07/12/2022
The Past People's Present Societies Seminar continues Wednesday 07/12/22 at 17:00.
This week's talk is by Justine McLean from Newcastle University.
Title: "The lesser point: The place of the Sword in Classical Greek Warfare and Society"
The sword is a staple of Greek art, shown slung over soldiers’ shoulders and in the hands of tyrannicides. It is also in many of the literary sources in a wide variety of contexts, from personal defence (or offense) to storming enemy positions or in the desperate stand at Thermopylae as described by Herodotus.
However, its place in Classical Greek society and warfare is often consigned to the role of a backup weapon in the hoplite phalanx. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the sword more broadly and to examine the possible tensions between our literary sources and the iconographic ones. Taken together, it will be argued that the sword played almost as vital a role in the Classical Greek world as it ever did in the medieval or early modern eras, although lacking much of the symbolic importance that becomes attached to swords over time.
The Teams link for the meeting is as follows:
