The appetites of war in ancient Greek literature

Abstract

This paper explores representations of warfare in Greek literature by considering literary personifcations of confict, in particular its frequent depiction in the act of consumption. War often appears in the characters of Ares, Polemos or Stasis, and one of its most frequent features in all of these guises is its formidable appetite. In Aeschylus' Suppliants, for example, Ares “reaps” humanity (636), and he is sometimes called φθῑσίμβροτος, ἀκόρητος, and similar epithets. Aristophanes, meanwhile, shows Polemos preparing to cook the cities of Greece as food (Pax 230–289), and Solon describes Stasis as sleeping, satisfying another type of appetite (S. 4.19). Humans who cause or conduct a war are often associated with the same desires and hungers (e.g. H. Il. 11.67, Alc. f. 70.6). Literary treatments of war thus suggest a political philosophy about the nature and causes of confict, which seems to both arise from and serve as the embodiment of a set of human appetites and desires. War often seems in fact to turn on its makers, inficting humanity's hungers back upon it to consume society or force men to consume one another, a tendency which suggests the dangers of giving in to such appetites in the frst place.