Military Departures, Homecomings and Death in Classical Athens: Hoplite Transitions

Owen Rees, Military Departures, Homecomings and Death in Classical Athens: Hoplite Transitions (New York: Bloomsbury, 2022). 9781350188648.

Reviewed by Stuart McCunn, University of New Haven, smccunn@newhaven.edu.

Military Departures, Homecomings and Death in Classical Athens is a monograph that positions itself to play an important role in the debate about PTSD in the ancient world. Was it present and can we legitimately attempt to diagnose it from offhand references at such a great remove? To what extent is PTSD a result of the structure of modern society, and were soldiers in ancient societies different enough psychologically to reduce or eliminate the risk factors that cause combat trauma?

This is obviously a big question with a range of possible approaches, and one that Rees feels has too often been debated without sufficiently grounded methodology. In an excellent summary of current scholarship, the book lays out the problems it sees with the approaches taken so far, which are classified as either universalist (PTSD is inherent to human psychology) or relativist (combat trauma’s severity depends on societal norms). Since it regards earlier works as relying too heavily on anachronistic assumptions and being prone to imposing a modern sociological framework on ancient cultures, this monograph offers a more constrained approach based on close reading of primary sources. PTSD covers too wide a range of issues to be discussed at this level of depth in what is ultimately a small book (only 151 pages of text), so instead, the monograph is built around a carefully defined topic: the process of transitioning between civilian and soldier and back again.

The basic argument confronted is that of Jason Crowley (the supervisor of the PhD thesis this book is based on) in his The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite.¹ Crowley is a firm defender of the relativist viewpoint and argues that Athenian soldiers did not suffer from PTSD because they did not share the values and cultural conceptions of modern soldiers. One of the most basic causes of PTSD is the inability for an ex-soldier to adapt to a civilian identity because their military one was so emotionally overwhelming. If, Crowley argues, Athenians military and civilian values were functionally similar, then social tension would be slight and the act of transition would have had minimal psychological impact. The implicit assumption, of course, is that the transition between civil and military roles was a smooth one, and it is this assumption that this monograph intends to examine. By focusing on this specific element of the debate, Rees hopes to explore whether the broader answers stand up to scrutiny.

The question of how Athenians transitioned between military and civilian roles is a potentially expansive one, so the approach this monograph takes is restrictive. It only addresses the question at the specific points of transition: the moment of the hoplite’s departure and of their return (alive or dead). These three situations (the departure, the return alive, the return of remains) are further divided into domestic (oikos) and public (polis) spheres. The former, for example, considers how the hoplite and his family handled the transition process, while the latter focuses on the way the soldier joins/leaves the larger group identity. This divides the book neatly into six distinct chapters (plus an introduction and conclusion). The organization outlined here is one of the book’s greatest strengths. At each point in the monograph it is clear what is being discussed and where the discussion will go next. While many topics are specific and seem to be otherwise unrelated to each other, this broader structure keeps the content manageable.

There are two broad types of questions being asked within all of these chapters. The first is about the physical process being undertaken. To focus solely on departures: How exactly are hoplites informed to report for duty? How is it decided who will be called up? Where do the hoplites muster? How are the armies formed? How do they depart the city? How far do they go and using what form of transport? These are all specific questions which must have specific answers (where the sources can be made to provide them). While these questions tend to be highly technical they are surprisingly underexplored in the existing literature. Rees attributes this to source difficulties arising from the problem that the basic process was one taken for granted by all Athenians and therefore never needed to be explained. Even so, given how much scholarship has focused on hoplite identity, it is surprising to realize that the actual process of becoming a hoplite has generally been poorly served. 

The second type of question discussed is that of ritual. To focus on homecoming this time: What types of religious rituals were conducted upon an army’s return and who conducted/participated in them? What actions (if any) required a returning soldier to ritually purify themselves? What sort of ceremonies did the household undertake to reintegrate the soldier? Where did they perform them? While many of these questions are technical, too, they are of necessity also concerned with meaning and therefore confront the psychology of the returning/departing hoplite. Since it is impossible to get a general survey of returning hoplites, this type of question will always be more speculative than some of the others. As may be apparent from these topics, questions of technical matters are mostly (though not exclusively) associated with the public role while ritual issues are considered more with regard to the domestic scene.

The wide range of questions covered here require a number of different approaches. Because this book is determined to avoid anachronism, it takes nothing for granted. Every assumption is interrogated and much of the book is consumed with detailed source analysis. The sources analyzed in this way cover an exceptionally wide range of material. Thucydides and Xenophon are naturally prominent, but individual discussions are built around surprising sources like Aristophanes, Aeschylus, and Euripides. Euripides is actually the focus of one of the most striking discussions, as his depiction of Heracles’ homecoming (though fictional) gives us a surprisingly personal glimpse at the rituals and assumptions facing the returning hoplite.

Red-figure amphorae and other works of art are the subject of particular focus in reconstructing domestic scenes. As few written works have come down to us and almost all are from elite and moralizing authors, works of art provide us with a rare glimpse into a more average Athenian mindset. While drawing grand conclusions from visual culture is always dangerous, there does seem to be enough variance here to suggest that the depersonalized warrior ideology promoted by the state through public funerals and inscriptions was not always accepted by the family. Civic ideology was not always the same as that commemorated in a domestic context. While the book never directly asks, this differentiation does raise the question of whether the smooth transition implied in some written sources reflects a reality or an ideal.

The book tries to provide clear and unambiguous answers to its questions, but of course this is not always possible. Speculation is inevitable in some areas and some of the conclusions are less plausible than others. The good news is that when the argument does get speculative, the author is always transparent about that fact and does not try to oversell its certainty. When the evidence simply is not there, the book does not try to hide that, either. The goal is to provide a working model for the process of homecoming and departure, and at that it succeeds. A more serious problem is that the tight restrictions on coverage do come with certain sacrifices. While we touch on a great many topics, we only really get to see a fraction of them, and not always the deepest or most representative one. Can purifying rituals for entering the household or city really be divorced from the rituals and sacrifices carried out on campaign? The actual homecoming is just the final stage in the process of demobilization, so where does it fit with regard to the earlier stages? In particular, I feel like the erection of trophies on the battlefield would have played a powerful role in the process of emotionally concluding a campaign. The transition between civilian and soldier is mentioned several times, but apart from the technical details of how the army was mustered, the question of subsuming the individual into the group identity is never examined. To discuss any of this would require stepping beyond the restrictions imposed by the structure, and at times this leaves the discussion frustratingly incomplete.

While the monograph does an admirable job of elucidating (as much as possible) all the topics it covers, it has to be regretted that it does not go further in some areas. The introduction describes this book as a contribution to the study of PTSD in ancient warfare, but this is a topic that is never directly addressed outside the literature review. To some degree it views its contribution as foundational, establishing a necessary sociological background to underpin future research on the topic. While this is a useful task, it still seems strange that the book positions itself so firmly within a debate which it does not directly address. Even a somewhat more expansive conclusion (it is only three pages long) would have helped place the arguments being made into the broader field of research it intends to contribute to.

While that is an issue, the focus on PTSD as justification for the survey really sells the book short. Naturally it would serve well as a foundation for the type of PTSD study it envisions, but the questions it asks actually make it valuable for a wide range of subjects. Social history and, specifically, the nature of the Athenian civic/military identity is a common research subject and one well served by the details here.² The many practical questions asked (and sometimes answered) would be of interest to any students of the underexplored field of Greek logistics.³ The innovative use of pottery suggests approaches that could be useful for explaining religious practices. The monograph certainly discusses other subjects that will be of interest to different fields of study as well. It is true that none of these wider topics (including PTSD) ever receives full coverage in the book, but to focus as it does solely on the PTSD question is to undersell its contributions. Departures and homecomings are worthwhile topics in their own right, of course, but the book makes contributions to the field beyond what can sometimes seem a narrow approach.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction (1–15)
2. The Warrior’s Departure (17–33)
3. The Military Departure (35–61)
4. Military Homecoming (63–80)
5. The Warrior’s Homecoming (81–103)
6. Military Homecoming of the Dead (105–21)
7. Domestic Reception of the War Dead (123–48)
8. Conclusion (149–51)

Notes

 1. Jason Crowley, The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

2. C.f. Alan L. Boegehold and Adele C. Scafuro, eds., Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994); Gabriel Herman, Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Susan Lape, Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

3. While Rome has been well served by recent studies on the topic, Greek logistics remains in need of a dedicated monograph. J. F. Lazenby, “Logistics in Classical Greek Warfare,” War in History 1, no. 1 (1994): 3–18,  is still the most thorough account, although there is a detailed discussion of specifically Macedonian logistics in Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).