War as Spectacle

Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict

Anastasia Bakogianni, Valerie M. Hope, Anastasia Bakogianni, Valerie M. Hope

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781350005884
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781472527554
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: History of Ancient Art
• Index: History

War as Spectacle examines the display of armed conflict in classical antiquity and its impact in the modern world. The contributors address the following questions: how and why was war conceptualized as a spectacle in our surviving ancient Greek and Latin sources? How has this view of war been adapted in post-classical contexts and to what purpose?

This collection of essays engages with the motif of war as spectacle through a variety of theoretical and methodological pathways and frameworks. They include the investigation of the portrayal of armed conflict in ancient Greek and Latin Literature, History and Material Culture, as well as the reception of these ancient narratives and models in later periods in a variety of media. The collection also investigates how classical models contribute to contemporary debates about modern wars, including the interrogation of propaganda and news coverage.

Embracing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of ancient warfare and its impact, the volume looks at a variety of angles and perspectives, including visual display and its exploitation for political capital, the function of internal and external audiences, ideology and propaganda and the commentary on war made possible by modern media. The reception of the theme in other cultures and eras demonstrates its continued relevance and the way antiquity is used to justify as well as to critique later conflicts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Also available from Bloomsbury
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction: War as Spectacle, a Multi-sensory Event Worth Watching? Anastasia Bakogianni
• Part 1 Ancient and Modern Literary Spectacles of War
• 2 ‘What if We Had a War and Everybody Came?’: War as Spectacle and the Duel of Iliad 3 Tobias Myers
• 3 From Our Own Correspondent: Authorial Commentary on the ‘Spectacles of War’ in Homer and in the Tale of the Heike Naoko Yamagata
• 4 ‘The Clash of Weapons and the Sight of War’: Spectatorship and Identification in Roman Epic Neil W. Bernstein
• 5 Death on the Margins: Statius and the Spectacle of the Dying Epic Hero Helen Lovatt
• 6 Lyric Visions of Epic Combat: The Spectacle of War in Archaic Personal Song Laura Swift
• 7 ‘The Greatest Runway Show in History’: Paul Violi’s ‘House of Xerxes’ and the Herodotean Spectacle of War Emma Bridges
• 8 Plato’s Cinematic Vision: War as Spectacle in Four Dialogues (Laches, Republic, Timaeus and Critias) Andrea Capra
• 9 Shadow-Boxing in the East: The Spectacle of Romano-Parthian Conflict in Tacitus Rhiannon Ash
• 10 Bodies on the Battlefield: The Spectacle of Rome’s Fallen Soldiers Valerie M. Hope
• Part 2 Spectacles of War in Material Culture
• 11 The Monument and Altar to Liberty: A Memory Site for the United States’ Own Thermopylae Jared A. Simard
• 12 Triumphal Washington: New York City’s First ‘Roman’ Arch Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis
• 13 An Unwinding Story: The Influence of Trajan’s Column on the Depiction of Warfare Andrew Fear
• Part 3 Spectacles of War on Stage and in Modern Media
• 14 Epic Parodies: Martial Extravaganzas on the Nineteenth-Century Stage Justine McConnell
• 15 Parading War and Victory under the Greek Military Dictatorship: The Hist(o)rionics of 1967–74 Gonda Van Steen
• 16 The Anti-War Spectacle: Denouncing War in Michael Cacoyannis’ Euripidean Trilogy Anastasia Bakogianni
• 17 Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Homeric Epic: Spectacle, Simile, Scene and Situation Jon Hesk
• 18 Animating Ancient Warfare: The Spectacle of War in the Panoply Vase Animations Sonya Nevin
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright