Military Departures, Homecomings and Death in Classical Athens

Hoplite Transitions

Owen Rees

• Editorial: Bloomsbury Academic
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350188662
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Storia
• Categoría: Storia dell'antica Grecia

This volume sheds new light on the experience of ancient Greek warfare by identifying and examining three fundamental transitions undergone by the classical Athenian hoplite as a result of his military service: his departure to war, his homecoming from war having survived, and his homecoming from war having died. As a conscript, a man regularly called upon by his city-state to serve in the battle lines and perform his citizen duty, the most common military experience of the hoplite was one of transition – he was departing to or returning from war on a regular basis, especially during extended periods of conflict. Scholarship has focused primarily on the experience of the hoplite after his return, with a special emphasis on his susceptibility to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but the moments of transition themselves have yet to be explored in detail. Taking each in turn, Owen Rees examines the transitions from two sides: from within the domestic environment as a member of an oikos, and from within the military environment as a member of the army. This analysis presents a new template for each and effectively maps the experience of the hoplite as he moves between his domestic and military duties. This allows us to reconstruct the effects of war more fully and to identify moments with the potential for a traumatic impact on the individual.

1

Introduction

The subject of homecoming in the classical Greek world seems, in many ways, hardwired into the disciplines of Classics and Ancient History. For many, one of our first encounters with these disciplines came through the Nostoi stories, most likely that of Odysseus. So, it is of little surprise that the idea of homecoming permeates through the literary studies, nor that ancient historians have become fascinated by the idea of the homecoming Greek warrior. How did he adapt to coming home? How hard did he find it to reconcile his experiences of war with the normality of domestic life? How had war affected him on a personal level?

This interest in homecoming as a literary concept and, in turn, as a psychological experience, has meant that one area has been neglected to date. The process of homecoming itself. While it is, of course, important to understand the warrior’s experience after his demobilisation, this can only be understood after we have identified how a man transitioned from his domestic life to his military service and then how he transitioned back into his domestic life again. What was the process? What were the basic logistics involved? What rituals and customs took place? Who else shared these experiences with him? And, of course, is there any evidence for how these transitions were perceived by the warrior or by those around him?

Some of the questions asked within this book have never been satisfactorily answered and some seem to have been rarely asked. Yet, it is important to ask them so that we can begin to gauge the experience of transitions between the domestic and military duties. Like all such enquiries, our analysis is guided by insufficient evidence, thus not all these questions can be satisfactorily answered. But, by asking them, we can begin to pick away at our historical preconceptions and start to understand the homecoming transition within a diachronically sensitive framework.

1.1 The ‘PTSD in history’ debate

The most prevalent analysis on the experiences of the homecoming Greek warrior comes from the studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its presence in the ancient world.¹ Proponents for the idea that PTSD existed in the ancient world base their work on universalist principles that accept all combat experience to be inherently the same and, because modern combat produces stress-related trauma, this must always be the case wherever and whenever there is, or has been, war.² Conversely, those scholars opposing this model do so on relativist principles, trusting in turn in the individual, the idiosyncratic nature of every culture and their style of warfare.³

Both viewpoints are strongly focused on the psychology of combat stress and the trauma it may create. Both schools of thought survey the evidence to examine how exposure to combat affected the behaviours of the combatants, how individuals are said to be feeling, whether there is evidence of addiction or depression or any other signifier stated in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-IV, or DSM-V in its most up-to-date version). They look at the vulnerability, or strength, of the individual based upon their social integrations before and during combat, as a means of analysing whether it is possible for ancient warriors to have suffered trauma.

1.1.1 Universalist approach

The primary catalyst behind the examination of PTSD in ancient history is, without question, the revolutionary work of Dr Jonathan Shay, a former staff psychiatrist at the United States Department of Veteran Affairs Outpatient Clinic.⁴ Within his two influential books, he showed how both the Iliad and the Odyssey could be used to aid in the rehabilitation of Vietnam War veterans. In so doing, Shay aligned the experiences of the heroes Achilles and Odysseus with those of modern veterans. With Achilles he offered a model of the combative military experience; with Odysseus he formed an allegorical homecoming narrative. While Shay was aware that his connections between the past and present experience could be strained, it was not his intention to analyse ancient mentalities or experiences. For instance, his work on Odysseus focuses on the modern diagnosis of PTSD but he is clear in stating that Odysseus did not have PTSD as the American Psychiatric Association defined it.⁵ Yet, this did not prevent Shay from placing the hero on a hypothetical therapist’s couch; historical credibility was not his primary concern nor should it be a factor by which his work should be judged.⁶

Unknown to Shay, his work tapped into a growing field of military history that was exploring the individual experience of military service. This approach was born from the seminal work of John Keegan who set down a model of research in his book The Face of Battle.⁷ Keegan’s revolutionary approach redirected the study of warfare, which was primarily based on tactics and strategy, to the examination of the individual soldier and his varied experiences. Keegan’s work would strongly influence that of Victor Davis Hanson, who used Keegan’s ethos to re-examine the lives and experiences of the combatants in ancient Greek warfare.⁸ When Shay released his novel interpretation of the Homeric epic poems, he tapped into a growing field of both ancient and military history; but, more than that, he brought a plethora of outside knowledge and experience to allow for a completely new reading of well-trodden ground in classical literature.

Shay’s first book was quickly picked up and qualified by Lawrence Tritle in his equally hard-hitting book From Melos to My Lai, which was an examination of the impact of war on the participants in Ancient Greece; often calling upon his own experiences as a veteran of the Vietnam War.⁹ Where Shay’s analysis was based within the realm of poetry, devoid of any wider cultural or historic context, Tritle attempted to qualify this analysis with an evidence-based review of historical narratives. Melos to My Lai was followed by A New History of the Peloponnesian War, a book in which Tritle attempted to employ the conclusions he drew in Melos to analyse the Peloponnesian War as a whole, with a particular focus on the socio-military aspects of the war, rather than the more conventional approach of political, and strategic analysis. His works have highlighted the potentially traumatic experiences that are evident in the histories but, more importantly, he has identified three direct, non-fictional examples from the written record which he believes express the symptoms of combat-induced trauma.¹⁰ The first instance, according to Tritle, comes during the battle of Marathon with the strange case of Epizelus.¹¹ Epizelus fought in the frontline of battle and saw the man next to him killed by a large imposing Greek warrior fighting for the Persians. At that moment he went blind, although he was not touched by any sort of blade or projectile.¹² To Tritle, this is a clear case of trauma-induced blindness and his comparison with a similar phenomenon in Cambodia is used to cement this idea.¹³ The second instance, according to Tritle, comes from the writing of the logographer Gorgias.¹⁴ In his defence of Helen, Gorgias describes an incurable madness that can result from abject fear on the battlefield, something Tritle sees as a reflection of trauma.¹⁵ Tritle’s final example from the Greek historical record comes from Xenophon’s mini-biography of the Spartan mercenary commander Clearchus. Tritle identifies Clearchus as a man deeply affected by war and whose personality bears a striking resemblance to the criteria of PTSD.¹⁶

The work of both scholars has become the lynchpin to the universalist position which has, for the past twenty years, been the most prevalent analysis. In 2011, Aislinn Melchior noted that the view that PTSD was present in the ancient world was ‘fast becoming dogma’.¹⁷ The work of these scholars popularised the study of trauma in the ancient world and has stimulated a large number of publications exploring the theme. The model of combat trauma has been used thus far to explore the characterisations of dramatic figures such as Medea, Heracles, Ajax and Philoctetes;¹⁸ to examine Athenian theatre as a form of ‘restoration’;¹⁹ to try and understand cases of military desertion;²⁰ to explore the military resilience of Socrates;²¹ and to explain the character of Alexander the Great.²² The work of Shay and Tritle has also become a springboard for scholars to examine combat trauma in different ancient societies, such as the Assyrians and the Romans.²³ More importantly, the universalist model has become influential outside the historical discipline.

Since the end of the First World War, the academic sciences have been interested in finding historical precedents to combat-induced psychological trauma. In September 1919, Dean A Worcester wrote a short letter to the editors of Science, published in the Notes and Comments section, in which he quoted Herodotus’ story of Epizelus, followed by a simple question: ‘Is this, perchance, the first account of “shell-shock”?’²⁴ The story of Epizelus appeared subsequently in a myriad of non-historical publications, assigning various labels and diagnoses such as war neuroses, battle hysteria, conversion disorder and, of course, PTSD.²⁵ Over time, he secured himself a place in many psychological textbooks, so, as Helen King so aptly describes, within the innocuous letter of Worcester ‘the [new] phenomenon had been given its origin in myth’.²⁶

It is not just Epizelus, but ancient history more generally which is so often drawn upon by the psychological sciences. Some scientific papers have tried to explore the ancient sources to offer psychological trauma a lineage and heritage that it is felt to be lacking.²⁷ Some studies have tried to push back the origins of PTSD from Herodotus to twelfth-century BC Mesopotamia;²⁸ another has gone one-step further, pushing it back to c. 5000 BC India.²⁹ Others have used ancient history as a starting point from which to explor...

Índice

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Figures, Tables and Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Warrior’s Departure
• 3 The Military Departure
• 4 Military Homecoming
• 5 The Warrior’s Homecoming
• 6 Military Homecoming of the Dead
• 7 The Domestic Reception of the War Dead
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright