Blood and Tears · The Emotional Experience of Classical Greek Warfare

Blood and Tears: The Emotional Experience of Classical Greek Warfare

'Blood and Tears: The Emotional Experience of Classical Greek Warfare' aims to produce the first comprehensive study of the various emotional aspects of Classical Greek military campaigns, from the levy to combat (fifth and fourth centuries, BC). Modern scholarship has long recognised the importance of emotions in Greek warfare. However, a serious study of this influence on war and its practice is still lacking. How much did emotions impact the field? Can we recognise some common occurrences and practices as expressions of emotional tension? How deeply were emotions and their management embedded in planning and fighting? Can we speak of a proper emotional awareness of Greek commanders? And, if so, how deep was it? This project seeks to answer these questions by interpreting the sources through the lens of a modern concept: morale. Developed in nineteenth-century France and still widely used today, morale is the collective emotional state of a group concerning the accomplishment and performativity of the tasks assigned to said group. This broad and malleable notion seems the ideal heuristic tool to conceptualise the emotional aspects of Greek warfare. However, in the past, it has been too freely and acritically applied to ancient sources. Indeed, one might ask in what terms and even if the Greeks had a notion similar to modern morale. In doing so, the idiosyncrasies of Greek cultures are not forgotten. Cultural constructs such as honour and normative masculinity are attentively considered in their interplay with emotional dynamics and their understanding to fully appreciate the phenomenon within its cultural framework. How emotional dynamics were outlined and discussed in different literary genres and, when possible, in specific poleis will be explored to provide the most scientifically accurate and complete picture of emotionality in Classical Greek warfare. The project has two overarching objectives: to fully understand and outline the complexity of the Greek soldiers’ emotional experiences, which scholars have too often either oversimplified or telescoped into individual dynamics; and to try to highlight how the Greeks perceived these emotional experiences from different points of view and how they represented them. This analysis gives us a glimpse into the psychological mechanisms underlying Greek warfare and leadership without forcing our categories upon ancient contexts; instead, the cultural idiosyncrasies and contexts are, for the first time, fully considered in discussing this crucial aspect of ancient warfare. The outputs are forecasted in a short monograph, collecting the results of the analysis, and two articles. Furthermore, I plan to disseminate the results of my research at academic conferences and through outreach activities.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз