\u2018Diagnosing War in Ancient Greece\u2019 \u2013 Dr Rachel Bruzzone; 6\/3\/2018 17:40 Art Gallery<\/p>\n
Dear colleagues and students,
\nYou are kindly invited to the next talk in the Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas Interdisciplinary Humanities Colloquium: Dr Rachel Bruzzone (CCI) will speak on \u2018Diagnosing War in Ancient Greece\u2019.<\/p>\n
Time & place: Tuesday 6 March 2018, 17:40\u201318:30, Art Gallery, Main Campus Library<\/p>\n
Diagnosing War in Ancient Greece
\nDr Rachel Bruzzone<\/p>\n
The Ancient Greek historian Thucydides\u2019 anxiety to prepare the reader to identify a calamity similar to the events he relates, the basis for his claim to his work\u2019s \u201cusefulness\u201d (1.22.4), is one of his more puzzling stances as he does not specify what, exactly, he proposes to enable the reader to recognize. His certainty that this type of event will return is clearer: he states that he writes so that the future may be able \u201cto examine the fundamental nature (\u03c4\u1f78 \u03c3\u03b1\u03c6\u03ad\u03c2) of what happened and the sort of thing, or similar, which will happen again sometime\u201d (1.22.4). I argue that he presents his war as an extreme manifestation of a specific pattern of catastrophe with a lengthy literary pedigree, and that it is this pattern, often portending total societal collapse, that his work is meant to ready the reader to identify. Many ancient authors in a variety of genres both preceding and following Thucydides describe a multitude of disasters assaulting a society in concert, usually including international war, civil war, starvation, environmental upheaval such as eclipses and tsunamis, and plague. This is precisely the constellation of catastrophe that Thucydides emphasizes in his programmatic but often-ignored pathemata passage, immediately before he asserts his work\u2019s usefulness. This reading suggests that Thucydides understands the phenomenon of warfare not as the manifestation of Realpolitik he is often seen as advancing, but rather as something more organic and uncontrollable, his work serving as a warning rather than support for modern attempts to justify amoral action in war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018Diagnosing War in Ancient Greece\u2019 \u2013 Dr Rachel Bruzzone; 6\/3\/2018 17:40 Art Gallery Dear colleagues and students, You are kindly invited to the next talk in the Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas Interdisciplinary Humanities Colloquium: Dr Rachel Bruzzone (CCI) will speak on \u2018Diagnosing War in Ancient Greece\u2019. Time & place: Tuesday [\u2026] <\/p>\n