Beyond the Boundaries of Fantasia: An ancient imagining of the future of leadership

Caesar the General

In this module we consider Julius Caesar primarily as a commander in battle and secondarily as a leader in Roman politics -- a distinction that Romans drew much less firmly than do virtually all modern states. We approach Caesar's generalship through two influential and roughly antithetical European takes on the art of war (Clausewitz and Jomini), corresponding styles of military history (Keegan and Kagan), and modern schools of military psychology (Marshall and King).

Along the way we analyze how modern mass media, social media, popular press, and scholarly war narratives construct and depict organized killing and the men (in these narratives, if not quite as much in reality, almost always males) who orchestrate it.

We compare implicit and explicit 'excellences' (aretai) of modern and ancient leadership in the crucible of the killing fields.

Finally, we  transmute these takes on leadership in battle to views on leadership in less bloody circumstances -- an analogy Caesar himself drew in his own war stories, as we shall see. 

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