“The End of Everything,” with Victor Davis Hanson | Uncommon Knowledge

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.