War is the father of all and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as humans; some he makes slaves of, others free. Fragment 82. Heraclitus This article explores the theme of deception in Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace, in particular the events described in the first three books, which … Read more
A Chapter in the WarAppian, 95-165 CEUnder orders from Octavian, the hardened captains – Pansa, Carfulenus – patrolled the narrow pass they had determined to defend, with the Martian legion and half a dozen cohorts in their train.Surrounded all about by mulling marshland, heavy bogs, eight miles south-east of Mutina, their suspicions as they carried … Read more
The bomb might be dropped any time soon now, apparently. The end of all ends, a nuclear war, looms among the narratives of where Ukraine and Russia’s war might end. Timothy Snyder warns in this regard that a nuclear bomb ‘would make no decisive military difference’; adding that looking at ‘the mushroom cloud for narrative … Read more
As events in Ukraine demonstrate, ineluctably, war diminishes our humanity, possessing men – and mostly men – of a callous disregard for life, and a capacity for often inexplicable cruelty. As such, the invasion of one state by another without a casus belli – as we have witnessed in Russia’s essentially unprovoked invasion of Ukraine … Read more
