Learning from War: Greek Responses to Victory and Defeat

This paper will argue that the Spartans exploited the emotionally fraught aftermath of victory and defeat to stage didactic spectacles, which aimed to bolster their socio-political structures and the ideology of cooperative sociability that underpinned the Spartan politeia (see, esp., Hodkinson 2005: 258-63; 2006: 128-29).

The economic aspects of classical Greek warfare are well studied (Pritchett 1974; 1991; Kallet-Marx 1993; Kallet 2001; van Wees 2004 and 2013; Trundle 2016). As the fifth century progressed, coinage professionalized and centralized warfare, which became bigger and less seasonal (Trundle 2010; Pritchard 2010). The fifth century, especially, saw war become as much an economic as a socio-political phenomenon (Thuc. 1.10-13). States fought wars for economic gain, but not all wars were profitable. Losers suffered deprivation, and wars cost winners dearly.

In sharp distinction to Thucydides, who (contra Kallett 2013) was highly skeptical about such things, Xenophon and Herodotus, as well as the fragmentary historians of the fourth and third centuries, attributed an historical agency to supernatural powers. Modern historians, despite arguments to the contrary (Parker 2000, 2004; Pritchett 1979: 140-53; Flower 2008), continue to assume that these writers simply made up portents and omens or that all such phenomena were the contrivances of elites who were intent on manipulating popular opinion.

This paper will explore the aftermath of battle and will challenge the conclusion reached by a number of scholars, that the experience of combat left many Greek warriors psychologically traumatised.