Civilizations Wiped Out by Conflicts
War doesn’t determine which side is right. Often it only settles who is left. In a relatively few instances — such as the quartet examined in the book — the losers (be they cultures, states, or civilizations) get outright demolished during the wars.
The targeted states, both by their enemies and in the case studies at hand, are the classical city state of Thebes, ancient Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople, and Aztec Tenochtitlán. Who were the obliterators? The author describes those covered in his book as “the ruthless wannabe philosopher Alexander the Great, the literary patron Scipio Aemilianus, the self-described intellectual Mehmet II, and the widely read Hernán Cortés — [who] all sought to destroy utterly rather than merely defeat their enemies.”
Brace yourself for bloodshed, albeit in an erudite fashion, which is what one expects from Victor Davis Hanson, author of The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation, as well as other such volumes as The Western Way of War, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, The Second World Wars, and The Dying Citizen. Hanson is a senior fellow in military history and classics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, and a fellow of Hillsdale College.
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