The Brutality of War and the Limits of Violence in Archaic and Classical Greece

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Even though physical violence is the constituting element of war, classicists and scholars of ancient history have only very recently begun to make a study of violence in ancient Greek warfare. The evolution and the extent of violence in warfare are still disputed. Some scholars assume that until the late fifth century BCE wars were fairly small-scale and violence effectively contained by rules and conventions; while others stress the range of violent acts that characterised even archaic warfare, and point out that the extinction of enemies had always been an option. The different schools of thought view the developments of the fifth and fourth centuries very differently, interpreting them either as the blatant breaking of established rules, or as ordinary forms of military conflict unchanged since Homeric times.This controversy over the nature of ancient warfare has been governed by presuppositions on both sides and appears to have ground to a halt. A fresh approach from a cultural science perspective promises to be more fruitful, allowing us to include aspects like the history of mentalities as well as social and political developments. The project aims to reconstruct and contextualise the conditions under which violence was practised in warfare in Archaic and Classical Greece. It will take seriously ambiguities and conflicting statements in the sources about the practice of violence and consider them in conjunction with discourses of justice, power and honour in the Greek city states. As a result, we should gain a clearer understanding of the causes of violence and the changing attitudes towards it among Greeks in both thought and practice. The project will deliver new insights to the history of warfare in the Ancient Greek world; more importantly, it will make a significant contribution to a history of violence in Antiquity.