Strategos

Bust of an unidentified strategos with Corinthian helmet; Hadrianic Roman copy of a Greek sculpture of c. 400 BC

For the board game, see Stratego.

The term strategos (plural strategoi; Greek στρατηγός) (literally meaning "army leader") is used in Greek to mean "general". In the Hellenistic and Byzantine Empires the term was also used to describe a military governor. In the modern Hellenic Army, it is the highest officer rank.

The office of Strategos in other Classical Greek states

Other Greek states also possessed the office of Strategos. Notable among these was the Achaean League, whose most famous strategoi were Aratus of Sicyon and Philopoemon.

Hellenistic and later use

In the Hellenistic empires of the Diadochi, notably Lagid Egypt, Strategos became a gubernatorial office.

This use was continued in the Byzantine empire (see Byzantine aristocracy and bureaucracy).

Modern use

In the modern Hellenic Army of Greece, strategos (the spelling remains στρατηγός) is the highest officer rank. Officers holding this rank are addressed as "stratige" (Στρατηγε) (stressed on the last syllable). All but one of the other Greek general officer ranks are derivations of this word: antistrategos and ypostratigos, lieutenant general and major general, respectively; brigadier general, however is taxiarkhos, after a taxis (in modern usage taxiarkhia), which means brigade.

at the present Stratégòs is the name of a social network of business strategists [1]

Fictional uses

This position was featured in Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game. In the novel, the position of Strategos was charged with overall command of solar system defense. The Strategos, along with the positions of Polemarch (responsible for the International Fleet of space warships), and the Hegemon (the political leader of Earth, rather like a stronger version of the Secretary-General of the United Nations), was one of the three most powerful people alive. Because of a belief in their inherent luck and brilliance--specifically, that no Jewish general had ever lost a war--all three positions were filled with Jewish people - an American Jew as Hegemon, an Israeli Jew as Strategos, and a Russian Jew as Polemarch. The defeat of the Formics by half-Māori Mazer Rackham changed this position. Bean was given the title of Strategos by Peter Wiggin after he assumed the role of Hegemon.

The dystopian slave-empire of the Draka, in the series of books by S. M. Stirling, also uses "Strategos" together with many other military ranks and terms drawn from Classical Antiquity - though often with only the most loose resemblance to what they originally meant.

The position of 'Strategos' was also featured in the English language version of the Sunrise anime The Vision of Escaflowne; the character Folken occupied the position when he served the Zaibach empire.

The oldest use of the term "strategos" in fiction may be found in the "Callirhoe" of Chariton of Aphrodisias which is dated in the first century A.D. There, Hermocrates is the "strategos" of Syracuse and the father of Callirhoe, living in the 5th century B.C. In fact, he was a historical person, the victor over the Athenians in 413 B.C., an event which stopped Athenian expansion to the West. His role as a character in the novel is rather limited. Although his position in Syracuse gives Callirhoe a background, and he gives consent to her marriage and fulfills a few official duties, his legal or constitutional position is not very clear.

References

• Hansen M.H. 1987, The Athenian Democracy in the age of Demosthenes. Oxford.
• Debra Hamel 1998, Athenian generals : Military authority in the classical period. Leiden.
• Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1996: strategoi.
• Pauly-Wissowa