Victor Davis Hanson » War’s Paradoxes II: From the Peloponnesian War to ‘Leading From Behind’

"Thematic in the war was the sense of Nemesis — that victories lead to hubris that leads to overreaching that leads to folly, and eventually ruin. The hardest thing for a nation at war seems to be to judge, at a moment of victory, whether to press on and properly exploit the momentum, or to hold back and avoid overextension"