Commemorating Classical Battles
Commemorating Classical Battles

Author: Brandon Braun

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2023-07-15

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 1789259363

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This is a study of the commemoration of Classical Greek battles, approaching monuments and other mnemonic practices as vital elements in the creation and curation of memories. It analyzes the diachronic development of battlefield, sanctuary, and city spaces, as evidenced by archaeological remains and ancient literary sources. In addition, it explores the experience of the commemorative spaces through the application of theories of space, phenomenology, and social memory. Following a biographical approach, the commemoration of each battle is organized into stages of initial commemoration, official monumentalization, memory curation, memory lapse, and reception. The research has led to several conclusions. While the commemoration of each battle can be divided into stages, these stages are not always discrete. There is variation in the types of commemorations within the stages, dependent on time, surrounding space, and the parties involved. Single commemorations can resonate differently with multiple audiences. The processes within the stage of memory curation lead to the subsequent lapse. The final stage of commemoration for each battle begins with the rediscovery of ancient monuments and continues to this day. The battles of Marathon, Leuktra, and Chaironeia are case studies for three reasons. First, they effectively span the period of Classical Greece (Marathon in 490 BCE to Chaironeia in 338 BCE). Secondly, these battles had different participants, thus allowing a variety of perspectives of both the victorious and the defeated. Lastly, these were battles that left lasting impacts in the material and literary record, making their commemoration relevant not only in antiquity, but also in the modern world.

War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens
War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens

Author: David Pritchard

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-12-23

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 0521190339

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Analyses how the democracy of the classical Athenians revolutionized military practices and underwrote their unprecedented commitment to war-making.

Classical Greek Tactics
Classical Greek Tactics

Author: Roel Konijnendijk

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 900435557X

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What determined the choices of the Greeks on the battlefield? Were their tactics defined by unwritten moral rules, or was all considered fair in war? In Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History, Roel Konijnendijk re-examines the literary evidence for the battle tactics and tactical thought of the Greeks during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Rejecting the traditional image of limited, ritualised battle, Konijnendijk sketches a world of brutally destructive engagements, restricted only by the stubborn amateurism of the men who fought. The resulting model of hoplite battle does away with most received wisdom about the nature of Greek battle tactics, and redefines the way they reflected the values of Greek culture as a whole.

States of Memory
States of Memory

Author: David C. Yates

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-05-29

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0190673567

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The Persian War was one of the most significant events in ancient history. It halted Persia's westward expansion, inspired the Golden Age of Greece, and propelled Athens to the heights of power. From the end of the war almost to the end of antiquity, the Greeks and later the Romans recalled the battles and heroes of this war with unabated zeal. The resulting monuments and narratives have long been used to reconstruct the history of the war itself, but they have only recently begun to be used to explore how the conflict was remembered over time. States of Memory focuses on the initial recollection of the war in the classical period down to the Lamian War (480-322 BCE). Drawing together recent work on memory theory and a wide range of ancient evidence, Yates argues that the Greek memory of the war was deeply divided from the outset. Despite the panhellenic scope of the conflict, the Greeks very rarely recalled the war as Greeks. Instead they presented themselves as members of their respective city-states. What emerged was a tangled web of idiosyncratic stories about the Persian War that competed with each other fiercely throughout the classical period. It was not until Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great dealt a devastating blow to the very notion of the independent city-state at the battle of Chaeronea that anything like a unified memory of the Persian War came to dominate the tradition.

Cultures of Commemoration
Cultures of Commemoration

Author: P.J. Rhodes

Publisher: OUP/British Academy

Published: 2012-05-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780197264669

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This volume presents studies of military commemorative practices in Western culture, from 5th-century BC Greece, through two World Wars, to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This new comparative approach reveals that the distant past has had a lasting influence on commemorative practice in modern times.

Sparta and the Commemoration of War
Sparta and the Commemoration of War

Author: Matthew A. Sears

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-12-21

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1009021109

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The tough Spartan soldier is one of the most enduring images from antiquity. Yet Spartans too fell in battle – so how did ancient Sparta memorialise its wars and war dead? From the poet Tyrtaeus inspiring soldiers with rousing verse in the seventh century BCE to inscriptions celebrating the 300's last stand at Thermopylae, and from Spartan imperialists posing as liberators during the Peloponnesian War to the modern reception of the Spartan as a brave warrior defending the “West”, Sparta has had an outsized role in how warfare is framed and remembered. This image has also been distorted by the Spartans themselves and their later interpreters. While debates continue to rage about the appropriateness of monuments to supposed war heroes in our civic squares, this authoritative and engaging book suggests that how the Spartans commemorated their military past, and how this shaped their military future, has perhaps never been more pertinent.

Brill's Companion to Greek Land Warfare Beyond the Phalanx
Brill's Companion to Greek Land Warfare Beyond the Phalanx

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9004501754

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Brill’s Companion to Greek Land Warfare Beyond the Phalanx brings together emerging and established scholars to build on the new consensus of multiform Greek warfare, on and off the battlefield, beyond the usual chronological, geographical, and operational boundaries.

Sparta and War
Sparta and War

Author: Stephen Hodkinson

Publisher: Classical Press of Wales

Published: 2006-12-31

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1910589543

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Ten new essays from a distinguished international cast treat Sparta's most famous area of activity. The results are challenging. Among the contributors, Thomas Figueira explores the paradox that Sparta's cavalry was an undistinguished institution. Jean Ducat conducts the most thorough study to date of Sparta's official cowards, the 'tremblers'. Anton Powell asks why Sparta chose not to destroy Athens after the Peloponnesian War. And Stephen Hodkinson argues that the image of Spartan society as militaristic may after all be a?mirage. This is the sixth volume from the International Sparta Seminar, founded by Powell and Hodkinson in 1988. The series has established itself as the main forum for the study of Spartan history.

Beyond the Gates of Fire
Beyond the Gates of Fire

Author: Philip de Souza

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2013-05-19

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 1783469102

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The Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC is one of the most famous battles in history. The heroism of the 300 Spartans who opted to remain behind to face the full might of the Persian host while their Greek allies made good their escape has become the stuff of legend. The story still inspires novelists and film-makers today (Frank Miller's fanciful 300 was a huge hit in 2007 and the film rights to Steven Pressfield's more historical novel Gates of Fire were bought by George Clooney, the film expected to finally surface in 2011 or 2012). But what is the truth behind the legends and why was this bloody defeat immediately accorded a halo of glory that has endured for nearly two-and-a-half millennia?Beyond the Gates of Fire brings together experts on the classical period from Australia, New Zealand and the United States to take a fresh look at various aspects of the battle. A substantial introductory section by the editors outlines the background to the conflict as well as the arms, armor and fighting styles of the opposing sides. The following chapters (9 of them) then discuss such questions as whether the defense of the pass really was a suicide mission; the exact topography of the battlefield itself in 480 BC, using the latest geological research and core samples; the impact of the battle on the Greek psyche; commemoration of the war dead; the impact of the original battle on the conduct of later battles in the pass, right up to the German invasion of 1941. For the classical scholar or the general reader whose interest has been piqued by the popular books and films, this book is sure to shed refreshing new light on the most famous last stand in history.

The Greek and Roman Trophy
The Greek and Roman Trophy

Author: Lauren Kinnee

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-12

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1351846574

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In The Greek and Roman Trophy: From Battlefield Marker to Icon of Power, Kinnee presents the first monographic treatment of ancient trophies in sixty years. The study spans Archaic Greece through the Augustan Principate. Kinnee aims to create a holistic view of this complex monument-type by breaking down boundaries between the study of art history, philology, the history of warfare, and the anthropology of religion and magic. Ultimately, the kaleidoscopic picture that emerges is of an ad hoc anthropomorphic Greek talisman that gradually developed into a sophisticated, Augustan sculptural or architectural statement of power. The former, a product of the hoplite phalanx, disappeared from battlefields as the Macedonian cavalry grew in importance, shifting instead onto coins and into rhetoric, where it became a statement of military might. For their part, the Romans seem to have encountered the trophy as an icon on Syracusan coinage. Recognizing its value as a statement of territorial ownership, the Romans spent two centuries honing the trophy-concept into an empire-building tool, planted at key locations around the Mediterranean to assert Roman presence and dominance. This volume covers a ubiquitous but poorly understood phenomenon and will therefore be instructive to upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in all fields of Classical Studies.