ABSTRACT
The tradition of writing history began at Rome in the third century B.C. as an imitation of Greek historiography, and for a long time histories at Rome were written in Greek. Certain traditions were passed down about the early confrontations between Greek and Roman culture that made much of the theme of Greek trickery versus Roman forthrightness. The terms for "trickery" cover a variety of things: diplomatic chicanery, improper motives for warfare, and an implicit suspicion of rational strategic planning and utilitarian thinking about warfare at any level. The fact that the Roman historians record so little high-level strategic discussion raises the question of whether there existed much to record. The "stratagem" tradition provided an avenue through which a sanitized version of raison d'etat could be made acceptable to Romans. The Romans may affect to despise stratagems, but they know how to use them.
