This blog was researched and written by Visualising War and Peace student Martha Shillaker, School of Classics, University of St Andrews, November 2023. It discusses concepts of peace expressed in an ancient Athenian speech, On the Peace with Sparta, by politician Andocides.

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Un-common Peace: Peace in Andocides’s On the Peace with Sparta

Martha Shillaker

‘There is a wide difference between a peace and a truce.’^[i] This is a statement made by Athenian politician Andocides in his address, On the Peace with Sparta. The concept of ‘peace’ – and the reality that the word manifests itself as – has been, and continues to be, debated amongst thinkers and scholars. It is clear to most that peace is not just the absence of war; however, the extent to which peace is the absence of violence is still an area of discussion. In the last century, Peace theorist Johan Galtung popularised the concept of negative and positive peace, providing the vocabulary to discuss different understandings and situations that cannot be classified as war.^[ii] Despite being helpful framings, it is clear that peace is something that is far more ambiguous and complicated than these binary categories. It is important, in the analysis of case studies, to understand the complicated nature of waring and peaceful states. The interactions and narrative between these states define their understanding and visualisation of conflict resolution and peace-making. It is this relational concept that Söderström, Åkebo and Jarstad highlight in the presentation of their framework, ‘relational peace’, in Friends, Fellows and Foes: A New Framework.^[iii]

‘Relational Peace’  

The idea of peace as a relationship is not a unique or original idea. The concept that peace requires a bond is an idea that has stretched back to the beginning of peace treaties themselves. The ‘eternal treaty’ between the Hittites and Egyptians, for instance, is drowning in language of brotherhood.^[iv] Söderström et al. are, therefore, not presenting a revolutionary concept. Yet it is this fact that makes it appealing for the study of ancient peace-making. They present a framework which can be applied to peace based on the most tenuous of terms to a relationship of genuine brotherhood. There are three components, they propose, which define this peace: ‘behavioral interaction (deliberation, non-domination, and cooperation), subjective conditions (recognition and trust), and the idea of the relationship (fellowship or friendship).’^[v]

Relating ‘relational peace’

These modern concepts developed in International Relations studies can be beneficial to our understanding of ancient concepts and discussions of peace. Indeed, the speech by Andocides, On the Peace with Sparta, displays a peace that can be explored and understood to a greater extent through this framework of ‘relational peace’. This allows us to look beyond whether there is a state of violence and to the fundamental relationship that undermines these states of war and peace, providing an insight into ancient peace-making through the lens of a modern framework. 

It would take a lot more words and time to apply all three of the components to ‘relational peace’ to the relationship between Athens and Sparta during this period of time than this blog can manage. For that reason, using primarily the ‘behavorial interaction’ component of this framework, I intend to explore Andocides’s definition of peace and how it marks the changing perceptions in Grecian thought of peace during this period. 

On the Peace With Sparta

Andocides was a minor, and generally unsuccessful, Athenian politician in the 4^th c. BC. Around 392-1 BC, he was a member of an embassy sent to negotiate peace terms as part of the discussions of peace between Sparta and Athen during the Corinthian Wars.^[vi] This was one in a series of peace-talks between the two states occurring after the failed discussions at Sardis by Antalcidas.^[vii] It was during these discussions that On the Peace with Sparta was penned. The extent to which this presentation of peace is realistic is questionable as the majority of Andocides’s argument is focussed upon its merits, appealing primarily to the expressed concerns of the Athenians.^[viii] Neither does it display a peace that actually occurred. Indeed, it is not hard to conclude that this was not a successful discussion for peace, as Andocides was expelled from Athens after the rejection of these terms, and the war continued until its conclusion in 386 BC. Ultimately, this war famously ended with what became known as the ‘King’s Peace’ under the terms of the Persian king, and not in Athens’ favour. 

Although it did not result in peace, Andocides’ speech marks the beginning of a new perception of peace: koine eirene. It is in this speech that this term was first used: ‘you are negotiating today for the peace and independence of all Greeks alike.’^[ix] This developing concept of panhellenism moved from a concept of negative and temporary peace to a more permanent and positive peace. The framework of ‘relational peace’ allows us to understand these changes and how perceptions of peace developed from truce to positive peace. 

Deliberation  

Discussion and peace-talks, or deliberation as described by Söderström et al., were an essential form of ancient conflict-resolution. As displayed by even the existence of this text there was a desire between ancient states to mediate peace. What is uniquely presented in Andocides’ speech is not that a peace-talk occurred but rather the purpose and definition of peace: ‘A peace is a settlement of differences between equals.’^[x] The use of these peace talks presents a willingness to create narratives that are not dominated by that of conqueror and conquered. This narrative of equality is, as will be explored later, the defining characteristic of this new definition of peace.

It is not the existence of peace talks that are unique and display a difference in visualising peace but instead the language of equality that is present. It is this concept of ‘non-domination’ that signals a change in dialogue. 

Non-domination

Although there is no language of ‘brotherhood’ or friendship which we can see in other texts of peace, alongside the continuation and safety of democracy, equality – and its accompanying freedom – is a primary concern in the definition of peace. It is these qualities that differentiate between the concept of peace and truce. The concept of peace as a ‘settlement of differences between equals’ became a marker of the common peace.^[xi] This was unprecedented.^[xii]

Indeed, Andocides clarifies his definition of peace by contrasting the definition of truce: ‘a truce is the dictation of terms to the conquered by the conquerors after victory in war’.^[xiii] This definition may be obvious to the modern audience but previous to this (and also afterwards, as manifested in e.g. Augustus’ Pax Romana) peace was not synonymous in antiquity with concepts of justice. Andocides’ clarification between the concept of peace and truce was necessary. Previous relations between Athens and Sparta had been unfavourable to Athens. Indeed, the last peace between Athens and Sparta had resulted in the control of Athens under Spartan hegemony, a state that they had only just removed.^[xiv] Athenian understanding of Spartan peace was that of a ‘forced truce.’ Peace to them was the language of the victor and controller. Indeed, we can still see echoes of this in the speech: 

‘Under the truce Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros remained in the possession of their occupants: under the peace they are to be ours.’^[xv]

The autonomy of these islands and their occupants would, arguably, be a just move; but it was undesirable for the Athenians. They still desired power over areas of Greece that they had conquered. Furthermore, the rejection of this peace displays somewhat a desire for this continuation of ‘truce’. Athens thought they could win, and being a conqueror was better than being equal. 

Despite this, it displays that there was a choice that had previously been unavailable. As this was a speech regarding the preliminary conditions of peace, the extent to which this would have worked out in practice is unknown. But it marks a development, an evolution in the visualisation of peace and conflict resolution in antiquity.  

Cooperation

Although this speech didn’t receive support, it displays the importance of cooperation in peace, both in context and in the terms presented. That this was the second of three peace treaties proposed during this war displays a willingness to deliberate but also adapt. The terms here are not presented in the same form as their last ‘peace’ with Sparta which Andocides describes as ‘a forced truce upon dictated terms’.^[xvi] In this treaty there are appeals to the desires of the Athenian government: democracy and the autonomy of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros. This ‘settlement of differences’ is one that places emphasis on the settlement. This transactional nature of peace, a characteristic of ancient peace-making, reflects the desires of the two states (or a least in this case of Sparta to Athens) to ‘make moves that benefit the other’, despite having different goals.^[xvii] The emphasis of Andocides on a previous ‘forced truce’ in comparison with their current consideration highlights autonomy and a lack (or lesser form) of coercion: a willingness from both parties. This would be a peace made of their own volition, between two equal states. 

Another characteristic of cooperation would be the developing nature of their relationship and the aligning of goals, ideally resulting in a lasting (or at least longer-lasting) peace. Although this may be reading into the gaps of this source, the lack of an end date to this peace indicates an intention for longer cooperation.  The lack of end date is a new revelation, reflecting this new attitude to peace. Previous to this, Greek treaties were not designed to last longer than an agreed time (if they even got to that point).  This can be seen in Aristophanes’ ‘peace-plays’. Aristophanes’ Peace, written just before the peace of Nicias (a peace which clearly indicates the lack of longevity, lasting only for 6 years rather than the intended 50), displays the desire for war amongst the younger generations.^[xviii]Although the narrative is focussed on this goal of achieving peace, the martial dreams of the young boys in this scene leave an understanding that this may only be a peace for this generation. Furthermore, we see in another play by Aristophanes, Acharnians, the peace treaty (hai spondai) made by Dikaiopolis is one that has an end date: He is given a choice of 5, 10 or 30 years.^[xix] This is not presumed to be a lasting relationship of peace. But this is not an attitude seen in Andocides’s speech:‘once we have made our sworn compact, we should abide by it.’^[xx] There is no mention of a timespan for this peace, rather an exhortation for consistency.

Incoming Common Peace

Ultimately, Andocides’s peace was no success story, but by analysing his speech through the framework of ‘relational peace’ we can see the seeds of a new understanding of peace, an era of koine eirene.  Although this is beneficial in viewing the new emphasis upon equality and longevity which would become two key characteristics of ‘common peace’, this speech only displays the theory, the ideal. It does not display the inner workings of this political thought which developed across the next century or so. As such, this leaves us with many questions to explore: To what extent did the King’s Peace reflect the peace that Andocides paints? Can panhellenism succeed through alliance rather than hegemony? Could peace really last in ancient Greece?

Bibliography 

Beckman, G. (1996). Hittite diplomatic texts. United States: Scholars Press.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2011, September 19). Andocides. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andocides (accessed 1/11/2023)

Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191.

Hornblower, S. (2023, November 9). ancient Greek civilization. Encyclopedia Britannica.https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Greece (accessed 1/11/2013)

Hyland, J. O., (2017). Persian Interventions : The Achaemenid Empire, Athens, and Sparta, 450−386 BCE. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Newiger, H. (1996). War and peace in the comedy of Aristophanes. In E. Segal (eds.) Oxford Readings in Aristophanes.  United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Ryder, T. T. B. (1965). Koine Eirene; General Peace and Local Independence in Ancient Greece. United Kingdom: University of Hull.

Sealey, R. (2023). A History of the Greek City States, 700-338 B. C.. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Söderström, J., Åkebo, M., & Jarstad, A.K. (2020). Friends, Fellows, and Foes: A New Framework for Studying Relational Peace. International Studies Review. 23. 3. 

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^[i] Andocides, On the Peace, 11.

^[ii] Galtung, 1969.

^[iii] Söderström et al., 2020.

^[iv] Beckman, 1996, no. 15.

^[v] Söderström et al., 2020, 486.

^[vi] Ryder, 1965, 32.

^[vii] Sealey, 2023, 394.

^[viii] Andocides, On the Peace., 1; Ryder, 1965, 33.

^[ix] Andocides, On the Peace., 17.

^[x] Andocides, On the Peace., 11.

^[xi] Emphasis added; Andocides, On the Peace., 11.

^[xii] Ryder, 1965, 1.

^[xiii] Andocides, On the Peace., 12.

^[xiv] Andocides, On the Peace., 10.

^[xv] Andocides, On the Peace., 12.

^[xvi] Andocides, On the Peace., 12.

^[xvii] Söderström et al., 2020, 492.

^[xviii] Aristophanes, Peace, 1265-78.

^[xix] Aristophanes, Acharnians, 186-194; Newiger 1996 144.

^[xx] Andocides, On the Peace., 34.

This blog was researched and written by Visualising War and Peace student Elizabeth Walker; School of Classics, University of St Andrews, November 2023. It discusses Polybius’ synthesising, universalising approach to narrating war in his Histories.

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From the outset of his Histories, Polybius sets out the end goal of his work – to understand the growth of Roman imperial power: 

For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government — a thing unique in history? (1.1.5)

Polybius explains how the Romans’ have achieved this unrivalled hegemony, examining the different wars and conflicts that have facilitated the growth of this power as the substance of his discussion. Yet importantly, Polybius seeks to establish a fool proof way of uncovering this question and a reliable means of examining his material critically. In his eyes, this is done through a history with a stalwart theory that underpins it. As such, Polybius’ approach is consciously programmatic; he continually reemphasises and redefines certain conceptual frameworks which are intended to elucidate understanding of the multitude of wars, reflecting a concern with how to conceive of the enormous and unprecedented change the Romanisation of the world had brought about. This blog will explore how Polybius’ form of historiographic approach creates a particular understanding of war within his narrative, one that perhaps seeks and holds claim to being analytical and comprehensive in its analysis, but in fact demands a need for cohesion and explanatory rationality. This brushes over the more difficult aspects of war or provides generalised explanations for inconceivable phenomena. The relationship between Polybius’ historiography and war will therefore be examined through pertinent selections of his programmatic passages.

In the first of the two most significant programmatic passages (at the beginning of book 1 and 3 respectfully) Polybius makes clear that a significant overall purpose for his work is its practical application. Almost immediately in the introduction to the first book he incites his readers to recognise the practical value encoded in his work:

The soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others. (1.1.2)

Whilst Polybius’ writing is not formulated with the same intention for instructive assistance for war as the exempla tradition in the military manuals of Frontinus, for example, he certainly makes clear that the reader’s examination of his subject matter (a discourse of war) is inherently didactic, and furthermore, relevant for the rather vaguely stated navigation of life more generally. Scholars debate whether Polybius intended a practical or moral teaching to be read in his material.^[i] Yet this seems a somewhat irrelevant particularity, since predominantly, any claim to didacticism aids prestige to Polybius’ project, stretching it beyond an academic exercise, and makes his work appeal to be read by a cross-section of readership groups. Polybius is appealing for its relevance to any elite man, not just politicians and those with military aspirations.^[ii] Furthermore, this appeal continues a notion witnessed in different writings across antiquity, that war is a phenomenon to be consumed by the reader. War as a concept held intellectual fascination for the ancient elite man, perceived as offering up an inexhaustible richness in what it could say about the elusive idea of ‘human nature’ more broadly, something which Polybius connects war as providing observations on consistently through his Histories.^[iii] Additionally, the fact that the ‘calamities of others’ is specifically mentioned suggests that ‘failure’ of wars should be of particular curiosity for Polybius’ reader. This reduction of the end of conflicts glosses over the impact of the aftermath and fallout of war, specifically the profound, widespread long-lasting repercussions that impact human lives. It implies that these cataclysmic reverberations of war can almost be made meaningful if they help Polybius’ reader ‘bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune’. War is reduced to simply a cerebral concept to be utilised for self-development.

Additionally in this first programmatic statement in Book 1, specifically 1.4.7-11, Polybius lays out a clear intent to actively re-visualise wars of the past in a purposefully cohesive manner:

He indeed who believes that by studying isolated histories he can acquire a fairly just view of history as a whole, is, as it seems to me, much in the case of one, who, after having looked at the dissevered limbs of an animal once alive and beautiful, fancies he has been as good as an eyewitness of the creature itself in all its action and grace. For could anyone put the creature together on the spot, restoring its form and the comeliness of life, and then show it to the same man, I think he would quickly avow that he was formerly very far away from the truth and more like one in a dream. For we can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances, and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history. (1.4.7-11)

Polybius uses a metaphor of an animal’s body as an ideologically poignant image by which he demonstrates how he perceives an adequate grasp of history can be attained. Polybius is inviting the reader to literally look at the substance of his text – wars – as constituent parts of a dead animal’s body that are incomplete in isolation, and only ‘alive’ once put together. It is notable that the Roman state was often conceived of as a ‘body’ by other writers, such as Cicero, with the idea of a defective body particularly being employed as a metaphor for political dysfunctionality.^[iv] Therefore, Polybius is perhaps interreacting with Roman imperialistic discourses, suggesting that the sum of wars produce meaning when under an imperial project. Moreover, as Wiater argues, Polybius is attributing aesthetic beauty and completeness to his own particular historical understanding of wars, emphasised that there is intellectual life in them when collated together.^[v] The imagery is certainly impactful and works effectively to portray individual wars (equivalent to dissected limbs) as holding more desirable value when they are synthesized together in a single conceptual understanding. Whilst this initially seems to encourage a generalising approach to the complexities of war, Tully argues that it is not reductive, offering that ‘Polybius is not detracting value from knowledge of single events and wars but emphasising the need for “overarching synthesis”’.^[vi] This interpretation recognises what Polybius intends, but the superimposition of a synthetic agenda is inherently not a neutral reproduction. Polybius’ overall aim for cohesion creates an environment that seeks to fit individual experiences of war into an overarching pre-established interpretation of what war is and retrospectively can be used for. This framework of understanding creates literary conditions which can swerve towards disregarding certain nuances that do not ‘fit’ or glossing over the ‘unexplainable’. In this way, for example, it has been argued by Walbank that Polybius at times resorts to the allusive concept of tychē (fortune) as a governing force for difficult explanations of war.^[vii] Whilst this is perhaps an overly critical interpretation of Polybius’ work (since he is highly invested in human causation^[viii]), there is definitely an argument that Polybius’ schematic approach provides an apt environment for overemphasising similarities between wars to provide a summative interpretation, inevitably overlooking differences and nuance. However, L.V. Pitcher particularly rebuts this, arguing that Polybius was highly aware of the complexity involved in the representation of war in the genre of history, wrestling with ‘methodological anxieties’.^[ix] Whilst Pitcher’s analysis is valid in attributing some awareness of nuance to Polybius, it does not address the fact that Polybius, in his employment of historiographic frameworks, is actively transforming and reconstructing wars to give them a new meaning altogether. 

Therefore, returning to the metaphor, it also illustrates the very paradox that comes with viewing war through a historical lens: the animal is indeed unable to be restored to life – the only way of experiencing that animal in its fullness was to see it when it was alive. As Cobley asserts ‘no discourse is able to recuperate the reals as such, different modes of representation connote reality differently’.^[x] As such, whilst Polybius does not deny the limits of accessing the past, it is fascinating that in some way he views his visualisation of war as getting as close as possible to a reality. He implies his history is almost able to resurrect the body of the metaphorical animal. In fact, Polybius even believes that a deeper and more analytical perspective on war will be generated as a result of his selective historical methods. Whilst the metaphor acknowledges history as a way of visualising war, it fails to recognise the bias that comes with any literary reconstruction (let alone a retrospective one) especially of such a complex phenomenon as war.

In book 3, Polybius gives further insight into how he sees the historian and reader’s agency and role in reconstructing the wars of the past. The historian is compared to a physician:

My object has not been to censure previous writers, but to rectify the ideas of students. For of what use to the sick is a physician who is ignorant of the causes of certain conditions of the body?… [he] will scarcely be likely to recommend proper treatment for the body… (3.7.4-6)

Polybius’ students are substituted for doctors who diagnose and then treat illnesses, explicitly placing the historian not as a removed third party, but as an active and authoritative participant in a restorative, or even corrective, process. Cobley reflects that ‘the traditional historian always acts as an external and retrospective mediator whose narrative is the outcome of carefully documented source material’.^[xi] However, Polybius’ idea of a historian seems to go beyond a ‘mediator’. The historian is the actor synthesizing the separate nature of the individual wars, and like a doctor, he is knowledgably initiating the dissection of his subject matter – transforming, not just observing. Likewise, Polybius does not hold neutrality; he is purposefully steering his material for a particular aim, which undeniably affects how wars are presented. He is laying out the material in a way so that a particular interpretation might be drawn – in this case, to map war onto his contemporary geopolitics and Greek self-definition. Analysing this analogy further, Polybius suggests that it is fundamental that a doctor-come-historian must draw on their pre-existing knowledge: a diagnosis cannot be done without a bedrock of accumulated expertise. Polybius openly advocates for the application of previous knowledge of wars onto other wars. Walbank argues that ‘historians have frequently been tempted to try to detect – and in practice this has usually meant being tempted to superimpose – some sort of pattern on the social and constitutional changes which constantly occur in history’.^[xii] Walbank’s statement certainly rings true for Polybius. In seeing cohesion as almost synonymous with finding a ‘truth’, or rather producing the most accurate account of history and perspective on the wars themselves, he searches for a universality that does not necessarily exist. Whilst this is not an inherently invaluable exercise, it leaves little space for the ‘inarticulacy’ that might come with war. As McLoughlin says, ‘inarticulacy, like silence itself, is an ethical-aesthetic response to the challenges of conveying conflict’.^[1] In Polybius’ desire to comprehend multiple wars so thoroughly as one cohesive whole, this in fact potentially leads to either a disregard for wars that don’t offer meaning or contribution to his project, absent voices and valuable perspectives being dismissed, or generalisation of factors. In this way, whilst Polybius promises a systematic depth of analysis, he often grasps at tropes for the representation of war, for example giving great significance to ‘outstanding’ men.^[2] Even if Polybius grants complex analysis to them, the onus being on a singular great man plays into a tradition of conceiving the outcome of wars as being fundamentally influenced by the genius or mistakes of an individual, when the reality is much more complex. These are tropes that he has inherited from earlier storytelling traditions, not just from his synthesis of history. In other words, narratives are shaping narratives which are helping to shape reality.

Overall, much can be deduced about Polybius’ approach to war from his approach to history as a discipline. Perhaps the visualisation of cohesion that Polybius advocates for is as a way of reconciling the enormity of the military impact Rome has had on the world. The change Polybius’ world had undergone through conflict needed to be shaped into something that made sense altogether, and furthermore, converted into useful knowledge. Polybius shows no interest in questioning conflict – it is a consistent norm in his worldview, and also a convenient vehicle for a complex academic discourse that aids him prestige as a writer. Polybius’ use of rigid historiographic methods blurs out space for uncomfortable conclusions or a more affective rendering of war.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baronowski, Donald Walter. Polybius and Roman Imperialism (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010)

Cobley, Evelyn. “Narrative Situation: Focalization and Voice” in Representing War: Form and Ideology in First World War Narratives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993) pp. 71-117

Eckstein, Arthur M. ‘The Act of Generalship as the imposition of Order’ in Moral Vision in The Histories of Polybius (Berkley, California: University of California Press, 1995) pp. 161-193

Engberg-Pedersen Anders. Empire of Chance: The Napoleonic Wars and the Disorder of Things (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015)

Hau, Lisa Irene. ‘Polybius’ in Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus (sl: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) pp. 23-71

Longley, Georgina. “Thucydides, Polybius, and Human Nature” in Imperialism, Cultural Politics and Polybius edited by Christpher Smith and Liv Mariah Yarrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) pp. 68-84

Marsden, Eric W. “Polybius as a military historian”, Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 20 (1974): 269-301

McGing, Brian. Polybius’ Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

McLoughlin Kate, Lara Feigel, and Nancy Martin, eds. Writing War, Writing Lives (London: Routledge, 2017)

McLoughlin, Kate. ‘War and words’ in War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) pp. 15-24

McLoughlin, Kate. Authoring War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

McLoughlin, Kate. The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Miltsios, Nikos. “Introduction” In Leadership and Leaders in Polybius, IX-XVI (Berlin, Boston: DeGruyter, 2023) pp. ix-xv

Pitcher, L.V. ‘Classical war literature’ in The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp. 71-80

Tully, John. ‘Ephorus, Polybius, and τὰ καθόλου γράφειν’ in Between Thucydides and Polybius: The Golden Age of Greek Historiography edited by Giovanni Parmeggiani (Cambridge, MA; London: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2014) pp. 163-174

Walbank, Frank. ‘Polybius and the past’ in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp.178-192

Walbank, Frank. Polybius (Berkley, California: University of California Press, 1972)

Walters, Brain. ‘The Republican Body Politic’ in The deaths of the Republic: imagery of the body politic in Ciceronian Rome (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2020) pp. 7-26

Wiater, Nicolas. “Politics, Aesthetics and Historical Explanation in Polybius I.” University of St Andrews. 15 Ocotber, 2013. https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/latehellenistic/5-politics-aesthetics-and-historical-explanation-in-polybius-i/index.html

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^[1] McLoughlin (2010) 17.

^[2] Miltsios (2023) ix.

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^[i] Hau (2016) 23.

^[ii] Marsden (1974) 284.

^[iii] Longley (2012) 69.

^[iv] Walters (2020) 15.

^[v] Wiater (2013).

^[vi] Tully (2014) 173.

^[vii] Walbank (2002) 182.

^[viii] Longley (2012) 68.

^[ix] Pitcher (2010) 76.

^[x] Cobley (1993) 79.

^[xi] Ibid.

^[xii] Walbank (2002) 181.

This blog was researched and written by Visualising War and Peace student David Calder; School of Classics, University of St Andrews, October 2023. It discusses alternative readings of ancient and modern images of ‘the departing soldier’, what they can tell us about culturally dominant habits of visualising conflict, and how myths and allusions to established narratives can be used both to sanitise and critique war.

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The image of the departing soldier is an enduring and universal visualisation of war, present in many eras, and across various cultures (Fig. 1 and 2 above, & 3 below).^[i] The depictions of this moment in warfare focus upon the sacrifice of the soldier leaving his home and loved ones. Additionally, these images often present visualisations of the experience of war for those whom the soldiers leave behind. Versions of this image were frequently produced on Athenian vases in the late 6th and early 5th centuries, perhaps in response to the heightened conflict of the period.^[ii] While certain aspects of these images may be idealizing and anachronistic,^[iii] nevertheless they represent a lived experience of many families in Attica.^[iv]

In this blog, I will examine an amphora from the late 6th century, found in Vulci, Italy, depicting Hercules and the Erymanthian boar on one face (Fig. 4) and a narrative of a departing soldier on the other, which is the side this essay will primarily discuss (Fig. 5). This image contains five figures which are, from left to right, an old man with a sceptre commanding a bowman who wears a peaked cap, a hoplite in full armour looking to a female figure, and rightmost a hoplite looking back on the scene as he departs to the right. The narrative of this scene is fairly clear: the king, distinguished by the sceptre, orders the two soldiers to war, and as a result the hoplite must depart from the woman, who can be read as either mother or wife.^[v] As she is more of an object of grief in the scene, there is little to distinguish her and the narrative can be understood either way. Despite its apparent simplicity, this vase, like many ancient sources, is open to a variety of interpretations. By exploring this vase’s context and meaning, and comparing its imagery cross-culturally, we can seek to identify the messages of war it might present, and thereby encourage further investigation of both war and peace on Attic vases more generally.

One interpretation of the scene is that it visualises the idea of the heroic sacrifice. The centrally positioned hoplite is the focal point of the image, and his sacrifice provides the emotional conflict of the piece. The soldier’s struggle between duty and love is shown by his spear and body facing the ruler, but his head turned towards the woman. A repetition of this imagery is visible in post-Revolutionary French conscription artwork, for example the Départ de conscrit[s] by Desfeuilles of Nancy, 1818-1824,^[vi] which presents a narrative of the French conscription process. The picture shows, in a reversed order, the departure and return of a conscript. Here again, the internal battle between love and duty is externally visualised through the awkward posture of facing backwards while marching forwards.^[vii] This and other images of the same genre, designed to promote conscription, do not ignore the pain of separation caused by military service but instead present it as a highly positive, transformative event,^[viii] and a duty to be praised in 19th century France. 

Returning to the amphora, it is unlikely that the image is representing a mythical tale, as there is neither the inscriptions nor the imagery of myths seen on some other vases.^[ix] However, heroes on Attic vases are often portrayed as a hoplites, bearing the same arms.^[x] By contrast, the archer’s ‘cowardly’ bow,^[xi] peaked cap, and short tunic,^[xii] identifies him as an easterner.^[xiii] Whether he is friend or foe is unclear. Many scholars take the portrayal of eastern archers as a device by which the Hoplite is further heroised, as they identify the archer as a secondary character and a companion of heroes, who by their lower status elevate the importance of the central figure.^[xiv] At the likely time of this amphora’s creation however, the Persian empire was an increasingly significant threat to the city-states of Greece. The Athenian potters may have been presenting a narrative of war in which they reflect imagery of their contemporaneous enemies. We do not see any conflict between the Hoplite and the archer— indeed the date may be too early for scenes of open hostility such as the Eurymedon vase,^[xv] and the Athenians were at this point nominally at peace with the Achaemenids.^[xvi] However, the image does follow the conventions of Attic vase paintings in the depiction of easterners that presents them as inferior to the ‘noble’ Greek hoplite, and thereby contributes to the othering of a potential enemy. Finally, the vase may further heroise the subject by the inclusion on the reverse side of a mythical comparison. By presenting one of Hercules’ labours it emphasises the glory to be won by performing a difficult duty, essentially suggesting that by going to war the soldier becomes a hero like Hercules.^[xvii]  It is possible that Attic vases of this period display ‘recruitment’ images designed to encourage the departure to war, praising the heroic qualities of the hoplite, and presenting departure scenes as necessary to address existential threats to the state as they were in the 19th century French departure scenes. 

There is an alternative reading: the vase may have been attempting to portray a distinctly anti-war narrative, along with an anti-authoritarian message in response to the overthrow of the Peisistratids which occurred in 510 BCE. The figure of the king is presented as an old man who remains behind but sends the hoplite, in the prime of his life, away to war and potential death; if understood thus, this image potentially criticises authority and war. While the inclusion of the mythical story upon the reverse image may have a heroising effect, it may also identify the old king with Eurystheus— both are kings that send others away to do difficult tasks; and by featuring a scene where Eurystheus’ cowardice is pronounced, the vase invites this connection to be made to the otherwise anonymous king. This interpretation is further supported by the examples of two other departing hoplite vases, both suggested to also be the work of the Antimenes painter (Fig. 6).^[xviii]On these images, the old man holds a staff, or walking stick, not a sceptre. In most other vases of departing soldiers the old man is understood as the father.^[xix] This modification of the established figure may be a criticism of the recently deposed Hippias. Evidencing this point is difficult as only rough estimates for dates can be accepted and establishing a chronological timeline for the vases’ creation is likely impossible. However, the principal amphora under discussion here clearly represents a divergence from a common theme— it is apparently unique, at least in the oeuvre of the Antimenes painter, in its portrayal of the old man as a king. The archer may also become an Anti-Peisistratid symbol, as his inclusion may refer to the tyrannical dynasty’s use of mercenaries.^[xx]

Understanding the context in which Attic vases were used in Etruria is essential to explaining how they might visualise war. This is, however, far from simple, with many very different views presented in scholarship. Some sources argue that the Attic vases were quotidian, functional objects in Etruscan society.^[xxi] This may mean that they were objects that engaged in everyday militarisms, supporting a military culture by their omnipresence. Others have suggested that these vases were reserved for a specific funerary purpose.^[xxii] Indeed, most Attic vases that have survived were found in Etruscan tombs, and this is especially true of those found in Vulci, where a large tomb network was excavated in the 19th century. This casts some doubt on the heroic interpretation of the vase. The vase may have been selected for its image of the departing soldier, to furnish the tomb of a soldier. If so, it strikes a stark contrast with the image of the departing conscript of 19th century France. In the latter images, the soldier always returned, greatly improved by his service,^[xxiii]but the amphora presents no hint of return and has perhaps become a monument to the consequences of war with much of its nobility stripped away. If these suggestions are accepted, then it becomes far more reasonable to argue that this amphora presents a message that is both anti-authoritarian and anti-war.

The amphora also serves as an example of a wider question: whose understandings of war are being presented? By the end of the 6th century Athens, had cemented itself as a major power in the mediterranean and Athenian potters dominated their industry.^[xxiv] Consequently, Attic visualisations of life and attitudes became diffused throughout the ancient world.^[xxv] The perspective of Attic culture is visible in the figure of the eastern archer, which to an Etruscan must have been unfamiliar if not alien. Detailed studies of surviving artefacts show that, while the demands of the Etruscan market shaped the forms of Attic ceramics, the images presented upon them remained unaffected.^[xxvi]Therefore, the imagery of war presented on vases is likely a reflection of the Athenian painter’s experiences/worldview; and so identifying the status and inspirations of vase painters is essential to understanding the visualisations of war that they present. 

Mythological stories are frequently featured on vases, including this one. Their presence indicates a familiarity with both the Homeric epics and other myths. This appears to be where the Antimenes painter has drawn much of their source material from, since many of their works feature mythological stories. As a consequence of this, his discussion of war on this vase is moralised with a mythological parallel. Therefore, the painter’s moral view of war is limited to the preexisting parallels that can be drawn on; and their visualisation of war is a reflection of already established ideas surrounding war. The role of the woman on the amphora is notably passive, she is the object of the hoplite’s attention and does not take any action further than grieving. On other departure vases, the woman often arms the departing soldier, or pours a libation,^[xxvii] here the woman is simply left behind. The woman remaining behind is a common theme in most, if not all, departure images throughout history, showing the understood place of women in war, at home.^[xxviii] This results in a limited view of how war affects women. There is another potentally sanitizing element, too, reflective again of dominant habits of narrating and visualizing way. By the soldier’s exit, the vase implicitly presents the idea that war is fought in some third place and neither side’s home is threatened. This links to the concept of noncombatant immunity, central to a lot of war theory, which relies on warriors avoiding harm to civilians.^[xxix] Of course this is not the case in much ancient warfare, but the presentation of the war as distant and as the woman as passive results in a further heroising of the scene as the hoplite could be understood to be fighting in a ‘clean’ just war. 

By undertaking an analysis of this amphora it is possible to see that understanding departure scenes throughout history relies on understanding how the authors viewed the conflicts they present, and that involves digging into the atmospheric habits of visualizing war that surrounded (and were then reinforced) by them. In the case of Eisenstaedt’s Penn Station photographs, for example, it is almost impossible that the photographer wishes to portray an anti-war message. While the content of these photographs could be interpreted as highlighting the costs of war, given the context of Eisenstaedt’s own life,^[xxx] it can be considered with some certainty that his departure images were designed to highlight the heroism and sacrifice of the departing soldiers and the necessary pain of their loved ones. With the amphora we have no such context, and as a result the message of the vase remains a mystery. Despite the apparent contradiction of the two offered interpretations, both should be considered plausible, and perhaps mutually present; we do not have to choose between one or the other. While the vase undeniably presents war in a heroic light by juxtaposing the hoplite with Hercules, and by arming the hoplite in the same manner as mythological heroes presented on other vases, the variations made by the artist suggest a less conventional reading could also be legible. Both the historical and archaeological context of the vase invite is to wonder whether the amphora is critical of the injustice of tyranny and, as an extension of this, opposed to war. A key question then follows from this is: if that is the case, what kind of power might such subtle criticism have, given that it is embedded in more conventional visuals and storytelling that traditionally sanitise and celebrate war? 

Whatever the painter’s agenda, or the interpretations of the vase’s owners/viewers, it is clear how culturally embedded their own visions, understandings and habits of visualizing war are in dominant forms of storytelling. Much of how they visualised war comes from mythological traditions and thus severely limits the nuance in which they could visualise war. Their portrayal of the woman presents a historically consistent image of women in war as passive The departing soldier is not only a common theme on Attic vases, but features throughout history. Therefore, understanding how the scene is presented on this vase and throughout history, allows the reader to analyse contemporary images of departing soldiers and understand the messages they present.

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References

• Beazley, John Davidson. “The Antimenes Painter.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 47, no. 1 (1927): pp63-92.
• Boardman, John. “The Greeks overseas: their early colonies and trade.” Thames and Hudson (1999).
• Bovon, Anne. La représentation des guerriers perses et la notion de Barbare dans la première moitié du Ve siècle. In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Volume 87, livraison 2, (1963):pp579-602.
• Cooke, Miriam. Women and the war story. Univ of California Press, (1996)
• Ciment, James, and Thaddeus Russell, eds. “The Home Front Encyclopedia: United States, Britain, and Canada in World Wars I and II.” Vol. 1. Abc-clio, (2007)
• Gill, David WJ, and Michael J. Vickers. “They were expendable: Greek vases in the Etruscan tomb.” Revue des études anciennes 97, no. 1 (1995): pp225-249.
• Hölscher, Tonio. “Images of War in Greece and Rome: Between Military Practice, Public Memory, and Cultural Symbolism.” The Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003): pp1–17.
• Hopkin, David M. “Sons and lovers: Popular images of the conscript, 1798–1870.” Modern & Contemporary France 9, no. 1 (2001): pp19-36.
• Ivantchik, Askold. “‘Scythian’ Archers on Archaic Attic Vases: Problems of Interpretation”, Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 12, 3-4 (2006): pp197-271
• Matheson, Susan B.. “3. A Farewell with Arms: Departing Warriors on Athenian Vases” In Periklean Athens and Its Legacy: Problems and Perspectives edited by Judith M. Barringer and Jeffrey M. Hurwit, New York, USA: University of Texas Press, (2005): pp23-36.
• Miller, Margaret C. Athens and Persia in the fifth century BC: a study in cultural receptivity. Cambridge University Press, (1997)
• Osborne, Robin. “Why did Athenian pots appeal to the Etruscans?.” World Archaeology 33, no. 2 (2001): pp277-295.
• Singor, Henk W. “The military side of the Peisistratean tyranny.” In Peisistratos and the Tyranny, Brill, (2000): pp107-129.
• Smith, Amy. “Eurymedon and the Evolution of Political Personifications in the Early Classical Period.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies119 (1999): pp128–41.
• Spivey, Nigel. “Greek vases in Etruria.” American Journal of Archaeology 110, no. 4 (2006): pp659-661.
• Steiner, Ann. Reading greek vases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (2007)

(Fig 1): https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-soldiers-departure-102606

(Fig 2): https://collections.artsmia.org/art/37473/warrior-departing-for-a-battle-kobayashi-kiyochika

(Fig 3): https://www.life.com/history/true-romance-the-heartache-of-wartime-farewells-1943/

(Fig 4): https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1836-0224-95

(Fig 5): https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1836-0224-95

(Fig 6): https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1843-1103-81

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^[i] See George Morland’s The Soldiers Departure, Kobayashi Kiyochika’s ‘Warrior Departing for a Battle’, and Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Farewell to departing troops at New York’s Penn Station as culturally and temporally diverse examples.

^[ii] Matheson (2005) p. 23.

^[iii] Ivantchick (2006) p. 201.

^[iv] Matheson (2005) p. 23.

^[v] Matheson (2005) p. 26.

^[vi] Figured in Hopkin (2001) p. 25.

^[vii] Hopkin (2001) p. 23-5.

^[viii] Hopkin (2001) p. 35.

^[ix] Matheson (2005) p. 26-9.

^[x] Ivantchick (2006) p. 205, 202.

^[xi] Hölscher (2003) p. 10.

^[xii] Bovon (1963) p. 587-588.

^[xiii] For an extensive discussion of the identity of similar figures often identified as Scythian, see Ivantchick (2006).

^[xiv] Ivantchick (2006) p. 206.

^[xv] Cf. Smith (1999).

^[xvi] Sending envoys to the Persians in 507/6 BCE (Hdt. 5.73) and only deciding upon open hostility in 502/1 (Hdt 5.96) Miller (1997) p. 4.

^[xvii] Steiner (2007) p. 25.

^[xviii] The other not figured here is Wurzburg 103. Figured in Beazley (1927) p. 73

^[xix] Matheson (2005) p. 25

^[xx] Singor (2000) p.118.

^[xxi] Spivey (2006) p. 660.

^[xxii] Gill and Vickers (1995) p. 245.

^[xxiii] Cf. Hopkin (2001).

^[xxiv] Boardman (1999) p. 202.

^[xxv] Barringer (2001) p. 3.

^[xxvi] Cf. Osbourne (2001).

^[xxvii] Matheson (2005) p. 26.

^[xxviii] Cf. Cooke (1996).

^[xxix] Fiala (2008) p. 53.

^[xxx] Eisenstaedt and his family having fled from Nazi persecution of Jews, Ciment (2007) p. 585.

This blog was researched and written by Visualising War and Peace student Elizabeth Walker; School of Classics, University of St Andrews, October 2023. It discusses Statius’ epic poem The Achilleid, looking particularly at how the narrative invites us to visualise Achilles’ time away from war while hidden by his mother on the island of Scyros. As Elizabeth explains, not-fighting and ‘unwarlike’ places are represented as feminine phenomena; but also as temporary options/states, always threatened by the return of violence. Her blog helps us think about ancient habits of visualising peace (pictured negatively, as a short-term ceasefire, a vacuum which war will always inevitably fill, even an aberration from the norm of from nature) as well as habits of visualising the kind of macho heroism which Achilles has come to embody.

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In its very title, Statius’ Achilleid says from the outset that it will put the most famous warrior known in antiquity (and beyond) at the centre. Those things inextricable from his name – heroism, arms and war – we might expect to hold centre stage alongside him. Yet Statius’ epic never witnesses Achilles enacting what is so integral to his Homeric characterisation: Achilles does not ‘do war’, nor for that matter is he anywhere near where the tensions of the Trojan conflict are building. In fact, the bulk of the Statius’ epic will narrate Achilles’ time on Scyros, the island where Thetis his mother chose to hide him, in an attempt to delay his fated role in the Trojan War. Even the journeys to, and then eventually from, this island, frame the narrative focus around Achilles’s time on Scyros. This blog explores what it means for such a famous warrior to exist in a place depicted as distant from the epicentre of war and conflict. It will analyse how Statius uses physical spaces in particular to visualise the literal and metaphorical boundaries of war.

Firstly, it is clear that Statius creates certain physical spaces to hold distinct functions in his narrative. From the outset, the sea is identified as the space within which war is operating. The epic begins with Achilles’ nymph mother Thetis emerging from the sea in fearful response for her son’s fate. She witnesses Paris’ fleet reaching the Hellespont, a clear signal to the building momentum of the Trojan War. This immediately alludes to another time in which Thetis was alarmed at the sight of a ship – that of the Argo, as it sailed to regain the golden fleece, in Catullus’ carmen 64. Through this, Statius clearly sets his narrative within the epic literary tradition, which cycles round a paradigm of violence and conflict.^[i] Yet here Statius also draws on the Aeneid, contrasting Venus’ use of a storm that delays Aeneas with Thetis requesting but failing to get Neptune to initiate one.^[ii] This inversion of the expected direction of the narrative signals that Statius’ narrative is taking a different bearing, literally and thematically: Statius’ story of Achilles will turn away from where war is happening to places on land and on the fringes of war. In turn, different locations bring broader thematic spaces for Statius to visualise less war-filled parts of Achilles’ narrative. As Rimell puts it, Statius’ narrative ‘lingers in caves, valleys, homes, groves’.^[iii] Statius will move Achilles between different remote physical landscapes to disrupt the narrative’s progression towards war, rather than utilise the pre-existing naval landscape of war.

Therefore, whilst Achilles inhabits mountains and islands, in contrast, the sea is occupied by activities of war. As Thetis leaves Achilles with King Lycomedes on Scyros, Statius shifts to where the hub of the war is, utilising language evocative of high epic register to describe it.^[iv] The war preparations are depicted as all-consumptive of the natural elements: ‘the sea cannot support the vessels, and the sails devour every shred of wind’ (501-502). The earth and sea are even depicted as merging: ‘mountains were stripped bare to the sky, every forest now floated’ (481-482). The idea that the sea and land converge because of war distinctly visualises war as an all-encompassing and metaphysical phenomenon, which does violence to the environment, not just to people. It also anticipates that even Achilles’ refuge on land will not mean he is immune to the reaches of its power.

Yet, even if the island of Scyros is known to only be a temporary refuge, it is still depicted as physically distant from the epicentre of war. Purcell suggests that mountains and islands were perceived to be ‘naturally marginal’ in antiquity.^[v] In this way, the focus on journeying helps us to visualise Statius’ use of peripheries. Thetis first travels to retrieve Achilles from Mount Pelion, then journeys to Scyros. Achilles’ reaction as he awakes on the beach of Scyros paints the scope of this physical distance for the reader:  

He was stunned by what he saw.

What place is this, what waves, where is Pelion?

Everything he sees is changed and unfamiliar,

And he isn’t sure he recognizes his mother…

Statius, Achilleid, 280-283

This sense of Achilles’ utter disorientation not only works to create a cinematic effect that a large expanse of space has been crossed. It also draws out the changes this new place will bring. The warrior-like activities that Achilles was pursuing in Mount Pelion will be replaced with cross-dressing and dancing. Therefore, Scyros is both geographically far away, but also functions as a detached conceptual space within which an alternative narrative of Achilles disconnected from war can be explored. In this way, Achilles’ disorientation perhaps invites the reader to view the subsequent episode on Scyros with a similarly dream-like and detached lens alongside him, one that frees up analysis of the gender ambivalence he will undergo. 

However, the thematic use of gender in Achilles’ cross-dressing is also coded in the language used to describe Scyros as a place:

But Thetis spent the night beside the roaring breakers,

trying to decide where she should hide her son,

in what land, what secret place. Thrace is nearest

but much too martial… Sestos and Abydos

are too accessible to ships…

she had heard bevies of girls from Lycomedes’

unwarlike palace screaming in play along there shore.

This she likes, the safest place for the fearful mother.

Statius, Achilleid, selected lined from 224-283

Thetis’ principal consideration is that Scyros is ‘unwarlike’, the Latin word for which (inbelli) is etymologically formed from the Latin word for war (bellum). The use of a negativized word invites contrast rather than complete antithesis, leaving ambiguous as to what degree Scyros is ‘without’ war, and leaving open the possibility that it could be ‘with’ war. Moreover, it is a word that denotes both the sense of a place being ‘without war’, but also could denote a lack of masculine strength.^[vi] Therefore, this adjective fundamentally introduces gender into the characterisation of Scyros. The description that ‘bevies of girls (were) screaming in play along the shore’ expands on the island’s supposed inherent lack of masculinity by introducing the binary opposite – femininity. Scyros as an ‘unwarlike’ place is therefore also a domestic, feminine space. This is furthered as Achilles immediately catches sight of one of Lycomedes’ daughters, Deidamia, and desires her (lines 277-310). The language and metaphors Statius uses to describe this change is distinctly that of love elegy.^[vii] Achilles’ cheeks ‘redden’, and it was as if he had ‘absorbed liquid fire’. Therefore, Statius even uses the language of a different literary genre to mark Scyros as a space where the ‘feminine’ abounds, in opposition to the ‘epic’, which is often synonymous with ‘masculine’ spaces where war abounds. In short, Statius perhaps visualises ‘femininity’ to be a boundary of sorts to war. It helps generate potential in the idea that Scyros could be a place which precludes war.

However, the gender overlap that results from Achilles’ cross-dressing ultimately reflects the way the ‘unwarlike’ space of Scyros will also come to overlap with its conceptual opposing counterpart – war. Statius blurs the polarity that the physical geography of island and sea engendered, destabilising the physical separation between Scyros and the epicentre of the war by bringing Ulysses and Diomedes to Scyros seeking Achilles out:

The closer they approached

the clearer it was Scyros, with Tritonia above

guarding the tranquil shore…

Statius, Achilleid, 777-779

The notion that Athena (Tritonia), the goddess of war, guards Scyros, is somewhat paradoxical. The need for a guard is inherently not peaceful. Scyros is a place which must actively prevent war from impeding, and a ‘feminine’ goddess as a guard does not have absolute power against the immense ‘masculine’ grip of war.

Furthermore, whilst war is encroaching on Scyros from the outside, this is underpinned by an internal assertion of violence. In his soliloquy, Achilles expresses frustration about Scyros as an oppressive place of confinement which renders him emasculated and far from his deep affinity for war (1.699-717):

How long will you endure 

Your fearful mother’s schemes and waste the prime 

Of your life in unmanly captivity? You are not allowed

to carry Mars’ weapons, or to hunt startled beasts?

Statius, Achilleid, 699-701

The phrase ‘unmanly prison’ (imbelli carcere) reflects Achilles’ perception of his situation on Scyros cross-dressed as someone forcefully hemmed in (a situation also brought about by a woman – his mother). The use again of the Latin word imbelli (‘unwarlike’) is here taken as ‘unmanly’. This choice of the translator corroborates an interpretation that gender is inseparable to understanding Statius’ conceptualisation of war. Furthermore, Julene Abad Del Vecchio interprets what here is translated as ‘captivity’ (carcere) to allude also to a horse’s ‘starting box’. The dual meanings of ‘captivity’ and ‘starting box’ contribute to Achilles and the reader’s viewpoints respectively: Achilles views his situation as a long-lasting ‘prison’, yet a horse’s ‘starting box’ anticipates for the reader his release from that space.^[viii] Achilles’ cross-dressing will in fact be revealed to be a gender ambiguity that cannot be reconciled without reassertion of his masculinity. Achilles does this through violence: the rape of Deidamia (720). This is Achilles’ ‘first act as a warrior, and the first act of war’.^[ix]As Rimell concludes, it is important to recognise that rape and war are fundamentally interrelated:

…rape is not just a crime that happens in war or on the edge of war, but what war does and is; that, in other words, those realms we are taught to view as separate, or to be separated (domestic and military violence, closed-in elegy and roaming epic, the mother and the man), are undividable and indeed symbiotic…^[x]

Therefore, Statius uses conceptual overlap to visualise the all-consuming nature of war. Whilst Scyros is initially a place where war seems at its fringes, it becomes a place within which the ultimate act of war and violence arises; physical space cannot boundary out war.

Ultimately, in the Achilleid Statius constructs physical spaces to explore the boundaries of where war can operate – and what its absence looks like. Scyros is initially projected as the most feasible place in which war is unlikely to reach. Statius’ use of femininity as a defining quality attributed to Scyros, poses the possibility that this island is as ‘unwarlike’ as a place can be. It has literal and conceptual distance from conflict and violence, subsuming Achilles into the activities opposite to that of an epic hero – dressing as a girl. Yet, as aptly surmised by Rimell, the Achilleid proposes that ‘epic energy must ferment in enclosures, how – paradoxically – war must be avoided or postponed in order to catalyse amor ferri, the passion for war’.^[xi] Scyros serves only as a temporary space of respite from the broader framing of Achilles’ epic narrative – a temporary break from war, which perhaps even increases Achilles’ passion for it. The feminine quality of the island does not make it invulnerable; it only strengthens the violence that surges from within. Statius’ use of vast expanses of space reflects the way that for Statius’ readership, the Roman empire had grown to its largest; it was plausible that war could be in one place and not another. Yet the fact that the first act of ‘war’ Achilles commits occurs on Scyros reflects the way that the civil wars of 69CE also generated from the central safe ‘haven’ of Rome.^[xii]Similarly, the world of the Achilleid is one in which no one is immune to the far-reaching inevitability of war, even in those places most unlikely to have war cross the threshold.

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The line numbers referred to throughout are taken from this translation: Lombardo, Stanley. Statius: Achilleid. (Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2015) 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abad Del Vecchio, Julene. ‘Subeunt Amazones: Tracing the Amazons in Statius’ Achilleid’, American Journal of Philology 144, no. 2 (2023): 321-349.

Abad Del Vecchio, Julene. “On the Use of carcer at Stat. Achil.1.625″ Philologus 165, no. 2 (2021): 326-330.

Augoustakis, A. ‘Achilles and the Poetics of Manhood: Re(de)fining Europe and Asia in Statius’ Achilleid’, Classical World 109, no. 2 (2015): 195-219.

Bessone, Federica. “Allusive (Im-)Pertinence in Statius’ Epic” in Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry: Contemporary Approaches, edited by Neil Coffee, Chris Forstall, Lavinia Galli Milić and Damien Nelis (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020) pp. 133-168.

Boyle, A.J. “Introduction: Reading Flavian Rome” in Flavian Rome edited by Anthony Boyle and William J. Dominik, (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2003) pp. 1-67

Fantuzzi, Marco. Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies (Oxford; New York: Oxford university Press, 2012)

Heslin, P. J. The Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 

Heslin, Peter. “Introduction” in Statius: Achilleid by Lombardo, Stanley (Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2015) pp vii-xxxi

McAuley, M. ‘Ambiguus Sexus: Epic Masculinity in Transition in Statius’ Achilleid’, Akroterion 55, no. 1 (2010): 27-60

Purcell, Nicholas. “Mediterranean Perspectives on Departure, Displacement, and Home” in The Returning Hero: nostoi and Traditions of Mediterranean Settlement edited by Simon Hornblower, and Giulia Biffis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) pp. 267-286

Rimell, Victoria. “Imperial enclosure, epic spectacle” in The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics: Empire’s Inward Turn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) pp. 231-275

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^[i] Heslin (2015) ix.

^[ii] Ibid. x.

^[iii] Rimell (2015) 253.

^[iv] Heslin (2015) xvii.

^[v] Purcell (2018) 273.

^[vi] TLL s.v. “imbellis” II.

^[vii] Fantuzzi (2012) 19.

^[viii] Abad Del Vecchio (2021) 329.

^[ix] Ibid.

^[x] Rimell (2015) 258-259.

^[xi] Rimell (2015) 253.

^[xii] Boyle (2003) 51.

CONTENT AND SPOILER WARNING: This article discusses the series Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) and includes mention of conflict, war, sexual violence and some graphic violence. 

Hello, and welcome to the first in a series of blog posts about my research into how popular media aimed at children and young adults’ can influence their habits of visualising war and peace. The first text I will be focusing on will be Attack on Titan^[i] and my blog posts showcasing my research will be structured as follows:

1. A Brief History of Attack on Titan (this blog post) will aim to give enough information about the world and the story of Attack on Titan for those unfamiliar with the series. This blog has little in the way of actual analysis and is meant as a summary and cheat sheet for those who have not previously engaged with the text.
2. Survival of the Fittest, Not the Nicest will introduce a theoretical framework that helps to understand how characters in Attack on Titan think about violence. I will focus on events in the beginning and middle of the manga demonstrating how characters act in the conflict they’re in.
3. Ending on A Low Note will explore how one can interpret the ending of the main conflict in Attack on Titan. I will investigate how it portrays the actions taken by the main cast of characters, the ethical ambiguities surrounding them, and what key messages manga creator and artist Isayama may be keen to convey. 
4. And They All Lived Happily Ever… will focus on peace building and the conclusion of the manga series after the ending of conflict. Peace-building post conflict is explored relatively little, but there is some consideration throughout the main conflict narratice as to how it will end. I will look at how Isayama conceives of peace in the relatively little space he gives to it in the manga. 

Introducing Attack on Titan

The world of Attack on Titan operates much like our own with some key differences. People are born and die in similar ways. Physics (save for some creative liberties for the purposes of entertaining action sequences) act the same. From what the reader is shown, the world looks very much like an alternate version of our world. The key differences that I will focus on are as follows:

• The existence of Titan superpowers
• Geographical differences
• Historical differences

In this blog post I will go through these differences to provide a useful, if imperfect, knowledge base to help readers understand my subsequent blog posts about the manga. After highlighting these differences, I will then provide a summary of the relevant characters and plot points. Please note: this manga is a very dense text with roughly 6000+ pages of comics told in a non-chronological manner, frequently switching perspectives between a big cast of different characters. Below, I have linked some resources that I have found or used in creating this blog, which readers might enjoy diving into to learn more about the manga.^[ii]

The existence of Titan superpowers

By far the biggest difference that a newcomer to Attack on Titan must grapple with is the existence and nature of Titans. ^[iii]

Titans are giant humanoid creatures that range in height from roughly 3 to 60 metres tall. They are creatures that do not procreate like other beings (they even lack genitals) and they appear “to violate several known laws of science” with their physiology.^[iv] Their bodies are incredibly light in terms of weight, they run at quite high temperatures, they do not need to breathe to survive, and they have incredible regenerative abilities, able to regrow virtually their entire bodies so long as their nervous system is intact.^[v] Hence, the most effective way to kill a Titan is to sever their brain’s connection to the rest of their nervous system by attacking their nape behind their neck. While Titans are clearly very distinct from a typical human, each Titan has in fact evolved from a race of people known as ‘Eldians’, or ‘The Subjects of Ymir’, who have the ability to transform into Titans. 

The Titans originated from a young girl named Ymir who lived roughly 2000 years before the main events of Attack on Titan and who acquired these powers after falling into a mysterious tree. 

Ymir was a slave who was under the control of King Fritz, the King of the Eldian empire, and after it was revealed that Ymir had this power King Fritz took Ymir as his wife and used her to expand and strengthen his empire. As a result of Ymir’s Titan powers, the Eldian empire was able to defeat Eldia’s main rival, the neighbouring nation of Marley. To ensure the continued strength of the empire, King Fritz had three daughters with Ymir. Then “thirteen years after acquiring the power of the Titans, Ymir died… King Fritz then forced his daughters to eat their mother’s corpse in an attempt to preserve the power of the Titans”.^[vi] This initiated a cycle where the descendants of Ymir were forced to reproduce, and upon their deaths have their children consume their parent’s spinal fluid to pass down the power of the Titans.

After the death of Ymir, her Titan power was split into nine unique Titans. Over the next 2000 or so, from Ymir’s death to the main events narrated in the manga, the Nine Titans were used by Eldians to expand the Eldian Empire. Each time one of the inheritors of the Nine Titans died or were about to die, their spinal fluid would be consumed by another Eldian to transfer the power of the Nine Titans. This process also transferred the memories of the previous inheritors of the Nine Titans. If their spinal fluid wasn’t consumed, a new-born Eldian would then be born at the time of their death and inherit the powers instead. Since Ymir only lived for 13 years with her Titan powers, each inheritor of one of the Nine Titans can only live for 13 years after inheriting their powers. A brief description of each of The Nine Titans is below: ^[vii]

As well as the Nine Titans, Subjects of Ymir are also able to be transformed into a different type of Titan distinct from the Nine Titans. Isayama dubs these titans as “Pure Titans”, and they are Subjects of Ymir that have been transformed into a Titan via the abilities of other Titans (e.g. the Founding Titan’s ability to transform others into a Titan) or through intaking a concoction made from another Titan’s spinal fluid. Pure Titans are like those seen in Fig 1.1, and range in size from roughly 2 to 15 metres. They make up the majority of the Titans seen in Attack on Titan and are generally unintelligent, but there are some abnormal Pure Titans capable of coherent thought or even speech. 

Geography

The geography of the world of Attack on Titan is an alternate version of our own world. The main events of the manga take place on the island of Paradis and the neighbouring nation of Marley.

Paradis and Marley seem to be vaguely based on real-world Europe, with many of the characters having “Germanic names”.^[viii] There also exists a nation paralleled to Japan, the nation of Hizuru. Whilst other nations are referenced that seem to parallel our own world’s political geography, these mentions are brief. The main places of relevance to the story are Paradis Island and the nation of Marley.

History

After the founding of the Eldian Empire by King Fritz roughly 2000 years before the main events of the manga, this colonial supremacy continued across the world. Roughly 100 years before the main events of the manga a descendant of the original King Fritz, named Karl Fritz, became the new monarch of the Eldian empire and inherited the powers of the Founding Titan. After inheriting the monarchy and the Founding Titan powers, he was ashamed of the colonial actions of the Eldian Empire committed against the wider world, and so he orchestrated a civil war (The Great Titan War) that dissolved the Eldian empire. 

The result of The Great Titan War left the Eldian empire dissolved and King Karl Fritz left with most of the Eldian population to the island of Paradis. He then transformed a large portion of the Eldian population into 60-metre-tall Titans like the Colossal Titan that use hardening together to form protective walls for the Eldians on Paradis. 

Before leaving for Paradis, King Karl Fritz left a warning to the world that if the Eldians on Paradis were provoked “The tens of millions of Titans that sleep inside the walls will surely flatten the entire Earth”.^[ix] This threat became known as the Rumbling. However, the Rumbling cannot be activated by a member of the Fritz royal family, because they all inherit King Karl Fritz’s memories, and these memories prevent them from using the Rumbling. Hence, a Founding Titan of non-royal blood must come into physical contact with another Titan of royal blood to initiate the Rumbling. 

Once on Paradis King Karl Fritz used his powers as the Founding Titan to alter the memories of all the Eldians on Paradis to make them believe that they are the last remnants of humanity trapped within the walls to protect them from Pure Titans that had destroyed the rest of humanity. This is what the Eldian characters on Paradis believe for the first half of the manga and they establish a militarily centred government. This society forms three branches of government: the Military Police, the Garrison, and the Survey Corps. The Military Police maintains order within the walls on Paradis, the Garrison protects the walls, and the Survey Corps are charged with exploring beyond the walls. Most of the cast of characters we follow from Paradis are part of the Survey Corps. 

Marley

The Great Titan War also left Marley in possession of several of the inheritors of the Nine Titans (the Jaw, Female, Colossal, Beast, Cart, Armoured and Warhammer Titans). Consequently, over the next hundred years Marley proceeds to replace the Eldian empire as the world’s preeminent colonial power. The leaders of Marley then contain the Eldians who had remained in Marley in internment camps and they use the Eldian population as soldiers for their colonial wars and as ‘Warriors’. ‘Warriors’ are Eldians who have been trained since childhood as soldiers to inherit the power of the Nine Titans and fight for Marley. Any Eldians who are seen as enemies of the nation of Marley and brought to Paradis and transformed to Pure Titans to terrorise the Eldians that originate from Paradis. 

These are the main enemies that the Eldians on Paradis face for the first half of the manga. Eventually, the rest of the world’s military technology develops to the point of rivalling the power of Titans. So, Warriors are sent to Paradis to attempt to reclaim the powers of the Founding Titan and other natural resources that are exclusive to Paradis. Ultimately, these efforts fail.  

Back to Paradis

The Eldians on Paradis attempt to reclaim their island from the Pure Titans which have been roaming the land outside of their walls and in doing so learn the truth of the world. That is that, due to the atrocities of the Eldian Empire, the rest of the world hates their race, and would have them imprisoned if not exterminated. 

Several years after learning the true nature of the World, Eren Yeager leads a mission to Marley and forces the rest of the military forces on Paradis to help. The main objective of the mission was to kill the military leadership of Marley at a gathering, to steal the Warhammer titan for Eren Yeager and to acquire Zeke Yeager, who is a titan of royal blood to enable the Rumbling. At this point Marley and Paradis are actively at war. As well as this, several international diplomats and journalists at this gathering were killed, also causing an alliance against Paradis.  

At this point, the thinking of the military leaders on Paradis is to leverage the threat of the Rumbling as a deterrent for a war against Paradis. With help from the foreign nation of Hizuru, over the next 50 years Paradis would try to update their military technologically and eventually negotiate peace with the nations of the world. However, for this plan to work, several things must fall into place: 

• The monarch of Paradis, Queen Historia Fritz, must inherit Zeke’s Beast Titan and must procreate and feed her Titan to her children and her children’s children etc. until Paradis can negotiate peace
• An Eldian of non-royal blood must inherit the Founding Titan from Eren Yeager until Paradis can negotiate peace 
• A smaller version of the Rumbling must be used to demonstrate to the world that the Rumbling would be devastating 
• Efforts must be made to negotiate peace with nations that hate the people of Paradis 

Eventually, against the wishes of the military leadership on Paradis, Zeke Yeager and Eren Yeager meet to unlock the full powers of the Founding Titan. Eren initiates a full-scale Rumbling genocide, against the wishes of Zeke. At the prospect of the full-scale Rumbling, former enemies from Marley and Paradis join forces to prevent it from happening. They succeed in killing Eren and in preventing the whole genocide, but around 80% of the human population are killed in the process. The manga ends with an exploration of peace negotiations between Paradis and the rest of humanity by the cast of characters that killed Eren.

This blog hopefully sets the scene for those of you who are new to Attack on Titan. In my next blog, I will focus on using this knowledge base to investigate how Attack on Titan conceptualises violence in the context of survival. 

Matin Moors

Undergraduate Student, Master of Arts in English and Philosophy, University of St Andrews

A special thanks to Lord Laidlaw and the Laidlaw Foundation for enabling my research, as well as to my supervisor Dr Alice König for helping guide me and facilitating my contributions to the Visualising War project.

The images included in this blog have been published online in good faith for educational purposes, making use of the exception for ‘Criticism and review’ in UK copyright legislation. If you are the rightsholder for any material used in this blog and have concerns about its use, please contact: arw6@st-andrews.ac.uk.

References

• Attack on Titan Wiki. “Marley” Attack on Titan Wiki, https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Marley. [date accessed 25/08/2022]
• Attack on Titan Wiki. “Titan (Anime)” Attack on Titan Wiki, https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Titan_(Anime)#cite_note-e5-4. [date accessed 25/08/2022]
• invaderzz. “This video will change how you see Eren”. YouTube. Dec. 22, 2021. Video Essay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6GmVCD7cxk&t=1257s [date accessed 25/08/2022] 
• Isayama, Hajime. Shingeki no Kyojin. Tokyo: Kodansha. 2009. Inkr. https://inkr.com/title/409-attack-on-titan. [Subscription needed] [date accessed 25/08/2022]

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^[i] I will be using the English name as opposed to Shingeki no Kyojin for ease of writing.

^[ii] For additional resources to understand Attack on Titan, I recommend the Fandom Wiki page if you’d want to look up specific groups or concepts. This video essay on youtube from invaderzz I have found extremely useful in interpreting the ending section of the manga.

^[iii] All quotations and images are taken from Shingeki no Kyojin. Isayama, 2009, Chapter 2, p. 20.

^[iv] Attack on Titan Wiki, “Titan (Anime)”.

^[v] Ibid. 

^[vi] Attack on Titan Wiki, “Titan (Anime)”.

^[vii] Please note that the abilities and features of each of the Nine Titans depends on who the inheritor is. Each person who inherits one of the Nine Titans has a unique appearance, but different inheritors of the same Titans have similar visual appearances.

^[viii] Attack on Titan Wiki, “Marley”.

^[ix] Isayama., Chapter 86, p. 41.

Lake Perucac, photographed by Dijana Muminovic. Due to an error at the nearby dam in 2010, during maintenance work on the Bajina Basta hydroelectric power station, the lake dried revealing the bones of hundreds of people killed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. The lake, 54 km long and 1,100 wide is now considered to be the largest mass grave in Europe. The Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina began a search with volunteers. The image on the right features Admir Sabanovic, searching for his father who was killed in 1992 during the attack of Visegrad. Sabanovic’s father was found two months later in a forest, an hour away from the lake.

Dijana Muminovic is a Bosnian-American documentary photographer. As she recounts in this podcast episode, she was 9 years old when the Bosnian War broke out in April 1992, and her childhood was dominated by the conflict. She vividly remembers the day it started: out picking flowers, she heard the first siren, followed by a sound that she would quickly learn was the noise of a bomb; and she ran to hide for the first time in the family’s basement. That routine became part of her childhood for the next four years: lots of time hiding in bomb shelters, and coping without electricity or water, with shortages of food, and with constant fear and anxiety, while dreaming of peace.

Dijana grew up in Zenica, an industrial town about 70km north of Sarajevo. Unlike the capital city, it was not a key target during the war; in fact, Zenica became a place to which people from other towns and villages fled. People whose homes had been bombed or burnt, and in particular many Bosnian Muslims who had become targets of ethnic cleansing. Dijana remembers her school becoming a shelter overnight, with the gym crammed full of people. As she puts it: 

‘That was my first introduction to what it meant to be a refugee. And for me, it meant that people came with nothing, having left everything they had. And they will probably never go back to their homes again…’

Dijana Muminovic, speaking on the Visualising War and Peace podcast

Dijana’s own father was Muslim, while her mother was Catholic. They eventually became refugees themselves, moving to the US in 1997. Some years later, shortly after graduating from university and starting out as a documentary photographer, Dijana was commissioned to develop a photographic project that would help explain the presence of so many Bosnians in her adopted part of America, near Kentucky. That project took her back to Bosnia and set her on a journey to document the ongoing process of exhuming and identifying victims of the Bosnian genocide. Her award-winning series of photographs entitled Aftermath focuses particularly on the exhumation of bodies from Lake Perucac, which borders Serbia and Bosnia-and-Herzegovina, where approximately 800 bodies were thrown during the Bosnian war. One of Dijana’s photos was chosen by the journalist and author Christina Lamb as the front cover of her book, Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: what war does to women.

In our podcast conversation, Dijana talks about the natural beauty of Lake Perucac, and how that beauty contrasts with the horror of what was recovered from it. She captures this paradox in several of her photographs, including the contrasting images of the tree on the lake’s shore shown above: in one, the ground is undisturbed and everything looks idyllic; in the other, the sombre task of digging has begun, shattering the illusion of peace. This paradox is evident also in the two images below. The stunning landscape on the left draws the viewer in, but closer inspection reveals four volunteers digging in the foreground – and their work disrupts the tranquility of the shot, just as they disturb the earth itself. Sunshine illuminates the far shore of the lake in the image on the right, but it also picks out colourful flags, which mark the presence of bones in the exposed lake bed at the front of the shot. Horror amid beauty; traces of war and genocide in an otherwise lovely landscape.

Volunteers help the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina to exhume bodies from Lake Perucac, which dried up due to an error at a hydropower station. Photography by Dijana Muminovic.

Dijana’s photographs also capture the physical and emotional labour of exhumation and identification for the volunteers involved. In one photo, we can see four people wearing raincoats digging in the drizzle. A dog is prancing around at the edge of the water, and its playfulness offsets the diggers’ sombre task. Three are bent over while the fourth takes a break and stands watchfully by, waiting to see what gets unearthed. This is just the beginning of a slow, laborious process of uncovering crimes against humanity.

In other photos we can see more of the work done by volunteers to bring closure to families who lost loved ones during the war. On the left, Dijana has captured the sombre interactions between three men who have just dug up a victim’s passport; and in another, a forensic pathologist is standing with her hands on her hips as she braces herself to start processing more jaw bones and broken skulls on her lab table. Together, these photographs capture just how much work is done by so many different people in processing the aftermath of conflict. Some of the volunteers are searching for their own family members.

Left: Goran Micic, left, shows an ID to Admir Sabanovic, right, that was found in a pit while searching for the remains of Sabanovic’s father who was killed in 1992. With the help of few friends, the MPI, and the ICMP, Sabanovic was able to find bones of his father. The ID belonged to the man found with Sabanovic’s father; the father of Adisa Karisik who also volunteered at Lake Perućac.

Right: Forensic Anthropologist, Dragana Vucetic, at the Tuzla Identification Coordination Division (ICD) July 9, 2010. The ICMP has helped exhuming bodies from Lake Perućac.

Some of Dijana’s photographs are quite ‘documentary’ in the sense that they capture a snapshot in time – a boy looking at the flower he is about to lay in a commemoration ceremony, or three women whose raw grief is etched on their faces in three very different ways. Others are more ‘artfully constructed’ – for instance, using reflections or unusual lighting to add meaning to an image. In all her photography, Dijana is conscious of two driving motivations: the importance of documenting what has happened, and the value of helping viewers to connect emotionally with the victims of conflict and killing. These motivations are at the heart of some other work she has been doing, capturing the stories of some of the 20,000-50,000 women survivors of war rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through her work, Dijana underlines the power of sensitive, human-centred photography in helping us visualise many different aspects of war’s aftermath.

You can read more about Dijana’s work on her website. We have also featured some of her photographic work that has been inspired by her own experiences as a refugee on our Visualising Forced Migration project website. You can listen to Dijana tell her own story in the podcast below.

Throughout 2022, a team of undergraduate students at the University of St Andrews have been working on a ‘Vertically Integrated Project‘ called ‘Visualising Peace‘. Directed by Dr Alice König, this project seeks to extend the work of the Visualising War project by examining how war’s aftermath, conflict resolution and peace-building are conceived. Our aim is to study different habits of imagining, understanding, representing and working towards peace, and we are particularly interested in analysing how different narratives and ideas of peace have evolved and gained influence over time. 

Students involved in the project have been drawing on their subject-specific expertise to explore and experiment with different ways of visualising peace, in different periods and places. History undergraduate Kara Devlin decided to dig deep into narratives of peace from Scottish and English perspectives during the Medieval period, and as part of this work she created a timeline which she introduces in the video below:

In what follows, Kara discusses her project in her own words.

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Mission Statement

Welcome to a timeline on visualised peace!

This resource was created as part of the University of St Andrews’ Vertically Integrated Project Visualising Peace, which seeks to explore habits of narrating and representing peace, as well as how those habits might shape our mindsets and behaviours. This timeline shares this aim, but has a few of its own too: 

• To give an overview on the temporal complexities of peace
  • To create an accessible resource which showcases first-hand narratives of peace around a central conflict

The conflict which I chose to centre these goals around was Anglo-Sottish relations throughout the medieval and early modern periods. I chose this issue as I believe it contains interesting sources, it has lasted through varied generations, and it is of modern interest with Scottish and English history being a large part of each nation’s national identity and politics. However, this was also a very complex conflict to choose. By keeping a focus on English and Scottish voices in the timeline entries, narratives that shaped the Anglo-Scottish relationship such as from French royalty or European reformation leaders were somewhat excluded. It is impossible to represent the true complexity of a conflict which has lasted for over 1000 years, with hundreds of sources feeding into the conflicting perspectives of the era. 

My hope is that as more items are added to the timeline, it becomes a more representative depiction of the relationships between England and Scotland. That is why feedback is important not just in keeping the project unbiased and free from inaccuracies, but also in adding more varied and encompassing sources. 

Notes on Data Used

The sources used in this resource were as varied and complex as the subject they represented. A few notes are necessary to work through the reasoning behind the selection of sources, as well as some issues that arise with sources from this era. 

Firstly, the accessibility of each source was kept in mind when adding it to the resource. I avoided non-English, Old English, or particularly difficult Scots language posts to make sure that the general English reader could understand what was being spoken about in each extract. I also referenced the full source within each post so that readers are encouraged to find each extract within its full context and to read more from the authors presented. I also picked out extracts which mention peace, or the resolution of conflict in an explicit way so that the reader does not have to jump to conclusions to figure out how medieval Scots and English visualised peace. 

There was some difficulty in finding sources, which explains a lack in women or non-elite voices. It was also trickier to find manuscripts which looked towards the future of each country, rather than looking back or discussing a present event. This non-representation will hopefully be resolved through feedback and further research. 

There were also some types of sources that were utilised repeatedly throughout this resource. A few further notes on each of these can explain their utility, as well as their drawbacks.

Chronicles: These sources make up a majority of the resource as they were a popular method of recording a country’s history within the medieval and early modern era. As they usually span centuries of events, these sources look back on the past with the aid of hindsight and any biases of the time from when they are written. It is always necessary to keep in mind the era which the chronicle was written within to analyse its content successfully.

Treaties: These are a unique source as they offer a look back at the past, a direct connection with the present situation, and a vision towards the future. They are also often (but not always!) drafted with the collaboration of both sides, meaning that they are not fully biased towards one or the other. These sources can be very useful in delving into the legal process of peace negotiation, as well as inferring what each side valued the most in their relationship with the other. However, these sources cannot be as accurate at showcasing relations as they might seem. In cases where kings are forced to sign treaties in order to live or keep their kingdoms, many false narratives crop up. It is therefore important to take the entire situational context when examining the source.

How to Use the Resource

How to use Tags: There are two types of tags utilised within this resource. The first groups together extracts from the same text (ex: Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon). This allows the user to explore one author’s narrative of what they have perceived peace to have looked like for their country over the centuries. 

The second type of tag categorises posts by whether they look back on the past, describe a current event in the present, or look towards the future. These tags allow the user to discover differences in visualising peace and events by how close the author was to them chronologically. These tags also make it easier to distinguish the effects of temporality in visualising peace, ex: narrating on the past might lead to a more negative outlook on peace than narrating on the future. 

How to Use Each Post: Each post includes an overall depiction of the event, an extracted narrative on the event, and an analysis on the connection between the event and the visualisation of peace. Each post is intended to be read in order, and each analysis is intended to invoke further thoughts and reading, rather than to explain each detail. 

Each post is also categorised by colour to make it clear what nationality the author is writing from. Blue posts are from Scottish writers, yellow are for English, black are for outsiders (usually travellers), and green is for treaties between the two sides. 

How to Use Groupings: Narratives about similar time periods are grouped together whether they are written before, during, or after the events.  Looking at multiple entries surrounding one event or time period allows users to compare the perspectives laid out within each narrative. 

Feedback

In the future, this resource aims to grow by making the connections between sources clearer, sorting the data into further categories, and adding more sources to the resource. Feedback is very helpful in achieving each of these goals, as well as diminishing inaccuracies and biases in the data and analysis already presented. For these reasons, any form of feedback on the resource would be truly appreciated! If you have any thoughts to share, please email us at vispeace@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Further Resources

I have compiled a list of further resources on Anglo-Scottish relations and the connection between temporality and peace. These are useful for the user who wants to delve in deeper into these topics beyond this resource. 

Primary Accounts

• A History Book for Scots: Selections from Schotichronicon by Walter Bower, Edited by D. E. R. Watt
• The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272-1346: Translated, with notes by Sir Herbert Maxwell
• John of Fordum’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, translated from the Latin text by J. H. Skene, edited by William F. Skene
• Chronichle of the War Between the English and the Scots in 11734 and 1174 by Jordan Fantosme, translated and edited by Francisque Michel 
• Anglo-Scottish relations, 1174-1328: some selected documents, edited and translated by E.L. G. Stones

Modern Historiography

• Land, Law and People in Medieval Scotland by Cynthia Neville
• Scottish public opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 1699-1707 by Karin Bowie
• Anglo-Scottish relations from 1603 to 1900, edited by T.C. Smout
• The Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity, 1300 – 1600, edited by Katherine Terrell and Mark P. Bruce
• England’s northern frontier: conflict and local society in the fifteenth-century Scottish marches by Jackson W. Armstrong
• Scotland’s Second War of Independence, 1332 – 1357 by Iain A. MacInnes
• England and Scotland at war, c. 1296 – c.1513, edited by Andy King and David Simpkin
• England and Scotland in the fourteenth century: new perspectives, edited by Andy King and Micheal A. Penman
• England and her neighbours, 1066-1453: essays in honour of Pierre haplais, edited by Micheal Jones and Malcom Vale
• Religion, culture, and society in early modern Britain: essays in honour of Patrick Collinson, edited by Anthony Fletcher and Peter Roberts

Articles

•  “A somewhat too cruel vengeance was taken for the blood of the slain”: Royal Punishment of Rebels, Traitors, and Political Enemies in Medieval Scotland, c. 1100–c. 1250 by Iain A. MacInnes (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2gjwz1j.12)
• Bloodfeud, Kindred and Government in Early Modern Scotland by Jenny Wormald (https://www.jstor.org/stable/650566)
• Custom in Context: Medieval and Early Modern Scotland and England by Rab Houston (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23014811)
• Myth and Identity in Early Medieval Scotland by Edward J. Cowan (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25530085)
• The Alliance between Church and State in Early Medieval Alba by Kenneth Veitch   (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4053521)
• Disorderly Damsels? Women and Interpersonal Violence in Pre-Reformation Scotland  (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23073504)
• Royal Treatment of Feudal Casualties in Late Medieval Scotland by Craig Madden (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25529182)
• Scotland’s First War of Independence: Historical Introduction by Arnold Blumberg (https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578347)
• Ethnicity and the Writing of Medieval Scottish History by Matthew H. Hammond (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25529883)
• The Meaning of ‘Britain’ in Medieval and Early Modern England by Alan MacColl (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/499787)

Websites

• Visualising Peace Museum: https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/gallery/
• Visualising Peace Library: https://visualisingpeace.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ 
• National Records of Scotland: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/
• Chronicles and memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages: Individual Volumes Online: https://cnu.libguides.com/c.php?g=23221
• Scottish Archive for Schools: https://www.scottisharchivesforschools.org/
• British History Online: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/
• British Literary Manuscripts Online: https://lst-gale-com.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/blm/start.do?p=BLM&u=stand&authCount=1
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook.asp

 

How the Visualisation of Peace in the Medieval and Early Modern Era differed throughout Europe

Throughout 2022, a team of undergraduate students at the University of St Andrews have been working on a ‘Vertically Integrated Project‘ called ‘Visualising Peace‘. Directed by Dr Alice König, this project seeks to extend the work of the Visualising War project by examining how war’s aftermath, conflict resolution and peace-building are conceived. Our aim is to study different habits of imagining, understanding, representing and working towards peace, and we are particularly interested in analysing how different narratives and ideas of peace have evolved and gained influence over time. 

Part of our work has involved created The Visualising Peace Library, an online bibliographic resource that encourages knowledge exchange between people studying peace in different disciplines and sectors. In this blog, student Kara Devlin discusses some of the items she has added to The Visualising Peace Library. Focusing on Medieval History, she highlights some important facts about the ways in which people experienced, understood and worked towards peace in this era – and she also draws attention to some of our blindspots in studying Medieval peace-making.

The Visualising Peace Library aims to promote knowledge exchange between different disciplines. To facilitate this, it must contain resources from a wide range of periods, places and subject areas; so I have spent the last few weeks adding more articles on medieval and early modern history. In doing so, I have come across some fascinating perspectives on peace in Europe in the Middle Ages.

As I discuss below, the visualization of a peaceful world – understood in its simplest form as a period with no conflict — varied along different binaries: some thinkers and politicians saw peace as something that had to be systemically embedded; others saw it as a randomly occurring phenomenon, the product of chance; some prescribed violence in conflict’s aftermath to ensure greater stability; for others, it was first and foremost an intellectual endeavour. The articles I survey below highlight stark different between theory and practice, and they also draw attention to key links between identity-formation and peace-building. Between them, they reveal valuable insights into how peace was visualised in the Medieval world which have a lot to teach us about visualisations of peace in other eras. Studying Medieval peace and peace-making can refresh how we study it in other disciplines and sectors.

The first article I added to The Visualising Peace Library was ‘The Normality of Peace’ by Matthew Melko. This was the perfect initial article for my research, since it illustrated through qualitative data that peace generally exists more than war, at least in early modern and modern history. Even in periods such as the early 20th century in Europe, Melko found that there was more peace than not, simply by looking at each country and year and analyzing whether conflict existed or not. This re-evaluation of the idea that ‘Peace is normal, war is exceptional’ is an effective starting point in analyzing Medieval history – and also an important check on our tendency to visualise (and teach) peace and conflict across history more broadly. 

Our pre-conceptions about conflict in the Medieval period may be that it was an era of violent justice and constant conflict. It is not difficult to prove this statement. Iain A. MacInnes’ article ‘“A somewhat too cruel vengeance was taken for the blood of the slain”: Royal Punishment of Rebels, Traitors, and Political Enemies in Medieval Scotland, c. 1100–c. 1250’ in particular gives many gory examples of the seemingly random punishments enacted by the English and Scottish to maintain order within their kingdoms. One visual example is the practice of beheadings, which were used by both countries, but featured more predominantly in Scotland as a symbol of victory. The heads were utilized as a bragging right and as a warning to anyone who might want to rebel again. However, MacInnes points out that this almost ritualistic killing was done with the primary intention of asserting systemic power, rather than as a bloodthirsty, senseless act of random violence.  

This glimpse we get of a prioritization of systemic justice over random violence in Scotland is backed up by Jenny Wormald’s article ‘Bloodfeud, Kindred and Government in Early Modern Scotland’, which discusses the use of law to resolve feuds. She argues that the Scottish relied on their own cultural system of justice, which involves the family and friends of the victim creating a sentence for the perpetrator. This peace-making relied heavily on community and shared ideals of justice to work effectively. The same sense of justice was applied to everyone, whether it was Mary Queen of Scots, or a local farmer. That said, Wormald stresses the flawed nature of Aulde Laws in Scotland, and the long way that Scottish law had to go to reach a real, collective idea of justice, rather than an idealized cultural version.

This idealised fantasy of a collective cultural idea of peacebuilding was a reality during the medieval era, however; it just happened to exist in a different country.  Loren C Mackinney’s article ‘The People and Public Opinion in the Eleventh-Century Peace Movement’ is an extraordinary depiction of a peace movement which spread throughout all social and economic classes of medieval France. This peace existed tangibly through ‘The Truce of God’ and through local pacts made between towns. French national identity was also re-moulded in efforts to achieve this central goal of national peace. Again, the process towards that was systemic and developed throughout time, beginning with church committees and moving towards more secular public assemblies. 

This French collective identity was strengthened through the Enlightenment as well, although this happened almost half a millennium later. Patrick Riley’s article ‘The Abbe de St Pierre and Voltaire on Perpetual Peace in Europe’ brings together ideas that had been stewing for centuries into the Abbe’s comprehensive plan for Europe. This plan largely involved creating a union for the European countries, an idea that was never fully explored within a medieval context. However, Voltaire and other enlightenment scholars questioned the practical effectiveness of a union, arguing that the way forward for peace was through global enlightenment. This article is a fantastic example of the differences between peace theory and peace practice – helping us to look at how peaceful practices and idealistic visualisations of peace evolved alongside each other. It is important to question whether medieval perspectives of peace were idealized theories or whether they were ingrained in everyday reality to understand how peace functioned within the medieval era. For example, Scottish sources speak of a cultural system of justice by family members. Whether this worked effectively in everyday practice is up for debate. 

Of course, perspectives on peace differed throughout the centuries to keep up with everyday practice within conflicts – in England, as elsewhere. Throughout the medieval period, English ideas and approaches varied from the systemic violence we can see amongst the Scots to the intellectual, realized peace more visible in France. MacInnes and Wormald both speak of the English as having similar levels of violence to the Scots and utilizing it in parallel ways to maintain order. Throughout the centuries, though, the English also turned to less violent methods of policing in order to maintain order. A. J. Musson’s article, ‘Sub-Keepers and Constables: The Role of Local Officials in Keeping the Peace in Fourteenth-Century England’ displays a completely different systemic approach than that of the Scottish. Musson explores the intricate structure of peacekeepers in England, from the royal decrees of the King to the powers of the sheriff constable. One thing which this article underlines is that national peace cannot be established through one system. Instead, it involves layers of overlapping roles which come together to reach every single person, place, and conflict in society. 

The visualizations of peace portrayed and discussed in these articles speak to a medieval world that maintained peace through a range of systemic developments. The Scottish found their systemic conflict resolution largely through violence, which allowed them to assert their dominance over enemies even in times with no conflict. The French built intellectual plans and systems towards a peaceful reality, first in the eleventh century peace movement, and next in the Enlightenment. The English began with similar acts of violence to the Scottish, but then built their own individual machine of law and order, recruiting roles for all levels of public and private order, and expanding the powers of these roles to enact justice. The three European societies presented in these articles ultimately display complex and varied visualizations (and realisations) of medieval peace, painting a picture that tends to differ from our own pre-conceptions of the period. Crucially, they also draw attention to connections between peace-building and national identity-formation which have lessons for our study of peace today.

I hope that this overview of a range of articles on Medieval ideas of peace will encourage you to dive into more items in our Visualising Peace Library, especially historic ones. Peace Studies often sits within the framework of International Relations or Political Science, but other disciplines such as History study peace and peace-making too, and we all have a lot to learn from each other’s disciplinary materials and perspectives.

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The field of peace education addresses how we may build a future of global peace when our global history is filled with violence, war, and conflict. One proposal is to focus on the upbringing of the next generation. Educational psychologists note that socialisation by adults during childhood has lasting impacts on pro-social behaviour, and mechanisms for morally disengaged reasoning start to develop during childhood.[1] These findings indicate the importance of childhood as “the time when the seeds of peace and conflict are sown”. Children will grow up to become leaders and policy makers, and purposefully educating future generations during their formative years may well encourage them to prioritise peace and moral courage, and advocate for alternatives to violence.[2]

Sarah Gough, Laidlaw Research Essay 2022

In 2022 Undergraduate student Sarah Gough was selected for a prestigious Laidlaw Scholarship at the University of St Andrews. She spent six weeks on a research project connected to Visualising War, exploring peace education in different contexts. Her research led her to ask a series of important questions:

• What different approaches/guidance to teaching war are promoted by different pedagogical theories?
• What can different educational methods and media teach children about conflict?
• What habits of visualising war do different teaching methods engender?

Sarah looked at school syllabi, educational resources produced by NGOs, war reporting aimed at children, documentaries, the museum space, and publications such as Horrible Histories. She focused her research particularly around the lessons that children might learn from these different media in relation to World War II.

This poster sums up her key findings:

You can find out more about Sarah’s research in the essay below, which has an extensive resource list for further reading:

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[1] Hymel and Darwich, Building Peace Through Education, pp. 345-357.  

[2] Lombardo and Polonko, Peace Education and Childhood, pp. 182-203.  

As part of the Visualising War project’s research into the ripple effects of conflict, we are exploring how different art forms have visualised the rupture, loss and trauma of forced displacement. Undergraduate Research Assistant Holly Axford has been looking particularly at ancient narratives of displacement, and in this blog she writes about ancient attitudes to supplication and hospitality, and how class and gender impacted on ancient experiences of migration and forced displacement. You can read another blog by Holly on women, war and displacement here.

Individuals and groups in the ancient world left their native lands and sought shelter elsewhere, either temporarily or to establish a permanent home, for a number of reasons: changing economic circumstances, political exile, or (very frequently) conflict. But what kinds of reception did these displaced peoples receive when arriving in another community across the ancient Greek and Roman worlds? The well-known institution of xenia, or ‘guest-friendship’, as well as the divine protection traditionally extended to suppliants in ancient Greek religious thought, could lead us to believe that displaced peoples were guaranteed a hospitable welcome. In this blog post, I will explore the figure of the suppliant and this notion of hospitality in more depth, before going on to consider how other factors – namely, class and gender – are depicted in ancient narratives of displacement, and how they may have shaped the experiences of the displaced. 

Supplication in the Ancient World

Closely embedded in the social and cultural framework of ancient Greece were the rights of the suppliant and, related to this, the proper welcome to be offered to the stranger, or xenos. The physical act of supplication, which is described in a number of episodes from epic, involves the suppliant lowering themselves and grasping the knees of another in a manner which served as a symbol of their vulnerability. It is noticeable, however, that this ritual of action and entreaty is not always performed in its entirety. Odysseus, in his meeting with the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa in book six of The Odyssey, decides that, given his present state of undress, it would be inappropriate to approach her, and instead supplicates her verbally from a respectful distance. John Gould, on the other hand, stresses the importance of the physical act of supplication, arguing that when a suppliant does not do it in full, their request tends to be rejected.^[i] In battle scenes in The Iliad, for example, when the suppliant either breaks contact or is unable to complete the ritual fully, he is often killed by his opponent.^[ii]

As these Iliadic examples demonstrate, there are times when the rights of a suppliant were not respected. However, the suppliant was thought to be placed under the protection of Zeus. In Aeschylus’ play, Suppliants, Pelasgus of Argos is encouraged to look favourably on the Danaids’ entreaty by his recollection that ‘the wrath of Zeus who protects suppliants is heavy indeed’ (347).^[iii] Repeated references such as this one to the role of Zeus in ensuring the safety of suppliants, in addition to the ultimate success of the Danaids’ appeal, seem to point towards the acceptance of displaced outsiders as part of a wider value system to which individuals and communities were expected to conform.^[iv]

In accordance with the vulnerability embodied by the physical ritual of supplication, the speech of the Danaids in the play appears to depict them as passive victims. As their father Danaus warns them: ‘Remember also to defer: you are in need, a stranger, a fugitive. Bold words do not suit weaker persons’ (201-202). Reflecting on this aspect of the play, Elena Isayev has highlighted similar issues with modern media representations of refugees. To win the sympathy of readers and viewers, modern media often chooses to emphasise the helplessness and passivity of refugees and, in doing so, effectively denies them any personal agency.^[v] The characterisation of the Danaids, however, is not so straightforward as it first appears. It is possible, following Isayev’s interpretation, to recognise in their story the agency – and not just the vulnerability – of suppliants.^[vi] The chorus invites Pelasgus to do as follows:

‘And see me, your suppliant here, and in flight,

Running about like a heifer pursued by wolves,

High up amid steeping crags, where trustful of his aid

She lows to tell the herdsman of her plight’ (350-353)

While characterising themselves as prey, the chorus of Danaids positions Pelasgus alongside the paternal figure of the herdsman, implicitly reminding him of his responsibility towards them. Their speech here recalls wider ancient thought, in which the imagery of shepherding served as an important symbol of guidance and protection (its deployment in later Christian parables being a key example of this). In their appeal to Pelasgus, the Danaids proactively utilise their vulnerability to illustrate the distinction between their present social position and his own, highlighting his obligations within this moral and religious framework and working to shape his attitude and actions towards them. The (perceived and actual) vulnerability of the Danaids as suppliants and as migrants, then, in some ways enables the exercise of agency by granting them a position within an existing social system, whereby they have the right to appeal for certain protections. Yet at the same time, it constrains their agency by restricting them to a predefined identity as victims within this system. Rarely, in the ancient world or the modern, do we hear the voices of migrants themselves. It is therefore striking that here, the Danaids’ representation of themselves goes some way towards collapsing the categories of agent and victim – but with agency restricted to voicing their victimhood and reminding others of their social responsibilities to such victims. 

This same flexibility is often absent from modern representations of displaced peoples. One need only look to the image of ‘women and children’ in modern media, as a homogenous and largely voiceless group in need of the state’s protection.^[vii] Women, included in this group on the basis of being children’s carers, come to share this supposed identity of passive vulnerability, characterised often as needing people to speak for them as well as support them in other ways. On the other hand, single men (as well as single women, who are especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation) are often not depicted with the same degree of sympathy and cannot expect the same levels of advocacy from others.^[viii] These different social identities, and the varying degrees of agency and expected independence which they entail, help to construct categories of ‘undeserving trespassers versus those who deserve rights and care from the state’.^[ix] All too frequently, modern depictions perpetuate a binary set of identities in which vulnerability presupposes a lack of agency, and in which a degree of agency erases an obligation of support. Aeschylus’ Danaids point towards a different kind of representation, where these two categories are not so fixed. 

The ritual of supplication, and of guest-friendship, and a community or individual’s response to it was also central to the construction of identity. Odysseus, the ancient world’s most famous wanderer, arrives as a stranger in a number of foreign lands, and the welcome he receives in each place is used to reflect the geographical extremity of his journey. The Cyclops Polyphemus, when called upon by Odysseus to offer the expected forms of hospitality, declares ‘my people think nothing of that Zeus with his big sceptre, nor any god’ (9.274-276), and goes on to wholly invert the system of xenia set out elsewhere in the poem by eating his guests.^[x] Arete and Alcinous, on the other hand, offer an exemplary response to Odysseus’ supplication, even going so far as to berate Nausicaa for not bringing him immediately to the palace (7.298-301). Their hospitality, in contrast to the barbarity of the cyclopes, acts as a mark of Odysseus’ return to civilisation and offers a bridge between the extraordinary events of his travels and the familiar world of Ithaca. 

Here, the acceptance of suppliants and strangers appears as the sign of a refined and prosperous community. This was not, it seems, restricted to the world of epic. In a speech of Isocrates, a group of Plataeans turn to Athens for aid after being driven from their home by the Thebans. They claim that an offer of support from the Athenians could ‘cause all the world to regard you as the most scrupulous and most just of all the Greeks’ (14.2).^[xi] While indicating that being seen to offer shelter to the displaced could contribute positively to a community’s wider image and reputation, the Plataeans’ reference to this here also suggests that they believed this to be an effective and successful argument to win over the Athenians. We might assume, therefore, that the listeners of this speech would wish to see themselves as protectors of the displaced, and to be seen that way by others.^[xii]

All of this points towards an optimistic view that the safety of the displaced and their right to be accepted was guaranteed by communities or individuals who either feared offending divine protectors, or who wished to be viewed by others as generous hosts (or, perhaps, a combination of the two). Yet it is true that, as with all literary depictions, such examples may be reflective of a cultural ideal rather than an everyday reality.^[xiii] Other factors came into play when displaced peoples sought the assistance of others. 

The Impact of Social Status

Class and social status were vital, not only to the kind of reception a displaced person was likely to receive, but also in determining whose narratives were told and preserved. In Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Jocasta, wife of Oedipus, questions her exiled son Polyneices about his experiences. She asks whether he received any assistance from his father’s friends, to which Polyneices replies that ‘poverty is a curse; breeding did not find me food’ (402-405).^[xiv] The importance of wealth and resources to the security of an exiled or displaced person is made clear here. We can extrapolate that, without such wealth and elite social connections, the prospects for a displaced person in a foreign land would be slim.

Social status can also be identified in the ability of Odysseus to be well-received by strangers. One scholar has suggested that the hospitality shown to him by the Phaeacians, despite his ragged appearance, is ‘one among many signs that he has ventured into fairyland’.^[xv] A view such as this seems to firmly support the idea that wealth and social status were vital to the prospects of a stranger or suppliant. It is held to be surprising that, without them, one would be offered shelter and aid. To some extent, however, this is undermined by the rest of the text. Alcinous claims that the Phaeacians always provide travellers with safe passage home (8.33-34) without any reference to their status or ability to reciprocate, suggesting that this behaviour was embedded in a wider moral framework like that discussed above. Yet, we as the audience are aware of Odysseus’ elite status and of the wealth which he possesses in Ithaca. He is, we know, more than equal to the Phaeacians’ hospitality. It may therefore be more fitting to see this episode as an important marker in Odysseus’ journey. The Phaeacians’ welcome functions as a recognition of his real status and facilitates his return to the ordered and familiar world of Ithaca. His status, when he arrives, is that of a displaced wanderer, but the hospitality which he is offered serves to restore him to an identity which he held prior to this displacement. This is an important reminder that The Odyssey, as a narrative of migration, is not necessarily about migrants or migration. Instead, Odysseus’ status as a migrant is just one part of a wider narrative arc. As is the case with the varying responses of his hosts raised in the previous section of this blog, discussions of migration are used to discuss the familiar world of the home, and to define its own identity against that of the ‘other’. 

In a previous blog post, I examined how the displacement of female prisoners of war following the Trojan War was narrated by ancient texts. What stood out in these accounts is that much of their pathos stems from their subjects’ dramatic change in circumstances, from Trojan royalty to slaves of the Greek victors. Hecabe, for example, refers to herself with a moving contrast as ‘the woman who once strode so proudly through Troy but is now reduced to slavery’ (505-506).^[xvi] Almost exclusively, these are the narratives of the elite and privileged. Andromache’s maid, in Euripides’ Andromache, recalls ‘the days we lived at Troy’ (58), in a brief acknowledgement of their shared displacement, but for the most part, the stories which were told were those concerning women from among the social elite. Not only, then, did social status grant displaced individuals a degree of protection. The ability to share experiences, and to have those experiences be acknowledged and reflected upon by others, was also influenced by issues of class. Those occupying a lower social position, like Andromache’s maidservant, lacked the ability to give a permanent and lasting account of their own.^[xvii]

It is possible to recognise some unfortunate similarities with modern media representations of displacement. Terence Wright has noted that, for a number of reasons including a possible lack of security, or language barriers, refugees and displaced peoples today may be poorly positioned to challenge and correct media representations of themselves, or to offer a direct account of their own.^[xviii] Recognising those who are absent from ancient narratives of displacement, therefore, is one way of helping to address our own issues of representation. 

Gender and the Experiences of Suppliants and Migrants

One’s social status was not the only factor which might have shaped experiences of displacement in the ancient world. Under a set of heavily patriarchal social norms, gender was also essential in governing how a displaced person could engage with a host community. One prominent example of this can be found in Euripides’ Medea. Abandoning her native land of Colchis, Medea settles in Corinth with Jason after his quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece. However, Jason then deserts her to wed the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. Medea poignantly underlines her isolation: 

‘But what of me? Abandoned, homeless, I am a cruel husband’s plaything, the plunder he brought back from a foreign land, with no mother to turn to, no brother or kinsman to rescue me from this sea of troubles and give me shelter’ (255-259) ^[xix]

Medea, of course, is a uniquely driven and resourceful character, who does not allow herself to become a victim of the men around her. Nonetheless, this situation perfectly encapsulates the way in which gender norms could influence the experiences of a displaced person. It is clear from this quotation that Medea, without Jason, is left stranded in Corinth. Her departure from Colchis has led to her removal from familial networks of support, of which her husband is now the only source. Medea’s connection to the city of Corinth, moreover, rests firmly on her connection to Jason. She cannot actively seek membership of the community for herself and, now she is no longer Jason’s wife, is treated firmly as an outsider. 

Medea’s story and those of other abandoned or mistreated women from the ancient world are recounted in Ovid’s epistolary work, The Heroides. This set of poems is fascinating, not only because it offers a female perspective (albeit one constructed by Ovid) on familiar stories, but because it shows a similar conflation of agency and disempowerment to that discussed above. Laurel Fulkerson recognises the authorial power of Ovid’s women in telling their own tales, arguing that, in turning their thwarted desires into poetry, the heroines become ‘successful in the same way as other elegiac Augustan poets’.^[xx] Medea’s letter opens with a recollection of her former power as she reminds Jason of a time when ‘you came begging for help’ (1-2).^[xxi] Ariadne, too, positions herself as an active player in Theseus’ victory over the Minotaur (79-80), and challenges Theseus’ cruel treatment of her, asking: ‘is this the tomb my kindness deserves?’ (150). However, any agency which Ariadne possesses here is coupled with a pervasive sense of her present helplessness and isolation. Now ‘an exile’ (74) from her father’s kingdom, but not able to continue her intended journey without the aid of Theseus, Ariadne remains stranded on an island where she expects ‘wolves to attack and tear my flesh apart’ (91-92). A woman alone, she remains suspended between Athens and Crete. 

Further examples of this theme can be found in accounts of Rome’s mythological founding. One central episode of Rome’s early history is the abduction of the Sabine women. The historian Livy records how, snubbed by neighbouring communities as being unworthy after approaching them with offers of marriage, the male fugitives and refugees whom Rome at this time consisted of took a group of Sabine women as their wives by force. In response, the Sabines went to war with Rome, but the women brought an end to the conflict by interposing themselves on the battlefield between their fathers and their new husbands. An uncomfortable account when viewed through a modern lens, the role of the Sabine women here is difficult to interpret. Elizabeth Vandiver has made a convincing argument that the consent of the Sabine women was necessary to give the marriages moral validity, and she therefore attributes a degree of agency to the Sabine women, who become crucial co-founders of the city.^[xxii]

For our present purposes, however, it is their initial forceable integration into the Roman community that is the most important part of this narrative.^[xxiii] Unlike Rome’s male inhabitants, who come actively to the city of their own accord, women become a part of the community only through the actions of men. Mythological accounts like this can be used to gauge something about the prevailing attitudes of their contemporaries. Women in myth did not gain admittance to a community through independent action (although the Danaids of Aeschylus’ Suppliants may be held up as an exception to this), indicating a belief that this was not an acceptable way for women to join a community.^[xxiv] Women who found themselves in the ancient world may have found themselves similarly constrained by patriarchal expectations.

Suggestions for Further Investigation

Despite a social obligation towards the displaced, it is clear that not all suppliants or migrant peoples would be received equally in the ancient world. One’s resources and social standing, or (particularly important to the experiences of women) gendered behavioural expectations which curtailed independent action, could influence how a migrant may be treated. But another factor, deserving of a post of its own, may have also shaped the migrant experience: ethnic or racial identity. Although modern conceptions of racial identity did not exist in the ancient world, evidence does suggest that ethnic origins could impact how migrants were perceived and received by communities.^[xxv] Ovid’s Dido, herself a migrant who was (initially) successful in founding a new home, asks Aeneas if, upon reaching the land he seeks, ‘is there one man who would trust a foreigner in his fields?’ (23-24). Although undoubtedly part of a wider rhetoric intended to prevent Aeneas’ departure, Dido’s question appears to point towards a widespread prejudice in which Aeneas’ Trojan identity would limit the welcome he received. 

An even more scathing account can be found in Juvenal’s Satire III. As a satirical text, the views which it expresses cannot necessarily be accepted at face value, nor understood as Juvenal’s own beliefs.^[xxvi] Nonetheless, the text can offer a very different perspective on migration and on any existing social obligations. The satire’s main speaker, Umbricius, cites as his reason for leaving the city that ‘I can’t stand a Rome full of Greeks’ (61-62), whom he presents as avaricious and false.^[xxvii] In Umbricius’ account, the Greeks and their culture are presented as a threat to traditional, Roman ways of living (‘See, Romulus, those rustics of yours wearing Greek slippers, Greek ointments, Greek prize medallions around their necks’ (68-69). Moreover, with its complaint that ‘few of the dregs are Greek’ (61), Umbricius’ tirade also appears to reveal an implicit belief that, as a ‘born-and-bred’ Roman, he is entitled to a certain degree of privilege and success which incoming Greeks do not deserve. The parallels between this and twenty-first century fabrications of the ‘threatening other’ blighting the native culture and ‘stealing’ the jobs of the native inhabitants hardly require further illustration. In light of the centrality of racial discrimination to recent responses towards refugees, it is even more vital that this aspect of ancient literature becomes a topic for further study. 

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^[i] John Gould, ‘Hiketeia’ The Journal of Hellenic Studies 93 (1973), 80-81.

^[ii] Victoria Pedrick, ‘Supplication in the Iliad and the Odyssey’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 112 (1982) 125-140, instead stresses context and narrative convenience reasons for differences in depictions of supplication across the poems.

^[iii] Quotations from Aeschylus, Persians and Other Plays, trans. Christopher Collard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

^[iv] See F. S. Naiden, Ancient Supplication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and Christopher Auffarth, ‘Protection strangers: establishing a fundamental value in the religions of the ancient near east and ancient Greece’ Numen 39.2, (1992) 193-216.

^[v] Elena Isayev, ‘Between hospitality and asylum: a historical perspective on displaced agency’, International Review of the Red Cross99.1 (2017), 78-9.

^[vi] Ibid., 83.

^[vii] See Mara Mattoscio and Megan C. MacDonald, ‘Introduction: gender, migration and the media’, Feminist Media Studies 18.6 (2018), 1117-1120 for an overview of the role of gender in media depictions of refugees.

^[viii] Ibid., 1118.

^[ix] Heide Castañeda and Seth M. Holmes, ‘Representing the “European refugee crisis” in Germany and beyond: deservingness and difference, life and death’, American Ethnologist 43.1 (2016), 13.

^[x] Quotations from Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018).

^[xi] Trans. George Norlin, available at: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0144%3Aspeech%3D14%3Asection%3D1

^[xii] Robert Garland, Wandering Greeks: the ancient Greek diaspora from Homer to the death of Alexander the Great (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 126, observes that Athens, in Greek tragedy, is depicted as a place of sanctuary for the oppressed.

^[xiii] Of course, it should also be noted that the Plataeans are here having to argue for their acceptance into the Athenian community.

^[xiv] Trans. E. P. Coleridge, available at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0118%3Acard%3D387

^[xv] Garland, 2014, 18.

^[xvi] Quotations from Euripides, Electra and Other Plays, trans. John Davie (London: Penguin Books, 2004). 

^[xvii] Gaps such as this are now frequently being addressed by modern retellings. Readers may be interested in Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls or Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den, which attempt to reconstruct the experiences of women of a lower social status in the ancient world. 

^[xviii] Terence Wright, ‘The media and representations of refugees and other forced migrants’ in Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona (eds.), The Oxford handbook of refugee and forced migration studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014),464-465. 

^[xix] Quotations from Euripides, Medea and Other Plays, trans. John Davie (London: Penguin Books, 2003).

^[xx] Laurel Fulkerson, The Ovidian heroine as author: reading, writing and community in the Heroides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1-2.

^[xxi] Quotations from Ovid, Heroides, trans. Harold Isbell (London: Penguin Books, 2004).

^[xxii] Elizabeth Vandiver, ‘The founding mothers of Livy’s Rome: The Sabine women and Lucretia’ in Frances B. Titchener and Richard F. Moorton (eds.), The eye expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 209-214.

^[xxiii] Ovid, Fasti 3.201-207 and Ars Amatoria 1.101-102 stress the force employed against the Sabine women.

^[xxiv] Parshia Lee-Stecum, ‘Roman refugium: refugee narratives in Augustan versions of Roman prehistory’, Hermathena 184, 2008, 89.

^[xxv] Debbie Challis, ‘The ablest race’ in Mark Bradley (ed.), Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 94-120, discusses the role of classics in the formation of modern racial categorisation.  

^[xxvi] For a discussion of instances of xenophobia in the work of Juvenal, see https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstream/handle/11222.digilib/141160/1_GraecoLatinaBrunensia_24-2019-1_8.pdf?sequence=1

^[xxvii] Trans. A. S. Kline, available at https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/JuvenalSatires3.php