Abstract
Almost all Greek authors, from Homer to Plato and beyond, deal with war and its impact, some more intensely and directly than others, but war seems an ever-present reality.1 Homer’s Iliad is an epic about war and how it affects those who fight it. Tyrtaeus, the mid-seventh-century elegist, composed songs that became “hits,” celebrating the hero’s beautiful death and urging the Spartans to fight bravely to protect their families and community. The Athenian sage and lawgiver Solon recognizes in civil strife and war and the deaths of young men the inevitable consequence of elite abuse of power. The early philosopher Heraclitus sees in war one of the natural forces that produces contrast and never-ending transformation. In the early fifth century, Simonides was in high demand to write poems celebrating the achievements of the Persian War heroes. In Persians Aeschylus dramatized and mythologized a recent war, showing the loser’s misery and warning against overstepping god-set limits. Sophocles’ Ajax confronts us with a hero whose mind cracks under the intense emotional experience of war. Euripides’ Trojan War plays stage the human consequences of Athens’ power and war policies and the price even the victors have to pay for martial glory. Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ invention of large-scale prose history, stimulated by extraordinary wars, focuses on war as an agent that drives history and challenges humans to excel in great deeds.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Akrigg, Benjamin. Forthcoming. Population and Economy in Classical Athens. Cambridge: University Press.
Anderson, J. K. 1970. Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
—. 1991. “Hoplite Weapons and Offensive Arms.” In Hanson 1991, 15–37.
Avery, Harry. 1973. “Persian Dead at Marathon.” Historia 22: 756.
Bechtle, Gerald. 1996. “A Note on Pseudo-Xenophon, The Constitution of the Athenians, 1.11.” Classical Quarterly 46: 564–6.
Best, J. G. P. 1969. Thracían Peltasts and Their Influence on Greek Warfare. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.
Bettalli, Marco. 1990. La dijesa di una città assediata (Poliorketika). Introduzione, traduzione e commento. Pisa: ETS Editrice.
—. 1995. I mercenari net mondo greco, I: Dalle origini alla fine del V sec. a.C. Pisa: ETS Editrice.
Bleckmann, Bruno. 1998. Athens Weg in die Niederlage. Die letzten Jahre des Peloponnesischen Kriegs. Stuttgart: Teubner.
Blok, Josine. 1995. The Early Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth. Leiden: Brill.
Bradley, Keith, and Paul Cartledge, eds. 2011. The Cambridge World History of Slavery, I: The Ancient Mediterranean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brule, P. 1999. “La mortalité de guerre en Grèce classique: L’exemple d’Athènes de 490 à 322.” In Armées et sociétés de la Grèce classique: Aspects sociaux et politiques de la guerre aux Ve et IV e . av. J.-C., edited by F. Prost, 51–68. Paris: Editions Errances.
Brunt, P. A. 1993. Studies in Greek History and Thought. Oxford: Clarendon.
Burckhardt, Leonhard A. 1996. Bürger und Soldaten. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Campbell, D.A., ed., trans. 1982. Greek Lyric, I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cartledge, Paul. 1987. Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta. London: Duckworth.
—. 1991. “Richard Talbert’s Revision of the Spartan-Helot Struggle: A Reply.” Historia 40: 379–81.
—. 1993. The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—. 2001. Spartan Refections. London: Duckworth.
—. 2002. Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 to 362 BC. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Clairmont, Christoph W. 1983. Patrios Nomos: Public Burial in Athens during the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Clark, Bruce. 2006. Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Croally, N. T. 1994. Euripidean Polemic: The Trojan Women and the Function of Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davies, J. K. 1997. “The ‘Origins of the Greek Polis’: Where Should We Be Looking?” In The Development of the polis in Archaic Greece, edited by L. G. Mitchell and P. J. Rhodes, 24–38. London: Routledge.
Dayton, John C. 2005. The Athletes of War: An Evaluation of the Agonistic Elements in Greek Warfare. Toronto: E. Kent.
Demand, Nancy H. 1990. Urban Relocation in Archaic and Classical Greece. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Ducat, Jean. 1990. Les hilotes. Athens and Paris: Ecole française d’Athènes.
Ducrey, Pierre. 1999. Le traitement des prisonniers de guerre dans la Grèce antique. 2nd ed. Athens and Paris: Ecole française d’Athènes.
Edwards, M., and S. Usher. 1986. Greek Orators, I: Antiphon & Lysias. Trans. with Comm. and Notes. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.
Edwards, Martha. 2000. “Philoctetes in Historical Context.” In Disabled Veterans in History, edited by David A. Gerber, 55–69. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Fisher, Nick. 2000. “Hybris, Revenge, and Stasis in the Greek City-States.” In van Wees 2000, 83–123.
Fromkin, David. 1989. A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914–1922. New York: Avon Books.
Gabrielsen, Vincent. 1994. Financing the Athenian Fleet: Public Taxation and Social Relations. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gaca, Kathy L. 2008. “The Little Girl and Her Mother: Iliad 16.7–11 and Ancient Greek Warfare.” American Journal of Philology 129: 145–71.
—. 2010. “The Andrapodizing of War Captives in Greek Historical Memory.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140: 117–61.
—. 2011a. “Girls, Women, and the Significance of Sexual Violence in Ancient Warfare.” In Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones, edited by Elizabeth Heineman, 73–88. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
—. 2011b. “Manhandled and Kicked Around: Reinterpreting the Etymology and Significance of andrapoda.” Indogermanische Forschungen 116: 110–46.
Gaebel, Robert E. 2002. Cavalry Operations in the Ancient Greek World. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Gagarin, Michael, and Paul Woodruff, eds., trans. 1995. Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garlan, Yvon. 1972. “Les esclaves grecs en temps de guerre.” In Actes du colloque d’histoire sociale 1970, 29–62. Paris: Belles Lettres.
—. 1975. War in the Ancient World: A Social History. Trans. Janet Lloyd. London: Chatto and Windus.
—. 1988. Slavery in Ancient Greece. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Rev. ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Gehrke, Hans-Joachim. 1985. Stasis. Untersuchungen zu den inneren Kriegen in den griechischen Staaten des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v.Chr. Munich: Beck.
Goldhill, Simon. 1990. “The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology.” In Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context, edited by J. J. Winkler and Froma Zeitlin, 97–129. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Green, Peter. 1996. The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Gregory, Justina. 1991. Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Hansen, M. H. 1988. Three Studies in Athenian Demography. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
—, ed. 1993. The Ancient Greek City-State. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
—. 1999. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Exp. ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Hanson, Victor D., ed. 1991. Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience. London: Routledge.
—. 1999. “Hoplite Obliteration: The Case of the Town of Thespiae.” In Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by John Carman and Anthony Harding, 203–17. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Pub.
—. 2000. The Western Way of War. 2nd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
—. 2001. “Democratic Warfare, Ancient and Modern.” In McCann and Strauss 2001, 3–33.
Harvey, David. 1985. “Women in Thucydides.” Arethusa 18: 67–90.
Henderson, Jeffrey, ed. 1980a. Aristophanes: Essays in Interpretation. Yale Classical Studies 26.
—. 1980b. “Lysistrata: The Play and Its Themes.” In Henderson 1980a, 153–218.
—. 1996. Three Plays by Aristophanes Staging Women. New York and London: Routledge.
Hirschon, Renée, ed. 2003. Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey. New York: Berghahn Books.
Hodkinson, Stephen. 1993. “Warfare, Wealth, and the Crisis of Spartiate Society.” In Rich and Shipley 1993, 146–76.
—. 2000. Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. London: Duckworth, and Swansea: Classical Press of Wales.
Hornblower, Simon. 1991. A Commentary on Thucydides, I. Oxford: Clarendon.
Humphreys, S. C. 1978. “Economy and Society in Classical Athens.” In Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks, 136–58. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Hunt, Peter. 1997. “Helots at the Battle of Plataea.” Historia 46: 129–44.
—. 1998. Slaves, Warfare and Ideology in the Greek Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—. 2001. “The Slaves and the Generals of Arginusae.” American Journal of Philology 122: 359–80.
—. 2007. “Military Forces.” In Sabin et al. 2007, 108–46.
—. 2010. War, Peace, and Alliance in Demosthenes’ Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, A. H. 1991. “Hoplites and the Gods: The Dedication of Captured Arms and Armour.” In Hanson 1991, 228–49.
Jacob, O. 1932. “La cité grecque et les blessés de guerre.” In Mélanges Gustave Glotz, II, 961–81. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Kagan, Donald. 2003. The Peloponnesian War. New York: Viking.
Krentz, Peter. 1985. “Casualties in Hoplite Battles.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 26: 13–21.
—. 2007. “War.” In Sabin et al. 2007, I.147–85.
Kyle, Donald G. 1992. “The Panathenaic Games: Sacred and Civic Athletics.” In Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils, 77–101. Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lazenby, John. 1991. “The Killing Zone.” In Hanson 1991, 87–109.
Lehmann, G. A. 1980. “Krise und innere Bedrohung der hellenischen Polis bei Aeneas Tacticus.” In Studien zur antiken Sozialgeschichte: Festschrift Friedrich Vittinghoff edited by Werner Eck, Hartmut Galsterer, and Hartmut Wolff, 71–86. Cologne: Böhlau.
LiDonnici, L. R. 1995. The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Lintott, Andrew. 1982. Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City, 750–330 BC. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lippelt, Otto. 1910. Die griechischen Leichtbewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Grossen. Weida, Thüringen: Thomas and Hubert.
Lissarrague, François. 1990. L’autre guerrier: Archers, peltastes, cavaliers dans l’imagerie attique. Paris: La Découverte.
Loraux, Nicole. 1986. The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Luraghi, Nino. 2001. “Der Erdbebenaufstand und die Entstehung der messenischen Identität.” In Gab es das griechische Wunder? Griechenland zwischen dem Ende des 6. und der Mitte des 5. Jahrhunderts v.Chr., edited by Dietrich Papenfuss and Volker M. Strocka, 279–301. Mainz: von Zabern.
Luraghi, Nino and Susan Alcock, eds. 2003. Helots and Their Masters in Laconia and Messenia: Histories, Ideologies, Structures. Washington DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.
McCann, David R., and Barry S. Strauss, eds. 2001. War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe.
Meier, Christian. 1990. “Die Rolle des Krieges im klassischen Athen.” Historische Zeitschrift 251: 555–605.
—. 1993. The Political Art of Greek Tragedy. Trans. Andrew Webber. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Orig. German ed. Munich: Beck, 1988.
Meiggs, Russell. 1972. The Athenian Empire. Oxford: Clarendon.
Mitchell, Stephen. 1996. “Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece.” In Battle in Antiquity, edited by A. B. Lloyd, 87–105. London: Duckworth, and Swansea: Classical Press of Wales.
Morrison, J. S., J. F. Coates, and N. B. Rankov. 2000. The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Munn, Mark. 2000. The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Newiger, Hans-Joachim. 1980. “War and Peace in the Comedy of Aristphanes.” In Henderson 1980a, 219–37.
Osborne, Robin. 1995. “The Economics and Politics of Slavery at Athens.” In The Greek World, edited by Anton Powell, 27–43. London: Routledge.
—. 2004. The Old Oligarch: Pseudo-Xenophon’s Constitution of the Athenians. Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. 2nd ed. London: LACTOR.
Parke, H. W. 1933. Greek Mercenary Soldiers from the Earliest Times to the Battle of Ipsus. Oxford: Clarendon. Repr. Chicago: Ares, 1981.
Price, Jonathan. 2001. Thucydides and Internal War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pritchett, W. Kendrick. 1971–1991. The Greek State at War. 5 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Raaflaub, Kurt A. 1998. “The Transformation of Athens in the Fifth Century.” In Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens, edited by Deborah Boedeker and Kurt A. Raaflaub, 15–41, 348–57. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
—. 2001. “Father of All—Destroyer of All: War in Late Fifth-Century Athenian Discourse and Ideology.” In McCann and Strauss 2001, 307–56.
—. 2007. “The Breakthrough of Dēmokratia in Mid-Fifth-Century Athens.” In Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece, edited by Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace, 105–54. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
—. 2013. “Homer and the Agony of Hoplite Battle.” Ancient History Bulletin 27.1–2: 1–22.
—. 2015. Our Ancient Wars: Rethinking War through the Classics, edited by Victor Caston and Silke-Maria Weineck. University of Michigan Press.
Rhodes, P. J. 1981. A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. Oxford: Clarendon.
—. 1992. “The Athenian Revolution.” Cambridge Ancient History V: 62–95. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosivach, V. J. 1985. “Manning the Athenian Fleet, 433–426 b.c.” American Journal of Ancient History 10: 41–66.
Roussel, L. 1966. Lysias, l’Invalide. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Ruschenbusch, Eberhard. 1979. Athenische Innenpolitik im 5. Jh. v. Chr. Ideologie oder Pragmatismus? Bamberg: aku Fotodruck und Verlag.
Sabin, Philip, Hans van Wees, and Michael Whitby, eds. 2007. The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Salazar, Christine F., ed. 2000. The Treatment of War Wounds in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Leiden: Brill.
Schaps, David. 1982. “The Women of Greece in Wartime.” Classical Philology 77: 193–213.
Scodel, Ruth. 1980. The Trojan Trilogy of Euripides. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
Seibert, Jakob. 1979. Die politischen Flüchtlinge und Verbannten in der griechischen Geschichte von den Anfängen bis zur Unterwerfung durch die Römer. 2 vols. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Shay, Jonathan. 1994. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International.
—. 2000. “Killing Rage: physis or nomos—or Both?” In van Wees 2000, 31–56.
—. 2002. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner.
Spence, Iain G. 1993. The Cavalry of Classical Greece: A Social and Military History with Particular Reference to Athens. Oxford: Clarendon.
Steinhauer, George. 2010. “The Stele of the Fallen of Marathon from the Villa of Herodes Atticus at Loukou (Cynouria).” In Marathon: The Battle and the Ancient Deme, edited by Kostas Buraselis and Katerina Meidani, 199–205. Athens: Institut du Livre A. Kardamitsa.
Sternberg, R. H. 1999. “The Transport of Sick and Wounded Soldiers in Classical Greece.” Phoenix 53:191–205.
Strauss, Barry S. 1986. Athens after the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction and Politics, 403–386 BC. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
—. 2000. “Perspectives on the Death of Fifth-Century Athenian Seamen.” In van Wees 2000, 261–83.
—. 2007. “Naval Battles and Sieges.” In Sabin et al. 2007, 223–47.
Stroud, Ronald. 1971. “Greek Inscriptions: Theozotides and the Athenian Orphans.” Hesperia 40: 280–301.
Talbert, Richard. 1989. “The Role of the Helots in the Class Struggle at Sparta.” Historia 38: 22–40.
Tritle, Lawrence A. 1997. “Hector’s Body: Mutilation of the Dead in Ancient Greece and Vietnam.” Ancient History Bulletin 11: 123–36.
—. 2000. From Melos to My Lai: War and Survival. London: Routledge.
—. 2003. “Alexander and the Killing of Cleitus the Black.” In Crossroads of History: The Age of Alexander, edited by Waldemar Heckel and Lawrence Tritle, 127–46. Claremont, CA: Regina Books.
—. 2004. “Xenophon’s Portrait of Clearchus: A Study in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” In Xenophon and His World, edited by Christopher Tuplin, 325–39. Stuttgart: Steiner.
—. 2009a. “Gorgias, the Encomium of Helen, and the Trauma of War.” Clio’s Psyche 16.2: 195–9.
Tritle, Lawrence A. 2009b. “Inside the Hoplite Agony.” Ancient History Bulletin 23: 50–69.
—. 2010. A New History of the Peloponnesian War. Maiden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Vaughn, Pamela. 1991. “The Identification and Retrieval of the Hoplite Battle-Dead.” In Hanson 1991, 38–62.
Wees, Hans van, ed. 2000. War and Violence in Ancient Greece. London: Duckworth and Swansea: Classical Press of Wales.
—. 2004. Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities. London: Duckworth.
Welwei, Karl-Wilhelm. 1974–1988. Unfreie im antiken Kriegsdienst. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Steiner.
—. 2006. “Überlegungen zur frühen Helotie in Lakonien.” In Das Frühe Sparta, edited by Andreas Luther, Mischa Meier, and Lukas Thommen, 29–41. Stuttgart: Steiner.
West, M. L. 1978. Hesiod, Works and Days. Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon.
Wheeler, Everett. 2007. “Land Battles.” In Sabin et al. 2007, 186–247.
Whitehead, David. 1990. Aineias the Tactician, How to Survive under Siege. Translated with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon.
Wyatt, William F. 1976. “Persian Dead at Marathon.” Historia 25: 483–4.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2014 Peter Meineck and David Konstan
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Raaflaub, K.A. (2014). War and the City: The Brutality of War and Its Impact on the Community. In: Meineck, P., Konstan, D. (eds) Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. The New Antiquity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137398864_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137398864_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48560-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39886-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)