The origins of Western warfare lie in classical Greece, on the battlefields of Marathon and Delion, and in the strange, terrible head-on collision of Thebans and Spartans at Koroneia. Instead of the ambush, skirmish, or single combat between heroes, the Greeks of the classical age devised a ferocious, brutal, brief, and very destructive form of combat that used armed men of all ages. With this technique, they invented the central act of Western warfare--the...