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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).
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