War as Spectacle

Anastasia Bakogianni is Lecturer in Classics at Massey University, New Zealand, and is the author of Electra Ancient and Modern: Aspects of the Tragic Heroine's Reception (2011).Valerie M. Hope is Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at The Open University, UK. Her works include Roman Death: The Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome (Bloomsbury 2009), Death in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook(2007) and Constructing Identity: The Roman Funerary Monuments of Aquileia, Mainz and Nîmes (2001).

The book's greatest strength, apart from the fascinating breadth of topics under discussion, comes from its editorial organisation, which brings a logical structure with which to explore the notion of war as spectacle ... [It] offer[s] fascinating insights into Greek and Roman notions of the spectacle of war, and bring[s] into question our own fascination with warfare as a form of entertainment.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on Contributors1 Introduction: War as Spectacle, a Multi-sensory Event Worth Watching?Part 1 Ancient and Modern Literary Spectacles of War A. Epic Spectacles 2 ‘What if We Had a War and Everybody Came?’: War as Spectacle and the Duel of Iliad 3 (Tobias Myers, Connecticut College, USA)3 From Our Own Correspondent: Authorial Commentary on the ‘Spectacles of War’ in Homer and in the Tale of the Heike (Naoko Yamagata, The Open University, UK)4 ‘The Clash of Weapons and the Sight of War’: Spectatorship and Identification in Roman Epic (Neil W. Bernstein, Ohio University, USA)5 Death on the Margins: Statius and the Spectacle of the Dying Epic Hero (Helen Lovatt, University of Nottingham, UK)B. Poetical, Historiographical and Philosophical Spectacles 6 Lyric Visions of Epic Combat: The Spectacle of War in Archaic Personal Song (Laura Swift, The Open University, UK)7 ‘The Greatest Runway Show in History’: Paul Violi’s ‘House of Xerxes’ and the Herodotean Spectacle of War (Emma Bridges, The Open University, UK)8 Plato’s Cinematic Vision: War as Spectacle in Four Dialogues (Laches, Republic, Timaeus and Critias) (Andrea Capra, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy)9 Shadow-Boxing in the East: The Spectacle of Romano-Parthian Conflict in Tacitus (Rhiannon Ash, University of Oxford, UK)10 Bodies on the Battlefield: The Spectacle of Rome’s Fallen Soldiers (Valerie M. Hope, The Open University, UK)Part 2 Spectacles of War in Material Culture11 The Monument and Altar to Liberty: A Memory Site for the United States’ Own Thermopylae (Jared A. Simard, CUNY, USA)12 Triumphal Washington: New York City’s First ‘Roman’ Arch (Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, CUNY, USA)13 An Unwinding Story: The Influence of Trajan’s Column on the Depiction of Warfare (Andrew Fear, University of Manchester, UK)Part 3 Spectacles of War on Stage and in Modern Media14 Epic Parodies: Martial Extravaganzas on the Nineteenth-Century Stage (Justine Mc Connell, University of Oxford, UK)15 Parading War and Victory under the Greek Military Dictatorship: The Hist(o)rionics of 1967–74 (Gonda Van Steen, University of Florida, USA)16 The Anti-War Spectacle: Denouncing War in Michael Cacoyannis’ Euripidean Trilogy (Anastasia Bakogianni, Massey University, New Zealand)17 Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Homeric Epic: Spectacle, Simile, Scene and Situation (Jon Hesk, University of St Andrews, UK)18 Animating Ancient Warfare: The Spectacle of War in the Panoply Vase Animations (Sonya Nevin, University of Roehampton, UK)NotesBibliographyIndex