teatri di guerra - Unive

CLASSICI CONTRO
TEATRI DI GUERRA
1.1
VENEZIA
TEATRO DI SANTA MARGHERITA
Mercoledì 25 febbraio 2015 - ore 16.30-19.00
L’ERRORE DELLA GUERRA
PETER MAURITSCH
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
«MANSLAUGHTERING, BLOOD-STAINED ARES»
IMAGES OF WAR (IN HOMER AND LATER ON)
As far as written records reach back in time and can be used as sources, we are
confronted with the fact that war (however we define it) was – and still is – one of
the main features history of mankind is made of. It was so prominent a part of
human life in antiquity that there goes the saying that peace then was just a short
interruption of the normal state, war. This implies the assumption that war is not
only the act of fighting. It starts in the heads of the soldiers long before they meet
on the battlefield and it still is in their minds long after the battle cries have faded
away. And of course there are not only the soldiers, but the whole population is
involved when a state wages war. So men and women are confronted with this
phenomenon at many levels, and there are many different ways authors try to write
about war. Homer’s epic on the Trojan War depicts a great variety of scenes and
many different aspects of the effects of war on individuals and communities: the
CLASSICI CONTRO 2015 TEATRI DI GUERRA
UNIVERSITÀ CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
commander, the warrior, the child, the widow, the army, the city... And any of
these settings is a small stone in the puzzle of war. Later on poets and
historiographers – all of them in one or another way successors of Homer – use
their precursor’s imagery for their own approaches to this everlasting theme to
develop new frames of thinking of war, as an ever-present background for human
life as well as a means for achieving political goals. As no one lives without being
affected, there are many narratives which in sum show an image of war that is
characterised by ambiguity.
SUGGERIMENTI DI LETTURA
Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War, New York, Atlantic Monthly
Press, 2011.
Hans van Wees, Status Warriors. War, Violence and Society in Homer and
History, Amsterdam, Gieben, 1992.
Hans van Wees, Greek Warfare. Myths and Realities, London, Duckworth,
2004.
James P. Holoka (ed.), Simone Weil’s The Iliad or the Poem of Force. A Critical
Edition, New York, Lang, 2006.
PETER MAURITSCH is professor of Ancient history and Classical antiquities at the
University of Graz. He has special interests in ancient historiography, history of sport in
antiquity and social history. At the moment he is working on a translation of Lucian’s
Dialogues of the Courtesans and on a prosopography of ancient prostitutes (database).
Author of many articles concerning the aforementioned themes and editor of many
publications such as Körper im Kopf. Antike Diskurse zum Körper (2010) and, with
Christoph Ulf, Kultur(en). Formen des Alltäglichen in der Antike (2013), he is now
curating an exhibition of war images (Kriegsbilder. Konstruktion, Reflexion, Imagination,
Graz, 2014-2015).
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