Wheeler Everett L. Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery

Brill, 1988. — 140 p.Wheeler's book is invaluable--as much for providing the ancient Greek and Latin terms for stratagems as for his discussions of the Odysseus and Achilles ethos. While this is supposed to be a primer in the strategies of war, it functions amazingly well as a primer in understanding the rhetoric and writings of such political philosophers and essayists as Plato, Plutarch, Montaigne, Bacon, and Emerson. Military trickery and rhetorical trickery have the same ends--for the ancients, the moderns, and the neocons.