Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Good generals

When setting off to war, beyond organizing a large and disciplined army and investing in decent spies, good generals consult the gods, sacrifice to them, and bring them along as talismans out to battle. More economical, however, is to petition a god with a specific goal in mind, pledging gifts or services in return for divine patronage.—Jack Sasson in Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature, page 410

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