“and therefore your greatness, Virgil, lies in being able to grasp all of life . . . in a single survey, in a single work, in a single glance.” So are strategy and statecraft the ability to grasp interconnections? To know where you’ve been in order to see where you’re going? It’s hard to understand, otherwise, how an indirect approach—whether Odysseus’ twists and turns or Octavian’s probes and shifts—can ever reach Ithaca, or anywhere else.
