Bloomsbury Academic (2021) h/b 296pp £76.50 (ISBN 9781350151543)
Students of Greek history are familiar with the classical Athenian ceremony for the previous year’s war dead involving mass burial by tribe in the public cemetery, a eulogy performed by a leading citizen and subsequent athletic games. Thucydides describes it as an ‘ancestral custom’, but what were its origins, and is there any evidence for the practice in the Archaic era? Drawing on epic poetry, mythology, art (both sculptures and vase paintings) and archaeology (grave monuments), K. presents a compelling argument not only for how the treatment of the war dead changed drastically from the eighth to fifth centuries BC, but also for how classical authors repurposed traditional tales to present Athens as an age-old advocate for the ‘proper’ treatment of the dead. Thus, for example, Theseus is made to secure (through diplomacy or military intervention) the burial of those who fell in the expedition of the Seven Against Thebes, an episode vaunted in Euripides’ Suppliants and sundry funeral speeches as well as (possibly) on the sculptures of the Temple of Athena Nike, where Athenians’ care for the dead is contrasted, too, with Persian neglect.
Yet the realities of Archaic and pre-Archaic wars were very different. Corpses are fought over, stripped and mutilated in the Iliad, where only the elite are accorded lavish burials, the rank-and-file being left where they lie to be picked clean by animal and human scavengers before being dumped in mass graves. But does heroic literature reveal Archaic reality? K. believes it does, arguing convincingly that scenes on black-figure vases showing warriors defending fallen comrades or carrying them to safety, while often formulaic, reflect the Archaic experience not of massed hoplite phalanxes but of battles fought between small groups of the elite (plus their retainers). To support his thesis he cites the absence of early polyandreia, or mass war graves. While Athenian aristocrats such as the Alcmaeonid Kroisos had their body brought home for burial by his family, the ‘other ranks’, it seems, were not accorded honorific tombs or grave markers.
But in the dying years of the sixth century BC the situation changes. A polyandreion in Euboea may be that of Athenians who fell fighting there in 506 BC, while the Soros at Marathon was only one of several grave mounds heaped in situ over the dead of the Persian Wars. The change in practice coincides, of course, with Cleisthenes’ reforms and the dawn of democracy, which saw responsibility for those who gave their lives in battle transferred from family to state. Yet the process was still not complete. Soon after the Persian Wars, it became customary to cremate the battle dead by tribe and ship them home for public burial, treating all with equal solemnity regardless of class. Now even the most lowly could enjoy heroic status. The ancestral custom had become democratised. In a final chapter, K. pulls the threads together, setting out a well-argued survey of the impact of Solon, Peisistratus and Cleisthenes on Athenian society, its warriors and their treatment.
With 10 black and white photographs, endnotes, a useful bibliography and index, this is a stimulating and dynamic book, which casts important light both on the Archaic age and on its classical successor. Engagingly written, it should appeal to any student of the Greek world. As K. observes, ‘The war dead … provide us with a unique lens through which to view war, state and society in Archaic Athens.’ He focuses that lens brilliantly, and the resultant picture is both inspired and inspiring.
David Stuttard