Why read War as Spectacle?

Book cover of War as Spectacle: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict

Book description

War as Spectacle examines the display of armed conflict in classical antiquity and its impact in the modern world. The contributors address the following questions: how and why was war conceptualized as a spectacle in our surviving ancient Greek and Latin sources? How has this view of war been adapted…

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Why read it?

1 author picked War as Spectacle as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sonya Nevin

Author

I love this unusual and thoughtful book. It looks not at the realities and practicalities of ancient warfare but at how different societies have made use of the striking, impressive, sometimes pitiable spectacle of ancient war.

Roman poets wrote about the last moments of dying warriors, and ancient Greeks conjured up images of the battlefield in song and dance. War as Spectacle also makes space for thinking about how and why later eras refer back to ancient wars, be it the military dictators of modern Greece or the monument-makers of the USA. This work is a rich cultural experience across…

From Sonya's list on The best books to attack ancient Greek warfare.