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Early Greek Land Warfare As Symbolic Expression Author(S): W The Past and Present Society Early Greek Land Warfare as Symbolic Expression Author(s): W. R. Connor Source: Past & Present, No. 119 (May, 1988), pp. 3-29 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/651018 Accessed: 06/09/2010 13:08 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press and The Past and Present Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Past & Present. http://www.jstor.org EARLYGREEK LAND WARFAREAS SYMBOLICEXPRESSION* The Greekshad little love for wild Ares. His templesand statueswere sparse.Athena always came out the victorin battlesbetween the two of them. His hair filled with dirt as he fell to cover seven acreswith his body. The artisans acceptedhim only in nakedform; they deniedhim his helmet; his spearoff to one side, abandonedon a chair,diagonally placed, no longera symbol morea bit of decoration.1 These lines fromYannis Ritsos' "Expiation" stand in sharpcontrast to the assessmentof the role of war in ancientGreek society offered by leadingancient historians over the past few decades.2Beginning in the l950s, and increasinglyin the 1960sand 1970s,many classical scholarsconcluded that ancientGreece was a war culture:it derived its values from war, it acceptedwar as somethinginevitable and natural,its citizens went out to fight every spring with the same regularitythat blood-redcyclamens brighten the Greek hillsides.3 ArnaldoMomigliano, speaking in 1954 at the second International Congressof ClassicalStudies, was one of the firstto arguethis view: War was an ever presentreality in Greeklife; it was a focus for emotions,ethical values,social rules . Warwas the centreof Greeklife. Yetthe amountof attention thatGreek political thinkers gave to causesof waris negligiblein comparisonto the attentionthey paidto constitutionalchanges . The reason,I suspect,is thatthe Greekscame to acceptwar as a naturalfact like birth and death about which nothing could be done.4 * This essaywas originallypresented in lectureform in the SpenserTrask series at PrincetonUniversity. I amespecially grateful to BruceFrier, Jack Kroll and Lawrence Stonefor help and encouragement. 1 YannisRitsos, Exile and Return: Selected Poems, 1967-1974, trans. Edmund Keeley (New York, 1985), pp. 85 f. 2 Ritsos'view aboutthe cultsof Ares, however,matches that of the leadingscholar of ancientGreek religion, WalterBurkert. See Burkert'sGreek Religion, trans. J. Raffan(Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 169 f. 3 Behind the movementsof the last generation,to be sure, is a long tradition includingMax Weber'sdefinition of the Greekpolis as "a communityof warriors": Wirtschaftund Gesellschaft (Tubingen, 1921), p. 558. 4 A. Momigliano,"Some Observations on Causesof Warin AncientHistoriogra- phy", Acta CongressusMadvigiani: Proceedings of theSecond International Congress of ClassicalStudies, 1954, i (Copenhagen,1958), pp. 199-211;reprinted in his Secondo (cont. on p. 4) 4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 1 19 The idea of controllingwars) like the idea of the emancipationof womenand the idea of birthcontroln is parto? the intellectualrevolution of the XIX centuryand meanta breakwith the classicaltradition of historiographyabout wars.5 In his Vanierlectures, publishedin 1972, Eric Havelockhelped supportthis view by providinga more secureconceptual basis He drew on the work of psychologistsand socialbiologists and his own studiesdevoted to literacy.The title of the lecturesreveals much of the approach-"War as a Way of Life in ClassicalCulture'.6 Havelockowed much to studies of aggressionand territorialityby KonradLorenz and others;the idea of"culturalprogramming' was especiallyimportant in his thinking.He appliedthat idea to Homer) Herodotusand Thucydides,whose texts he believed "yield up the secretof a jointpartnership in a literaryenterprise) one whichproved decisive in placing organisedwarEare at the heart of the European Yalue system1.7 In Havelocks view these authorsnot only exalted war)they legitimizedit and encouragedits persistentprominence in . , HuropeanClVlw ilZatlOn. LaterJacqueline de Romilly,Sir KennethDover and others joined in emphasizingthe universalityof war amongthe Greeks.8The late Sir Moses Finley also lent his supportto this view i'Warwas a normalpart of life . hardlya year went by withoutrequiring a formal decision to fight) followed by a muster and the necessary preparations,and finallycombat at some level'9 and in recent fn. 4 cont.) conlnbuto(Rome, 1960), pp. 21 ff., and Studiesin Historiogruphy(London, 1966), ch. 7. 5 Ibid., in Secondoconlribato, p. 25. Cf. Y. GarlanWar in theAncient UYorld) trans. J. Lloyd(London, 1975), pp. 16f. The analogyto contraceptionis misleading.Genevan for example, had alreadyentered ';the age of contraception"by the end of the seventeenthcentury: see P. Laslett,The World We Have Lost(New York, 1965),pp 101, 132;and the Greeksof antiquitydid rsotregard birth as somethingabout which nothing could be done: see E. EybenSssurvey, "FamilyPlanning in Antiquity' AnvientSoc., xi-xii (1980-1))pp. 5-82* 6 The lectureswere publishedin E. Gareau(ed.3, ClassicalValues and theModern WorS(Ottawa, 19723, pp. 19-78. 7 Ibid.3p.37. 8 J de Romilly,C'Guerre et paix entrecites", in 3 P. Vernant(ed.)3 Proklemes de la guerreen Greceancienne (Civilisations et societes,xi, Paris, 1968),pp. 207 ff. Note the criticismsof P. Ducrey,Le traitementdes pnsonniers de guerre(Ecoles franaises d'Athenes,xvii, Paris, 1968),p. 3. Dover commentedin GreekPopulur Morality (Oxford, 1974), p. 315, "It being taken for grantedthat there must be wars (Xen. Hell. vi 3.15)) just as there m7ast alwaysbe bad weather)the practicalproblem was alwaysa problemof when, where and how". Fromsuch a commentone mightforget that the passageunder discussion ("warsare foreverbreaking out and being concluded")is part of an argumentfor settlinga war and arrangingpeace as quicklyas possible. 9 M. I. Finley, Politicsin theAncierzt WorZd (Cambridge, 1983), p. 67, cf. p. 60: 'stherewere . few years in the historyof most Greekcity-states (of Spartaand Athens in particular)and hardlyany years in succession,without some military (cont. on p. SJ EARLY GREEK LAND WARFAREAS SYMBOLICEXPRESSION 5 years showed a dispositionto carrythe argumentone stagefurther. Not only was war "normal",it was unopposed:"No one in the city- state world, and certainly no social class, was opposed to war, conquestand empire".10 Behindthese commentsa radicalre-evalu- ation of Greek civilizationwas under way, and entering a wider intellectualdiscourse. In Hannah Arendt'sOn Revolution,for ex- ample, we find a similarview of the Greeks:"Since for the Greeks politicallife by definitiondid not extendbeyond the polis, the use of violenceseemed to thembeyond the needfor justification in the realm of what we today call foreignaffairs''.1l These scholarsand criticsare the best of their generation;yet, as we shall see, they arewrong or seriouslymisleading in severalmajor respects.They have, moreover,slipped into the old habitof treating the various periods of Greek civilizationand the variousforms of warfareas a unity. They have therebyencouraged the view that the Greekswere as monolithicin their acceptanceof the inevitabilityof war as they were ferociousin its conduct. As a result diversities, tensions and perplexitiesthat were extremelyimportant to ancient Greekcivilization are reducedto a cliche which has the Greekstell: . with such high zest To childrenardent for some desperateglory The old Lie: Dulce et decorumest Pro patriamori.12 This approachobscures much of the diversityof view to be found amongvarious Greeks about war theirdisagreements and dissen- sions, the diversity of practiceand the inner division between a (n. 9 cont.) engagements".A similarargument is presentedby Garlan,War in the Ancient World, p. 18. He arguesthat the allegedfailure of the ancientsto think deeply about the causesof warmay be "becauseit was so widespreadand perennialthat it appearedto be outsidehuman initiative and to fallwithin the domainof natureor the realmof the gods". A passagethat is oftenadduced as supportof this view (Plato,Laws, 625 e ff.) is in fact a statementthat one individual,Plato's Cretan lawgiver, "condemned the stupidityof the massof men in failingto perceivethat all are involvedceaselessly in a lifelongwar against all states. for . 'Peace'. ie nothingmore than a name". It does not establishthat most Greeksthought war was the normalor naturalstate of affairs.
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