very vulnerable as described, either in the nature
of their enemies and the intent of their enemies, or the neighborhood in which they reside, or
their size, or their limits. So for example, there's only 12 million Greeks in the world.
Peter Robinson: Right.
Victor Davis Hanson: There's Cypriots, but Greeks, and they
have a lot, they have a bad neighborhood, and they have been existentially threatened by
the Turks, especially the present government. Israel is another example. The Kurds are an
example. The Armenians are still an example. And all of them have had a history where at times
people thought they would be existentially gone, because that was the intent. And yet, we feel
that today when somebody threatens to wipe somebody out, either with nuclear weapons or with
conventional weapons, we discount that. That can't happen.
Peter Robinson: It's mere hyperbole.
Victor Davis Hanson: In the epilogue, I think I mentioned maybe a half a dozen, or maybe even a
dozen direct threats by various Turkish figures, Russian, Chinese, where they actually threaten
to destroy and wipe out, whether it's Ukraine or Taiwan, or the Armenians, or Greeks, or Israel.
Peter Robinson: And the argument is, take that possibility seriously, because every so often it
really does happen.
Victor Davis Hanson: Maybe so often the exception that nobody thinks, the
unimaginable, or what people think it can't happen here does happen here.
Peter Robinson:
The end of everything presents almost 300 pages of your usual approach, which is meticulous,
thorough, and engrossing historical writing.This is television.We can't go into it that deeply.But
I would like to touch on these case studies at least briefly, because even put in some reform,
my feeling was as I went through the book, even in some reform, every one of them is just fascinating
and surprising in some way. All right. Thebes, the end of everything, I'm quoting you. In 335 BC, the
Thebans not only revolted against the Macedonian occupation of Greece, but defiantly dared
Alexander the Great to take the legendary city, that is to take Thebes itself. He did just that.
All right. Briefly, the significance of Thebes, it was a major city. Who were the Macedonians? Set
it up. Who were the Macedonians? And who is this brilliant figure who arises as a very young man,
Alexander the Great?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well for 20 years prior to 335, Philip II of
Macedon...
Peter Robinson: Alexander's father.
Victor Davis Hanson: Alexander's
father had taken a backwater area that was deprecated as uncivilized by Greeks.
Peter Robinson: The northern mountainous region.
Victor Davis Hanson: The mountainous
region of today is parts of northern Greece and the autonomous state of so-called Macedon,
Macedonia. And he had forged a imperial power.
He borrowed...he was a hostage at Thebes when he
was a young man himself and he learned from the great master of Pamanondas about Greek military
tactics. He lengthened the Sarissa.
He did all of his military war.
Peter Robinson: The Sarissa
is..
Victor Davis Hanson: Pike. So he innovated and improved on Greek phalanx warfare, fighting
in Colum. And it was a juggernaut and he came from the north and he conquered at the Battle of
Carinea three years prior to this. He destroyed Greek freedom by this...basically it was an
army of Thebans and Athenians and a few other city states and they were conquered and they
were occupied and there was no longer a truly consensual government in these cities, 1500 city
states.
And he had a plan or an agenda that said, "I will unite you and even though you think I'm
semi-barbarous..." Macedonian, it was sort of hard to understand. You could understand it, the
language and the tradition. But it had no culture, the Greeks thought, but we're going to unite
and take Persia and pay them back for a century of slights and get rich in the process.
And
the Greeks revolted in 335. He died, he was assassinated and he had his 21-year-old son who
had been at the Battle of Carinea at 18 and had been spectacular in defeating the Theban and they
didn't take him seriously.
Peter Robinson: The Thebans or the Greek city states in general?
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, they thought, "You know what?"
Peter Robinson: He's a kid.
Victor Davis
Hanson: And who's going to take over from Philip II? He was a genius and he's got bastard children
here and concubines there and he's got this one guy named Alexander and it's, "Don't take him,
we're going to revolt." And everybody said, "Well, we hear about him and he's kind of fanatic, be
careful, but we're willing to revolt if you revolt first." And Thebes was at this time legendary
because it's the legendary home of Oedipus and Antigone. It's the fountain of Greek mythology.
It has kind of a dark history because bad things happen at Thebes like Oedipus kills his father
or Antigone is executed.
Peter Robinson: Not a lot of cheerful stories.
Victor Davis Hanson:
In Euripides' Bacchae, it's under the shadows of Mount Cthyrum. But the point is that it had been
under a Pamanondas, a Pythagorean, enlightened society. The first really expansive democracy was
trying to democratize the Peloponnese. So it was the moral leader at this point. It happened
to be...
Peter Robinson: Roughly how big a population is.
Victor Davis Hanson: It was
small. It was somewhere between 15 and 25,000 citizens and maybe at most 5 or 10,000 residents.
But it was the capital of what we would call today in English a province called Boeotia. And that
probably had somewhere around 150 to 250 and it was the capital that subjugated that.
Peter
Robinson: Okay.
Victor Davis Hanson: But it has separate dialect, Theban dialect was different
than the Boeotian dialect and it was the stellar city. So Alexander then says, "If you revolt,
we're going to come down." So he eliminates his enemies. He starts to march. The Athenians are
egging the Thebans on and said, "Don't worry, we'll come." And the Spartans are going to
come, both of them in decline. And the long and the short of it is he arrives there. The Thebans
mock him. They think we can replay the Battle of Carinea, we'll win. And all of a sudden, when he
shows up, they have no idea who he is. They don't know what he's intending. Had they studied his
career, they would see he's a killer and he's a genius and he's about ready to conquer the
Persian Empire. And he needs to have a solid home front and he means business and he doesn't
play by the rules. And the rules of Greek warfare, except for the Peloponnese, you don't destroy
your enemy. You don't, even Athens as it lost the Peloponnesian War, they did not destroy Athens.
The Spartans and the Thebans. So Spartans say they're going to come, the Athenians are going
to help them, they egg them on, they revolt, they kill the Macedonian garrison, are they
imprison them? And Alexander pulls up with this huge army. You can't get 200 miles from the
north in 10 days. You can if you're Alexander. You march at 20 plus miles a day. He pulls up,
they build siegecraft and...
Peter Robinson: Is it fair to say he's a little bit like Napoleon?
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes.
Peter Robinson: He's shocking.
Victor Davis Hanson: He's quick,
or Caesar, quickness of Caesar and Napoleon, audacity, it's like Donton. And the Spartans
dissipate and the Athenians dissipate.
Peter Robinson: You're on your own.
Victor Davis
Hanson: You're on your own and they think, this is the seven gates of Thebes, the magnificent
walls of Thebes. We've only been broached once after the Persian War. We can endure, we're on the
defensive, we've got this wonderful army, we'll go out in front of the...and they're defeated.
And they think...
Peter Robinson: But not just defeated.
Victor Davis Hanson: Not defeated. They
think they can negotiate, I think. And he says, "I'm gonna kill every single person that's
over the age of 16. I'm gonna enslave every woman and child." But you know what? I will save
the descendants of Pindar, the poet, his house, and maybe some religious shrines and he levels the
city down to the foundations and there are no more Thebans. Later the Macedoians will take the site
and bring in other people, other Greeks.
And so there is no longer a Theban who have been there
for two millennia. They're gone.
Peter Robinson: They have their own culture, their own history. It
is recognized as such by the entire Greek-speaking world and they even have their own, not quite
their own language, but their own dialect. And it just ends.
Victor Davis Hanson: And some
of the surrounding Vyoshan villages, of course, don't like them so they join Alexander and they
haul off the marble columns, they haul off the roof tiles, they level it. After Alexander's
death, some two decades later, they think it's be good propaganda to refound Thebes and they call
it Thebes, which is the modern city today, but it's not the same culture.
Peter Robinson: Okay,
that's example number one. By the way, do we have, from contemporary sources, who would have written
about that? What effect did that event have? It shocked all the other Greek city states into total
submission?
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, they could not believe it. They completely folded and it
was...
Peter Robinson: So he got the stable home base he wanted that permitted him to advance
into...
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. And it became, even among the Macedonians, it became shameful
that Alexander had destroyed this legacy city, the fountain, as I said, of Greek mythology
and of Paminondas, the great liberator, his legacy Pythagoras, the Pythagorean group
there, and he'd wipe them out and they regretted it later. But at the time, nobody came to their
aid. They were very confident. They didn't think anybody would ever do that and they were
shocked. It was something that had not happened before.
Peter Robinson: Carthage.
Victor Davis
Hanson: Yes.
Peter Robinson: Rome and Carthage, The End of Everything, your book, the three
centuries long growth of the Roman Republic, this is BC, we're not at Caesar, we're certainly
not close to Augustus, we're seeing Rome grow from a city to the dominant force in the
Mediterranean. The three centuries long growth of the Roman Republic was often stalled
or checked by its formidable Mediterranean rival Carthage on the other side of the Mediterranean,
at the northern tip of, northern edge of Africa. The competition between Rome and Carthage involved
antithetical civilizations.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes.
Peter Robinson: Explain that.
Victor Davis
Hanson: Carthage was founded about the same time as Rome was, but it was...
We use the word, they
use, it's an ancient word, Punic, and all that is, is a Phoenician transliteration for Phoenician
culture that would be today where Gaza is along that area.
This was a colony, colonists founded
under the mythical Dido at what is modern Tunisia, right?
Just 90 miles opposite, it's the narrowest
point of the Mediterranean. 90 miles opposite Sicily.
Peter Robinson: 90 miles..thats Sicily,
yes.
Victor Davis Hanson: And they were a Punic-Semitic culture, so their language was not
linguistically related to Greek or Latin. They did things that classical culture abhorred
such as child sacrifice. However, they did, were heavily influenced by Greek constitutional
history, so they actually had a constitutional system. They learned about Western warfare
from Spartan taskmasters. And so they fought these series, what we call the Punic War,
first and second.
Unfortunately for Rome, they were confronted with an authentic
Alexander Napoleon-like figure in Hannibal who took the war home.
Peter Robinson: Second
Punic War, he goes across into what is now Spain.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes.
Peter Robinson:
And goes behind the Roman line, so to speak, famously taking elephants up over the Alps and
then wreaking havoc.
Victor Davis Hanson: From 219 to 202, this war went on.
Peter Robinson: In
Italy itself.
Victor Davis Hanson: In a series of battles at the river Caecanius, Trebia, Lake
Trasimone and Canai, he killed or wounded a quarter million Italians. And he ran wild for over
a decade in Italy until Scipio Africanus invaded Tunisia and forced him to come home. But when
I'm getting it.
Peter Robinson: To defend his home.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, and he lost the
Battle of Zama. He was exiled. But that was such a trauma or wound in the Italian mind. It was always
Hannibal ad Portis. They scared little kids with, "Hannibals at the gates." And they were
traumatized. So they had given a very punitive piece to the Carthaginians and they said, "You're
going to pay this huge fine and you can never make war without our permission. You're going to
surrender all of your European and Sicilian colonies. You're going to have it and you're going
to be largely confined to the city of Carthage and some satellite villages."
Peter Robinson: So
the Romans, I'm thinking now of a phrase that was used by Madeleine Albright to describe what
we had done to Saddam Hussein.The Romans had Carthage in a box.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes.
That was the idea.
Peter Robinson: So may I set up the third Punic War here, which brings us
to the event to which this chapter is dedicated. I'm quoting the end of everything. After the first
two Punic Wars, there was no call at Rome to level a defeated Carthage and yet Rome attacks Carthage
again. Why?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, it's very ironic and tragic because they paid the identity
off early.
Peter Robinson: The Carthaginians did.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. They were
Carthaginians and they discovered that without these overseas colonies and given their prime
location in North Africa. I've got to remember that this time North Africa was the most fertile
part of the Mediterranean, much more fertile than the shores of Europe, southern shores. And so
they sent a delegation three years earlier to Carthage to inspect what was going on and how did
they pay the fine off and they were astounded. The city had somewhat 500,000 to 600,000 people in
it. It was booming. It was lush. The countryside was lush. They were confident and unfortunately
for them...
Peter Robinson: And they had one of the great ports of the ancient world.
Victor
Davis Hanson: Yes, it was the part of Carthage. It's about 20 miles from modern Tunis
today. Was starting to rival Rome again and yet they professed no bellicosity at all.
They said, "You know, we have no problem with you."
Peter Robinson: We've learned our
lesson.
Victor Davis Hanson: We learned our lesson. We're just a mercantile. They were
sort of re-fashioning themselves from an imperial power to something like Singapore or Hong Kong.
Peter Robinson: Right.
Victor Davis Hanson: And Rome unfortunately was in this expansionary
mood. They had now consolidated Spain. They had consolidated Italy. They consolidated much
of Greece and soon would conquer all of Greece and Macedon and they had Cato the Elder and he got
up, you know, legendarily and say, "Carthage must be destroyed as the epithet of every speech."
So there was...
After the inspectors came back, they said, "These people are insidious. They may
not have Hannibal but they're going to rival us again."
Peter Robinson: They're doing too well.
Victor Davis Hanson: They're doing too well and we've got all... There were people in the Roman
Senate that said, "No, no, don't do that." They don't pose a threat and actually they're good
for us because the more that they're there they put us on guard and they don't...we don't get
luck. The Romans had this idea that affluence and leisure make you decadent. So just the fact
that they're right across the Mediterranean means it will always be vigilant.
Peter Robinson:
The competition is good for us, Cato.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. Kind of what Americans used to
think, 19th century.
So unfortunately they decided that they would present Carthage with a series of
demands that could not possibly be met and still be autonomous. So they sent a group from the
Senate down to consuls. Consular army was rare but they brought two consuls in an army and they
landed them there and they said to them, "You're going to move your city at least 15 miles from the
ocean.
You're not going to be a sea power." If you get mad about it, we're the same way. We're
Rome, we have Ostia, we're from the end. No problem. But you're going to destroy this ancient
city and then you're going to have to move lock, stock and barrel. And by the way, we want all of
your arms. We want your elephants, your famous elephants. They have personal names even.
We want
your elephants, we want your siege craft, we want your armor, we want everything.
Peter Robinson:
You ll live.
Victor Davis Hanson: And if you're willing to do that, we'll consider that the
city can live.And they were willing to do that. Not to move. They sent a delegation.
They said, "Okay, here's our catapults, here's our body armor and we'll negotiate
about the rest." They went back and they think, "I think we're okay." And then they went back
the next time and the Romans who were camped away with this huge army said, "You know..."
Peter Robinson: You said that the Romans took an army across the Mediterranean.
Victor
Davis Hanson: It's in Utica, right near them, about 20 miles away.
Peter Robinson:
That was bigger than the landing force in the invasion of Normandy.
Victor Davis
Hanson: Yes.
Peter Robinson: It was a vast force.
Victor Davis Hanson: Our sources are
somewhat in disagreement but it could have been anywhere from 70 to 90 to 100,000 people. It took
us all day to land 135,000, us being the British and the Americans. But the Americans themselves
did not have as many people as the Romans landed at Utica. And so the Romans then told all of the
Carthaginian allies on the North Coast, "Are you with us or against us? Because if you're with us,
we're going to destroy them and you're going to be a favored colony. You're going to get to share in
the spoils. We won't tax you.
You'll be the guys that run North Africa for it." If you're with
them, we're going to do to them what you...And so most of them, not all defect. And then the
legates come back and they tell the Carthaginians, "We blew it. They're going to kill us. And now
we have no weapons because they're going to make us move." We thought if we turned in our weapons,
they might not make us move. So they bring out of retirement, Hasrbal, who's this fanatic, not the
famous Hasrbal, father of Hannibal, but another named Hasrbal. And he's a complete maniac and
they had not trusted him. And he says, "Kill all the legates. Anybody who was an appeaser,
we're in full moor.
We're going to rearm." And they do. They get all the women's hair, they make
catapults and they go crazy and then they put a siege around the city. The problem the Romans have
is these walls are, until Constantinople, they are the greatest walls in the ancient world, 27 miles
of fortifications. Carthage is on a peninsula and it's kind of like a round circle with a corridor.
And they've got that all area walled and they have a fleet still and it's very hard to take that city
and the Romans are not known for their siege craft and they can't take it. And they lose, lose, lose
and they get the Numidian allies to join them. And suddenly, after two years, they've lost probably
20 or 30,000 Romans. Sometimes they break into the suburbs but not the main walls and it looks
like it is an ungodly disaster. And they are very confident and then just in the case of Alexander,
they don't know who they're dealing with. They bring out of this obscurity, Scipio Emilianus and
he is the adopted nephew, grand nephew of Scipio Africanus, the famous one.
And he is a philosopher
like Alexander the Great. He's a man of letters. He wouldn't do such a thing. He has a Scipionic
circle, playwrights, terrains. He's a friend of Polybius the Great historian just like Alexander
has the student of Aristotle. So he comes and he's a legate and he's been there and he keeps saying
the consuls are incompetent and they don't know what they're doing and I should be it but he's a
lowly young guy. And they said, "You take over."
So he comes, he gives a big lecture and says, "You
guys are pathetic, his soldiers. You're lazy.
This is what's going to happen." He has discipline.
They build a counter wall and over the next year he turns out to be an authentic military genius.
He cuts off the city. He cuts off the corridor.
He cuts off all the allies supplying them and he
besieges them and they will not surrender but they still have a hope that he's a man of principle
and he will negotiate with them and he will give them terms and he is a killer. And he does not
give them terms and he systematically breaks for the first time and only time in history the great
walls of Carthage. He gets into the city and then over a two-week period he systematically kills
every single person that the Romans. In fact, the descriptions are horrific.
Peter Robinson:
Now, are we still dealing with half a million people or have men haven't fled by now?
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes.
Peter Robinson: No, no, it's still densely possible.
Victor Davis
Hanson: They have nowhere to go. They're stuck and they're starving now.
And he's...
Peter
Robinson: So this is an act of butchery. Like Slaughtering and cattle or sheep.
Victor Davis
Hanson: Well, our sources, we have accounts in Diodorus and somewhat in Libya, Polybius fragments
here and there. We're told that the Roman army has to scrape off the bodies because they've killed
so many people because they're in...it's like Gaza or Fallujah or Mosul.
It's fighting in block by
block and they're destroying...to get rid of the Carthaginian defenders, they're destroying
the buildings and they topple and then the bodies are there and then the army can't move. So
they go, go, go until they get to the pinnacle, the capital. And there is Hasrbal and his wife
and of course he flips and cuts a deal with...
Peter Robinson: And on your side now, boys.
Victor Davis Hanson: He leaves his wife and they burn themselves up. And then he goes...he ends up
in retirement in Italy, one of the few people who is...endures a Roman triumph and humiliated in the
parade and they let him live.
Peter Robinson: and they let him live.
Victor Davis Hanson: And then
they wipe it out. I don't think it's accurate to say they sowed the ground with salt as myth
goes, but they did completely declare it an inhospitable place and it was sacrosanct to even
get near it. They took it down to the foundation. There is no more formal Punic center of
knowledge. They had a very rich agriculture, agronomy literature. It's gone.
What happens? It's
remnants of people who in Augustine's time in the fifth century AD, there are still people who they
claim speak Punic, very few of them. And Romans under Caesar then they make something called
Carthago Nova, a new city, but it's a Roman city built on the...somewhat near the old city.
Peter
Robinson: So it's gone.
Victor Davis Hanson: It's gone.
