Since then the relationship between the two has been hotly debated, along with the subsequent interjection of the operational level of war.
What is not debated are the concepts themselves. Tactics and strategy are related but they are not the same thing. Strategy, of course, comes from the word ancient Greeks used for their generals, strategos. He was, in the later words of Clausewitz, concerned with the use of battle to further the political ends of his city. In other words, the strategos had to keep the long-term goal in mind and ensure that the tactics work to further that goal. A tactician would never abandon key terrain without a fight; it makes little tactical sense.
But strategy may demand that very thing and tactics must be subordinated. The first major Greek strategist, and perhaps the most gifted, was Themistocles. If a strategist must have a gift for long-term planning, then Themistocles was a born strategist. As a child, he reportedly fostered friendships with well-born children despite rules against such liaisons in pre-democracy Athens.
When Themistocles was born in BC, there was little chance he would one day achieve political power or have any opportunity to make use of those friendships.
Themistocles as a child could not have known exactly how such connections would benefit him. Around or BC, the reforms of Cleisthenes turned Athens into a democratic state, offering a path to power for the young Themistocles.
