Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks the New Antiquity Edited by Matthew S

Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks The New Antiquity Edited by Matthew S. Santirocco

Over the past two decades, our understanding of the ancient world has been dramatically transformed as classicists and other scholars of antiquity have moved beyond traditional geographical, chronological, and methodological boundaries to focus on new topics and different questions. By providing a major venue for further cutting-edge scholarship, The New Antiquity will reflect, shape, and participate in this transformation. The series will focus on the literature, history, thought, and material culture of not only ancient Europe, but also Egypt, the Middle East, and the Far East. With an emphasis also on the reception of the ancient world into later periods, The New Antiquity will reveal how present concerns can be brilliantly illuminated by this new understanding of the past. MATTHEW S. SANTIROCCO is Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs at NewYork University, where he is Professor of Classics and Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies, and he served for many years as Seryl Kushner Dean of the College of Arts and Science. He taught previously at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Brown, Emory, and Pittsburgh. He is the former editor of the American Philological Association Monograph Series, American Classical Studies and the journal Classical World. His publica- tions include a book on Horace, as well as several edited volumes and many articles. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is currently Assistant Secretary of the Academy for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Horace and Housman by Richard Gaskin Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks edited by Peter Meineck and David Konstan

Selected Previous Publications Peter Meineck The Electra Plays with Paul Woodruff, Celia Eaton Luschnig, and Justina Gregory (2010) Sophocles: Four Tragedies with Paul Woodruff (2007) Sophocles: The Theban Plays with Paul Woodruff (2003) Aeschylus: Oresteia (1998) Aristophanes 1: Clouds, Wasps, Birds (1998) David Konstan Before Forgiveness (2010) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks (2006) Pity Transformed (2001) Friendship in the Classical World (1997) Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks

Edited by Peter Meineck and David Konstan COMBAT TRAUMA AND THE ANCIENT GREEKS Copyright © Peter Meineck and David Konstan, 2014. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 ISBN 978-1-137-39885-7

All rights reserved. “Drive On.” Words and Music by John R. Cash. © 1993 SONG OF CASH, INC. (ASCAP). All rights administered by BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (US) LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation. “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. “Marion Henry Norman Khe Sanh, 1968” © 2002 Charles E. Patterson. Reprinted by permission of Charles E. Patterson from the Signal Tree Publications edition The Petrified Heart: The Vietnam War Poetry of Charles E. Patterson. “The Diameter of the Bomb” from The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, by Yehuda Amichai, edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. © 1996 by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press and Chana Bloch. “Champs d’Honneur” and “Poem” ©1979. Printed with permission of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-48560-4 ISBN 978-1-137-39886-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137398864 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Combat trauma and the ancient Greeks / edited by Peter Meineck and David Konstan. pages cm—(New antiquity) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–137–39885–7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Greek literature—History and criticism. 2. Post-traumatic stress disorder in literature. I. Meineck, Peter, 1967– II. Konstan, David. III. Series: New antiquity. PA3015.P67C66 2014 880.93581—dc23 2014011518 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September 2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Not even sleep can relieve the painful memories That fall upon the heart, drop by drop

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 179–80 This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS

List of Figures ix Preface xi

Introduction Combat Trauma: The Missing Diagnosis in Ancient Greece? 1 David Konstan One War and the City: The Brutality of War and Its Impact on the Community 15 Kurt A. Raaflaub Two Phaeacian Therapy in Homer’s Odyssey 47 William H. Race Three Women after War: Weaving Nostos in Homeric Epic and in the Twenty-First Century 67 Corinne Pache Four “Ravished Minds” in the Ancient World 87 Lawrence A. Tritle Five Beyond the Universal Soldier: Combat Trauma in Classical Antiquity 105 Jason Crowley Six Socrates in Combat: Trauma and Resilience in Plato’s Political Theory 131 S. Sara Monoson Seven The Memory of Greek Battle: Material Culture and/as Narrative of Combat 163 Juan Sebastian De Vivo Eight Women and War in Tragedy 185 Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz Nine “He Gave Me His Hand but Took My Bow”: Trust and Trustworthiness in the Philoctetes and Our Wars 207 Nancy Sherman viii Contents

Ten Combat Trauma in Athenian Comedy: The Dog That Didn’t Bark 225 Alan H. Sommerstein Eleven The Battered Shield: Survivor Guilt and Family Trauma in Menander’s Aspis 237 Sharon L. James Twelve When War Is Performed, What Do Soldiers and Veterans Want to Hear and See and Why? 261 Thomas G. Palaima Thirteen Performing Memory: In the Mind and on the Public Stage 287 Paul Woodruff

List of Contributors 301 Index 305 FIGURES

3.1 Sergeant Michelle Brookfield Wilmot on guard duty in Ramadi, Iraq in April 2005 71 3.2 Lionesses Cynthia Espinoza, Ranie Ruthig, Shannon Morgan, and Michelle Perry in Ramadi, Iraq in July 2004 71 3.3 Shannon Morgan on her parents’ porch in Mena, Arkansas 77 6.1 Socrates saving Alcibiades at Potidaea 132 7.1 Bronze Corinthian Helmet, c. 700–500 bce 164 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE

This volume of essays grew from a conference entitled Combat Trauma and the Ancient Stage held at New York University in April 2011. This two-day event was part of a national public program led by Aquila Theatre, in part- nership with the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University, the American Philological Association, and the Urban Libraries Council, that received a Chairman’s Special Award grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, called Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives. This program vis- ited one hundred communities across the United States and used staged readings by professional actors of ancient Greek tragedy and Epic, moder- ated by scholars and followed by open “town-hall” style meetings to bring together members of the American veteran community with the public to explore issues related to war and society. Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives also staged hundreds of public talks, drama workshops, and reading groups at public libraries, arts centers, museums, community centers, and military bases and placed new sets of books of translations of Greek drama and Epic in one hundred American public libraries. In 2012, the program was invited to represent the National Endowment for the Humanities at a special per- formance at the White House, where a combined group of American vet- erans and actors read scenes from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Ajax, Euripides’ Herakles, and Homer’s Odyssey. We were struck at how modern American veterans and their families that came to Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives programming frequently responded to hearing these ancient stories told again—as if the classic works conveyed an acknowledgment of the kind of extremes faced by many men, women, and children who have experienced the devastation of combat and war (Meineck 2010; Buxton and Painter 2010). Many of the scholars who par- ticipated in the program also noted the effectiveness of ancient material, albeit in translation, to inspire the frank and honest discussion of very dif- ficult subjects, as men and women told their own stories of war, sometimes for the very first time in public. Subsequently these observations led to a series of scholarly questions that formed the basis for our conference and this book: Do these ancient works reflect the issues of warfare and its after- effects? If so, were the ancient Greeks aware of what we now call “Combat Trauma,” but has also been variously termed, “Combat Stress Reaction” (Iraq and Afghanistan); “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” (Vietnam); “Battle xii Preface

Fatigue” (World War II); “Shell Shock” (World War I); and “Soldier’s Heart” (American Civil War)? Can we detect responses to Combat Trauma in ancient Greek culture? The Veterans’ Administration psychiatrist Jonathan Shay was among the first to foreground the relationship between Greek literature and the expe- riences of the modern combat soldier in his 1994 book, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Scribner), which examined the behavior of Achilles in the Iliad as a mythic parable of Combat Trauma. In his 2002 book, Odysseus in America, which tested a similar thesis on Homer’s Odyssey, Shay described Athenian classical drama as “a the- ater of combat veterans, by combat veterans to and for combat veterans” and suggested that it may have offered a form of “cultural therapy” for an audience traumatized by the effects of war (Shay 2002, 153). Greek drama, along with Epic, spread across the Hellenistic world from Athens, devel- oping from a variety of performance forms such as epic, choral song, and ritual enactments and probably not as a specific response to combat trauma. However, tragedy, in particular always reflected social, political, and cultural stresses and we can certainly detect this Greek art form responding to the realities of ancient warfare in the fifth century—every surviving Greek play from this period deals with the effects of combat and violence on families and societies (Meineck 2013, 20, note 1.). Beyond Athens and the genre of drama, in the wider literary and iconographic traditions of the Greeks, the effects of combat trauma are well described: the trials of Odysseus; the rage of Achilles; the madness of Herakles; the loss of Andromache; the suicide of Ajax; the isolation of Philoctetes; the fate of the women of Troy, to name just a few famous stories of trauma that are found throughout Greek poetry and iconography. In this volume several scholars, each with expertise of different areas of Greek culture, were asked to respond to and explore these basic questions. We deliberately sought to reflect both a multiplicity of differing viewpoints and to ask our contributors to respond to each other’s work to create a vibrant thread of dialogue throughout the chapters. We also hope that both specialists and nonspecialists will find value in this collection. All Greek references have been translated and although we have assumed our readers will have basic familiarity with most of the works described, we also feel it is entirely possible to read these chapters with little or no knowledge of the ancient material and to then be inspired to seek them out. With this in mind, it is our hope that in addition to scholars and students of the Classics, members of the veteran community, their families, and people interested in this important subject will find value in this collection. I would like to thank Matthew Santirrocco at New York University, for facilitating the original conference and encouraging us to publish the pro- ceedings and seek other contributors to add their respective viewpoints. My colleagues in Classics at NYU have always been supportive of my outreach work and understand its value. Adam Blistein, Executive Director of the American Philological Association, helped us select over 50 scholars to send Preface xiii out into libraries, museums, arts centers, and military bases to make Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives work so well. Kimberly Donato and Masha Carey at Aquila Theatre proved invaluable in organizing the conference, which included a staged reading event and a post-performance talk on trauma and Pirandello after Desiree Sanchez’s exceptional performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author at the Skirball Center in New York City. David Konstan, who gave the fine keynote address at the conference and then graciously agreed to lend his considerable experience and coedit this volume with me, provided expert guidance and incredible support to all the contributors. I would also like to thank the more than 50 profes- sors of Classics, Theater, and English who acted as “local scholars” at over one hundred sites, who moderated staged readings, gave public talks, and led readings groups for thousands of people all over the United States. Many actors also traveled many miles to bring these ancient works to life. I want to remember one in particular, John Buxton, who passed away in 2013 after battling cancer. John was a long-standing member of Aquila Theatre and loved participating in the Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives readings. John died at the age of 35, but in his short life he brought a plethora of classical characters to vivid life for thousands of people, whether reducing them to tears of laughter with his brilliant portrayal of both Antipholus twins in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, or pulling them to the edge of their seats with his powerful performance of Achilles in Aquila’s Iliad: Book One. I thank my wife Desiree, who has been so supportive and strong from this program’s inception, through its execution, and on into its next incar- nation called YouStories: Poetry, Drama, Dialogue, which adds a social media component to the programming to preserve veteran’s stories with the Library of Congress. I could not have done any of this without her. Finally, I wish to thank the members of the veteran community and their families who came to the events of Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives and shared their deeply personal stories. One Vietnam Veteran, Brian Delate, who went on to join Aquila as a member of the acting company, described the program as “helping to make American’s literate about the cost of war.” Another, John Meyer, a US Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who read the role of Ajax at the White House performance, used Sophocles’ words to articulate how he felt to the members of the high command, who were either in attendance or whose offices lined the corridors of the Executive Administration Building and the White House, where he came to speak those ancient lines. Several of the veterans who attended the program were invited to participate in a dramatic project staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York in March 2013. Here Euripides’ Herakles was staged with a chorus of film clips of male and female American veterans from World War II to Afghanistan. Their contribution to this project, which closed the Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives program, along with several scholars who led talk-backs with the audience who completely filled all the perfor- mances, was much appreciated. xiv Preface

Whatever conclusions one might draw from reading this volume about Combat Trauma in ancient Greece, one thing we can be sure of: Greek drama, poetry, and art still retain the power to move people today and remain a vital force in modern American culture. Plato (Phaedrus 245a, Laws 665c), Aristotle (Poetics 1450a 33), and Isocrates (Evagoras 9.10), all wrote that poetry had the power “to move the soul”—this book asks if the Greeks also used their art to help it heal. Peter Meineck New York, December 2013

Works Cited

Buxton, John, and Jay Painter. 2010. “‘Page and Stage’: The Actor’s Perspective.” Classical World 103.2: 251–55. Meineck, Peter. 2009. “These Are Men Whose Minds the Dead Have Ravished.” Arion 17.1: 173–91. Meineck, Peter. 2013. “Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage: ‘Restoration’ by Cultural Catharsis.” Intertexts 16.1: 7–24. Shay, Jonathan. 2002. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner.