British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Cultures of Commemoration:
War Memorials Ancient and Modern

Public events, private voices: war in funerary epigraphy, imagery and literature in the Hellenistic period

John Ma (University of Oxford)

The Hellenistic period saw frequent warfare, between super powers and also at the level of the local communities, who provided manpower for the great powers, resisted attacks by such powers, or fought local wars of their own. Prowess and death in war are commemorated in various private media: the funerary stele, the monumental tomb, epigraphy, commissioned epigrams. These ‘private’ forms draw on a variety of sources: epic poetry, aristocratic monuments, Classical discourses, to talk of a traumatic yet celebrated event, war and death. This paper seeks to give a sense of the evidence, its distribution, and historical significance; in a second part, specific documents will be read closely, to illustrate the issues.