The Ancients - Combat Trauma

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

From the 2000 historical blockbuster 'Gladiator' to the Total War series, brutal hand to hand warfare is something we commonly associate with antiquity. But do we have any ancient cases of psychological injury as a direct result of military service? Joining me to discuss this topic, focusing on cases from the Classical Greek Period (c.500 – 323 BC), is Dr Owen Rees. Owen is a historian of ancient warfare and society. He has also written papers about the possibility of an equivalent phenomenon to PTSD in ancient Greek warfare and how that trauma manifested itself differently in ancient Greek culture. In this podcast, we focus on the cases of two specific individuals from the Classical Period: Epizelus the Athenian and Clearchus the Spartan.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. How significant was combat's trauma in the ancient world? And how did ancient societies view people who had been psychologically affected by the brutal hand-to-hand warfare we associate with the ancient world today?

To talk about this topic, I'm chatting with Owen Rees. Owen has written papers about the possibility of an ancient equivalent of PTSD in ancient warfare and how that trauma manifested itself differently in ancient Greek culture. Enjoy. Owen, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you very much for having me. I'm very excited. PTSD in ancient warfare and classical Greek warfare, this is something you argue that there must have been. Yeah, to an extent, I certainly do. My work tries to separate the diagnosis of PTSD, which should not exist

outside of the modern world. I don't think it fits anywhere else. It's such a socially medically specific issue to the modern day and psychology can't really be picked apart from the society that creates it and talks about it however the diagnosis to one side the phenomenon of basically a psychological injury as a result of military service military activity for combatants and non-combatants. Yeah, I certainly fit in this model. It must exist, but probably didn't look the same as it does now. So how do you define combat trauma in the ancient world? Well, at its core, combat trauma is sort of similar to what I've said. we're talking about here are psychological injuries um predominantly as a direct result of military service military activity

which immediately causes a few problems uh because how can you prove something has a uh is a direct result from warfare if it's talked about generally so you know this is not an easy topic to uh to address but it kind of gives you the idea what we're looking for is behavioral shifts psychological changes that are negatively reported in the source material it can't be positively reported because then you haven't really got a a trauma you haven't really got a um a syndrome of some sort you have something different so So yes, so what we're trying to identify are psychological behavioural changes and shifts that are generally

considered negative. Not necessarily the person themselves are considered bad, but that it has a negative impact on that individual. And focusing on ancient Greek warfare in particular, where is the first case in the literature that we have surviving of someone who might be showing these symptoms? Well, this depends on whether or not you're happy to discuss fiction. Absolutely. We can go myth. We can go myth. Absolutely. So fictionally, we see a brilliant book by a psychiatrist in the US, a guy called Dr. Jonathan Shea. He argued back in the 90s that Homer's Iliad, in particular the behavior of Achilles and Odysseus in the Odyssey, he argued that they present kind of hallmark symptoms of what we now refer to as ptsd or the ptsd diagnosis

that we now use within achilles we see um his kind of berserker state this is something shay focuses on a lot he um presents all the markers of what we call combat stress reactions that is the physiological changes that the body goes under in combat stress situations so he stops feeling pain um he almost goes uh you know it's all the stereotypes you hear uh veterans talk about today sort of that red mist descending tunnel vision things like this um all the hallmarks of combat stress reactions and as jonathan shea rightly points out in his own work focuses on there is a link between combat stress reactions and later traumatic experiences ptsd and the like more interestingly for this discussion is odysseus he uses odysseus and his story in the odyssey

as almost a metaphor for the veteran returning home. So all the issues that Odysseus undergoes, he uses them in a very metaphorical sense. Now, of course, a historian, we enjoy reading this kind of analysis, but of course, it's not historical. It's just an interesting take on a fictional piece of work, which I certainly don't begrudge. I don't think any historian begrudges that kind of analysis.

Historically speaking, this becomes a bit more problematic. Some writers have tried to argue it goes back as far as the Epic of Gilgamesh. I found one paper by an academic in India who argues it's apparent in like 4,000, 5,000 BC Indian texts. The Ramayana, I think it is. So, you know, there's this real desire to push the origin of PTSD, the origin of combat trauma as far back as we can. Within Greek history, which I think is the area it's studied in the most, the earliest case that needs explaining is the story of Epizelos. Epizelos is an athenian hoplite that is a heavy infantryman

who is fighting in the battle lines of the athenian army against the persians the mighty persian army at the battle of marathon so we're talking 490 bc this is probably the earliest concrete historical case that needs explaining um of course it exists in the work of Herodotus, commonly considered the first proper historian in the Western literature record anyway. So Herodotus says, does he say Epizelos is a citizen soldier serving as a hoplite for the Athenians? I would love it if Herodotus was ever that specific. That would make me so happy. No, you have to sort of read between the lines. He is described fighting in the front lines.

Because he's fighting in the front lines, you can deduce within the Athenian army that that makes him a hoplite. Ultimately, the ranks of their phalanx are made up of hoplites. Light infantry, archers, cavalry are not ever described as the front line. The front line specifically refers to the ranks of the phalanx. To be in the phalanx at this point, he must be a heavy infantryman. He must be a hoplite. Because he's a hoplite, we can now extrapolate. Because he's on the front line, we know he's a hoplite. Because he's a hoplite, we know he's a citizen militiaman. As an Athenian, he is civically obliged to perform this military service.

He is not a professional in any way, shape or form. And actually in this period, arguably later as well, but specifically in this period, the Athenian hoplite is just not trained for what he is doing. You know, he might do a drill now and then. He might go and certainly get himself physically fit in the gymnasium if he is rich enough to afford to do that um however this is we should not envisage a man who is prepared for war who is drilled in the mechanics of combat in any way shape or form this is a man who any experience he has of fighting is literally in battle itself, nowhere else. This is interesting. So as you say there, he is not a professional soldier, as it were.

What happens to him during the Battle of Marathon? Well, he is fighting heroically. Herodotus is very clear on this. He is fighting heroically in a very manly way. He even emphasises his masculinity. He uses the word man. in a very manly way. He even emphasizes his masculinity. He uses the word man. He refers to the Agathon Andra. So this brave, courageous man really emphasizing his masculinity. And there's kind of a reason he's building this story because of what happens next. So as he is fighting at his most manly, he sees opposite him a giant phantom of an enemy man in the Persian line. This man is described as having a particularly large beard, which is a hallmark of Greek masculinity. It's not as weird as it sounds.

So he has this giant beard, so large it covers his shields. That's how big this man's beard is. And he moves towards Epizelos, hacks down the man to epizelos's left kills him dead passes over epizelos doesn't even acknowledge him and continues fighting the athenian line epizelos sees this happen sees the man to his left die in what is presumably a very violent and horrific manner and then as this phantom enemy soldier passes him by epizelos is immediately struck blind and herodotus tells us this and then says even though he was not hit by either arrow or sword or spear or any weapon no weapon touches him but he is immediately blinded for no apparent

reason so herodotus tells us this story and he tells us this not in a roundabout, or here's this kind of rumor that I've heard. He specifically says this is the story that Epizelos tells people on the streets of Athens. So we don't 100% know that Herodotus heard this firsthand from Epizelos. Certainly possible. But it's a story he certainly heard from someone who did hear it, and it's a story Herodotus heard this firsthand from Epizelos? Certainly possible. But it's a story he certainly heard from someone who did hear it, and it's a story Herodotus definitely believed. And what's quite interesting about this, when we go back to the fact that he's constantly reasserting this

idea that Epizelos was very brave, very manly, doing very brave manly Greek things and killing Persians like he should, but then he goes goes blind you feel a lot of this is to kind of explain to herodotus's readers and to his listeners um that epizelos was not a coward you know he has gone blind and this isn't because he's tried to run away from battle it's not because something's gone wrong it's not because he's a bad person in any way he did this at the moment he was most vera most aggressive and his most idealized athenian behavior everything athens wants him to be he was being and at that point he went blind and of course to the modern mind what we have here is a man in combat sees death before him is immediately uh faced with his own mortality from this huge figure of a man,

the fear that must be going through this man's body, that his entire embodiment will be feeling fear at this moment. And he immediately goes blind for no physical reason. To a modern psychological perspective, this just screams psychosomatic blindness, because there's no logical reason he's gone blind other than his mind has switched off he has switched that um that visual sensor I don't want to see this anymore blindness so you mentioned how he's going around the Athenian Agora later talking about what's happened to him how is he treated by the Athenians in the aftermath of Marathon? Really well. Now, this is where we have to piece things together. Whilst I would love to say, oh, well, I can now discuss the biography about him written by Plutarch,

I cannot. No such thing exists. His story is literally six lines of Greek in Herodotus, and that's it. He then is just kind of mentioned elsewhere in passing. So we've got to piece a lot together. However, there are certain things we can deduce about his story and about his reception. That's what we're talking about, his legacy and his reception, the legacy of his story. First things first, by the time Herodotus is writing, which is, it's always a bit suspect trying to put a date on when Herodotus is writing certain elements, but we're definitely talking at least 30, 40 years afterwards as sort of a minimum, if not maybe even later. So the fact that his story is picked up by Herodotus tells you that

it's still about, it's still being told. Herodotus chooses to memorialize this story at the end of the Battle of Marathon, possibly the most important battle that does actually occur in his histories. It's probably that and Plataea to the two big ones, maybe Salamis. But the fact that this is the only real story, the individual story he chooses to memorialize about this battle. So it gives you an idea of the importance he thinks it holds. as a state decided to memorialize, as you'd expect, they decided to memorialize the Battle of Marathon on a massive painted mural, painted stoa in the Agora. So on this mural are loads of important events in Athenian history, Athenian mythological history. So we have things like seen from the Battle of Troy and the Trojan War, obviously known from the Homeric poems.

But we also have scenes from the war with the Amazons in which the Athenians and the Amazon warriors, the female warriors, have a huge Amazonomarchy, a great war with the Amazons. So it goes through all these mythological events, really important mythological events in Athenian history, and it ends with the Battle of Marathon. So it gives you an idea of where they placed Marathon within their own history. And within this mural of the Battle of Marathon, we are told by more than one source that Epizelos is in it. We're not told how we know he's in it. So he doesn't seem to be named in it.

And we don't know if perhaps he's clearly identifiable because he somehow is going blind that might be one way it could be just literally folklore you know on that guy's epizelos you know how these things work but what's interesting is we're told he is identifiable and miltiades is identifiable miltiades is of course the general the mastermind of the victory at Marathon. So the idea that our sources are telling us, you can identify the mastermind and this bloke who went blind. This gives you an idea of just how well received his story was, just how important his story was and the legacy, the lineage of it. We can actually follow it, this lineage, into the Roman

period. The Roman writers are still talking about him in passing, but they're talking about him. Plutarch mentions him, for instance. And one of the things I love about Plutarch's short account of his story is Plutarch likes this story so much, or perhaps the works he read like this story so much. Plutarch he read like this story so much plutarch uh gives us a name change he's no longer called epizelos he's called polyzelos now epizelos quite hard to translate greek names but epizelos is kind of like look at him he's quite uh imitable he's someone you want to kind of look up to polyxelos takes this somewhere completely different this is someone who's very very very uh well zealous is where we get the word from um but you know this is a guy who you really want to emulate you know so his very name suggests just

how important his legacy and his lineage have become the other thing i love about the roman uh sources we have on him is he gets a promotion he is no longer just a man in the front lines he is one of the nine commanders at marathon so he's gone from just being a normal hoplite to now being a general um and again you wonder what's that about uh it could just be an error it could just be mistranslations and, you know, a misreading of work and stuff like that, or embodies how his story, the importance of his story tells us just how he was received. You know, this guy was so important within the narrative of Marathon. His experience was so important that surely he can't be a normal hotline. Surely he needs to be, he has to have a

great name that tells everyone exactly uh what we should do with him and that is emulate him so the the way he's received is he is adored he is loved um he is so famous within his time period and so famous afterwards that his what you and i might refer to as a really traumatic event um doesn't have the lasting trauma through poor reception by the society who takes him. You know, he's not looked down on. He's not alienated. He's not isolated. A lot of the feelings that we hear modern veterans have, especially when they have PTSD-like symptoms, epizellus does not have. There is no evidence for that whatsoever. But what he does have is what we would call a psychosomatic form of blindness. No question about that. But that does not bring negative connotations on him.

there was a religious element of epizelos being struck down in the midst of battle in this amazing event i say amazing but by that i mean this extraordinary event no absolutely um you're spot on here so the greeks in general um of course to them we like to compartmentalize religion and life and as a separate thing to the greeks everything had religion in it and so you you don't separate religion from anything else um they understand they understood the world they explain things through religion so it's no surprise that epizelos goes blind after seeing this ghostly phantom-like figure and that's that's the term um herodotus uses he calls it a phasma which which is not a god, but like a divine presence, so to speak. And it's what we call an epiphany.

So Greek warfare is filled with epiphanies, which is this kind of divine presence on the battlefield or around the battlefield. So this counts as one of the many epiphanies. And for the Battle of Marathon, he's not the only one. as one of the many epiphanies. And for the Battle of Marathon, he's not the only one. Perhaps the most famous is the meeting of Pheidippides with Pan whilst he's running back from Sparta. Before the Battle of Marathon, he bumps into Pan, and then Pan basically says, if you start worshipping me, I'll help you at the Battle of Marathon. So Epizelos is within a long tradition of divine epiphanies. so it does make sense that he would have conceptualized this all the athenians would have conceptualized this as a form of epiphany yeah

you're absolutely right there and it therefore allows them to make sense of what's occurred it begs the question how epizelos's Marathon, how common a case do you think this is what he experiences on the battlefield? Do you think this is a unique case or could it have been a more regular occurrence that we just don't hear of in the sources? I think the blindness is quite unique. It's not a common symptom even today. It is a very unique set of symptoms. Of course, we do have examples of it happening in the modern day. There's some horrific reports in Cambodia during the killing fields and things like that, of things like this occurring. It's not within the realms of impossibility. That's why we can take this

story quite seriously. But on the other hand, this is not a common thing to occur. Because the other thing about this form of traumatic blindness, if we want to call it that, is normally it comes to an end. You do regain your sight. Epizelos does not regain his sight. So immediately that's an anomaly. This is why when I said earlier about I try and move away from PTSD as a diagnosis, this is one of the reasons why.

Because that doesn't fit the diagnosis. that doesn't fit our medical understanding however that doesn't mean it's not worth talking about on the one hand is blindness no it's so unique it's worth talking about i think if it occurred more we would hear about it more because it's so strange on the other hand the idea of fear consuming an individual so apparently, we do hear of. One of my favorite stories comes from the Battle of Canaxa. The Battle of Canaxa is 401 BC. It's accounted in Xenophon's Anabasis. So Xenophon's Anabasis is his recording of his time in a massive mercenary army for Cyrus the Younger. So he's one of 10,000, well, actually more than that, but the supposed 10,000 Greeks in a Persian mercenary army to go and fight for the crown of the Persian empire. They meet the army of Artaxerxes at the Battle of Canaxa,

and Xenophon gives a riveting account. And there's this beautiful moment of human experience in combat where the chariots of the Persian army come charging at the Greek part of the line. And Xenophon basically tells us that the Greeks opened up their phalanx to let them through. Ha! Problem solved. However, one man didn't get the memo, fundamentally. One man is said to be so struck by fear he doesn't move now anyone who is sort of a passing interest in combat stress and combat stress reactions will immediately start talking to you about what's called um fight or flight syndrome you know it's kind of that pop psychology explanation for human action

uh especially when they're feeling fear um and that misses a very important element of human behavior which is fight flight and freeze because another reaction to fear is to not do anything and there's this lovely moment where xenophon shows us exactly that a man was so struck by fear by what he saw his mind cannot compute everything that's going on in a fast enough way so he does not move at all. The freeze of fight, fight, and freeze. So Epizelos' emotional experience is not unique. Fear is apparent throughout the source material.

No question about that. We see other people freezing in war. In the Iliad, for instance, there's a couple of examples in the Iliad as well. So this is not unique. war in the Iliad, for instance. There's a couple of examples in the Iliad as well. So this is not unique. I mean, to give you an idea of just how predominant fear is in the Greek mentality of warfare, I've talked to you already about Pan. So the Athenians believe that Pan is involved in the Persian wars. And of course, Pan is the inducer of emotions that come from nowhere. It's one of his many roles. This is where we get

the word panic from. It's not a word the classical Greeks use very much, if at all, really. It's used slightly later, but he's certainly discussed in this area of warfare. So he creates this spontaneous fear that is inexplicable. It often happens at night, where armies just lose their i won't swear but you know they lose their uh their sort of um their decorum shall we say they lose their uh their discipline for no apparent reason so the athenians have pan the spartans don't have pan well they don't talk about pan but they do talk about phobos now phobosos is the son of Ares. Phobos is the deities, the personification of Phaea. And the Spartans have a temple dedicated to him. So it's a really interesting moment where even the Spartans, who we like to stereotype as this

sort of hardcore headbanger kind of military system, which they weren't, but it's the way we like to conceptualize them. And they have this deification of Ph system, which they weren't. But it's the way we like to conceptualize them. And they have this deification of Phobos that they take very seriously, and they really respect. And Phobos is, of course, where we get the word phobia from. He is literally the personification of fear itself. And it's interesting that the Spartans and the Athenians both have their own conceptualization of fear in combat and it's something they really respect. So Epizelos is not unique in this respect. He is perhaps an extreme version of what the Greeks expect to see in combat. Let's keep on the Spartans for a moment.

Do we have any evidence in the ancient sources that points to combat trauma felt among any spartan soldiers do you know the biggest case study of greek soldiers hoplites exhibiting any form of ptsd like symptoms or ptsd like things is actually a spartan he's a guy called clearchus he's my favorite spartan if you can have one um clearchus the spartan clearchus we know he was active towards the end of the peloponnesian war possibly earlier but we don't have any concrete account of it um but we know definitely when xenophon takes over the writing of the peloponnesian war so of course everyone everyone thinks about the peloponnesian war and the history of peloponnesian war being written by thucydides and they forget the xenophon actually finishes the war um and in

many respects what thucydides brings in political exposition in uh sort of a he's real political focus xenophon really humanizes the war after that he's definitely my favorite of the two accounts so xenophon takes over after this. And when Xenophon takes over, Clearchus appears. The reason why I'm kind of emphasizing this is because Clearchus ends up as a commander in the mercenary army of Xenophon's Anabasis. Xenophon discusses Clearchus as someone who knew him and met him. So that's important for basically everything else I'm about to talk about. The reason why I like Clearchus is because Clearchus basically goes a bit off the rails.

He becomes too Spartan for the Spartans, to a point where he gets sent to Byzantion to try and control the area. He's too violent, too aggressive for the locals, and they kick him out. The Spartans don't particularly like this, but they put up with it. They send him back. And of course, there's basically mutiny in the city. So he takes over in a very violent way, and he has a force that he basically creates himself to control the city. And Sparta send an army against him to get him to leave. Now, any rational person would kind of panic and run away. Clearchus is not a rational person. He enters the field against the Spartan army to basically try and beat them, to leave him alone. He loses, and then he runs away to Cyrus's army in Asia Minor. So when we talk about Clearchus,

first of all, the Spartans thought he was too extreme. So when Clearchus takes over one of the commands of the Greek mercenaries in Cyrus's troops, Xenophon becomes one of the men under his command. So when Xenophon writes about Clearchus, he writes it as someone under his command. Clearchus is described as very violent. He has violent outbursts. He is very prone to becoming very aggressive. He actually starts a fight with one of the other Greek mercenary commanders and takes a gang of soldiers and basically starts a mini battle in camp. So he's described as very prone to violence.

He's described by Xenophon as what's called a philopolemos, a war lover. So extreme was his love of war, Xenophon tells us, when he received lots of money from the Persian prince, rather than any other Greek person would have done, which is spend it on drink, spend it on women, spend it on young boys, you know, all the things a Greek man would expect to do. Clearchus spent it on more soldiers to go out and wage more war as a mercenary commander. He was obsessed with it. So this is the image that Xenophon describes. He is a war lover, and he is also a lover of danger.

We're explicitly told this. He will basically go running into danger in battle. And whilst his men were afraid of him, his men did not like him. In fact, he did not have any friends. He was the commander, Xenophon tells us, that you would always want to be leading you. So this is a man who is perfect in the combat environment. Everything you want from a combatant, from a combat leader. Outside of that, he cannot cope with civilian life. He cannot cope with human relationships. He cannot cope

without warfare being a constant. So historians have really isolated on his mini biography that xenophon gives us of him and gone this these are all the hallmarks of a modern veteran who cannot adapt to civilian life to peace and he's exhibiting all the kind of the symptomatic issues that we'd expect to see issues with close relationships we've got um hyper vigilant states um he's uh hypersensitive to uh sort of the arousal state that combat brings you know he is quick to anger he is uh in love with violence and warfare itself he doesn't understand perhaps what you and i might consider normal social contracts between people um if you annoy him he will just hit you if you annoy him too much he may try and kill you um and to him this is normal his behavior is so extreme that the

spartans can't handle him right so this is uh one of the cases that yeah absolutely we um historians do jump on there are issues with describing him as having ptsd one of them is you don't actually know from the source material what he was like before so he may have just always been like this and this is the problem with diagnosis versus like phenomenon so yes he exhibits a really interesting case study of a phenomenon the problem with that phenomenon is we don't actually know if warfare has changed him or not and we don't know if he was always like this so you can't really align him with PTSD in that way what we can do is look at him as a really interesting case study of how a person struggles if they are so consumed by the military environment so consumed by combat and

their role within it how they struggle to cope transitioning to a peaceful life how they struggle to cope with citizen life and xenophon lays this out to bear amazingly about a man he knew personally well that must make xenophon such a useful source as you say if he knew this person firsthand if he witnessed it within the army's ranks he must be one of the best sources in the ancient world to provide us any possible information about abnormal military behavior within the army absolutely um other sources do it but usually as a way of trying to explain like morality or not so much morality but more bad behavior so Thucydides sometimes uses these to show that a commander does not have control whereas Xenophon is much more interested in the in the individual in the experience of the

individual or individuals there's an account in his Anabasis in which he describes the army. After the Battle of Canaxa, basically the Greek army is now running for their lives. The 10,000, I use that term loosely, are now trying to get home. And they're in the middle of bleeding Babylon or Babylonia. And they need to get all the way to the Black Sea. So this is over a year-long march. And it's a fighting retreat throughout. It's basically Bravo 2-0 for the ancient world.

This is such a fascinating account. If anyone is dabbling with, oh, I'd like to know more about Greek warfare, read his analysis. It gives you everything you want to know about the experience and the issues that they're facing. So he gives us an account where they basically have to storm a fortified position.

It may even be a town. I think it's a town, a fortified town, and they need to control it so they can get through a pass. Because remember, they're constantly being ambushed. They're constantly being attacked in their retreat. He describes the entire assault. assault. And there's this really horrifying moment where the women and children in the town are jumping off a cliff to get away from the Greek soldiers. They are so afraid of what might happen to them if the Greeks get into the city. There's no good side and bad side in this story. There's no good and evil. None of this Nazis versus Churchill rubbish. Everyone is a threat.

none of this you know nazis versus churchill rubbish everyone is a threat so we hear a really horrific image and remember it's xenophon telling us this story xenophon is in the greek side explaining that the women and children are especially the women are jumping off the cliff they would rather commit suicide they'd be captured potentially sold into slavery um or even slaughtered in their droves and And Xenophon actually describes trying to catch one, trying to stop them, get a hold of them before they jump. And he doesn't, he fails. So you've got this really poignant, horrific, nasty moment of someone committing suicide and a Greek soldier, Xenophon himself, trying to stop it and failing. Xenophon is the only source who talks like this. He's the only person who uses his own personal experience, other people's personal

experiences to such a poignant and vivid level. So in that respect, yeah, he's amazing. He's absolutely amazing for this kind of thing. He's also not's absolutely amazing for this kind of thing he's also not afraid of talking about this kind of uh experience he describes at another point um his own army in which case a point where he has a bit of command um so these are troops sort of under his command as well where they have got too excited they are they are within the kerosene i believe it is so they've made it to the black sea and they've got too excited they're they're within the kerosene i believe it is so they've made it to the black sea and they've got too excited because they think they're home and dry now and basically they lose all discipline and end up a group of them charging at the elders of a community the kerosene elders

and stoning them throwing stones at them because of this loss of discipline that's going on. They basically feel that they've been aggrieved and who cares about the people around us? Xenophon describes his attempts to try and stop them from doing what they're doing. He cannot control their erratic behavior. So he's not afraid of even portraying himself as a less than perfect commander, having less than perfect control over his disciplined troops. Of course, he then uses this to talk about how he's morally perfect and no one else is. He's not a perfect human being, let's not pretend he was. But his accounts are vivid. They're not sugar-coated.

They're definitely not sugar-coated. And that's one of the things we don't get. I mean, even outside of Greek warfare, there's nothing like him in Greek literature at all. Nothing like him at all. The closest would be Athenian drama. Athenian drama goes into more of the emotions involved, but nothing like in the other literary works.

Closest you'd expect to find it is someone caesar's gallic wars or something like that and god almighty he does not get into this kind of detail you know he's got his own political agenda going on um so yeah xenophon is really unique in this instance we're looking at some of those case studies you mentioned earlier epizelos and clearchus is that right clearchus yep how have they been treated in the 20th century in the 21st century when looking at combat trauma in the ancient world oh now this this does get interesting because epizelos in particular has been jumped on as a case study for well over it's over a century now earliest example i've found is from 1919 so in 1919 first of all the great war has just come to an end you've got all these men coming back uh especially in the uk um and you've got this issue this new issue which has only been

identified since about 1916 it's been talked about within academic circles properly uh which is of course shell shock now shell shock well as anyone who's read on the first world war shell shock had a very rocky start as a diagnosis ultimately people were identifying symptoms like blindness loss of hearing loss of smell things like this with no real physical ideology so what i mean by that is there's no physical origin to it some of them did and that's certainly where we get the model of shell shock the idea that you know the hypothesis that it's to do with the um experience of mortar explosion you know shell fire and the like um so there were some physical explanations but it didn't explain everything so what the medical world had to do was to rely on the very new discipline of psychology to explain this phenomenon.

Now, the problem psychology has had during this period was it was always considered a bit wishy-washy. So, you know, oh, well, it's in the mind. Well, that's your weakness. oh well it's in the mind well that's your weakness so you know this is where we get the really heartbreaking stories of uh people exhibiting shell shock symptoms um being put in front of firing squads for cowardice for desertion things like that so it's not really a surprise that the discipline who's looking for credibility is looking for an ability to explain to the world what's happened to these men. Look to the past to prove that this is not new. This isn't something we've made up. This is something that's always existed. So we see 1919, a letter to the Science Journal. Someone literally just quoted Herodotus' story of epizelos. And then at the end, just wrote a simple sentence.

Could this, per chance, be the first case of shell shock? You know, that's interesting. I think it's wrong. And it's not unique. Other academics had done similar things with hysteria. You know, they've aligned it to hysteria.

And a lot of people had argued that hysteria has an ancient precedent as well. The reason for this is lineage, which gives legacy. So ancient lineage gives a legacy. It gives legitimacy to the new diagnosis. What we then see is by the 1920s, when shell shock had been banned, especially in Britain, it had been banned as a term to be used in the British Medical Journal, for instance, banned it for a few years. No one could publish on the topic.

We even, is it the Southpaw Report, basically advises that they stop using the term. They stop using shellshock. They start talking a lot more about war neuroses. It's not shellshock, it's different. And again, epizellos gets that so it's immediately okay it's not shell shock but epizellos still has this new thing we're talking about and we see this um continuously i've i've collated cases that go from 1919 all the way to the modern day you can see it time and again different um explanations so hysterical blindness just general battle hysteria

we see conversion disorder lots of different titles thrown at him but it's consistent whenever someone wants to discuss it's hard to find a generic term but what we're talking about here is combat trauma all right so it's combat psychological injury that's what we're talking about here doesn't matter what diagnosis what model you want to throw at it epizelos has always been used to fit it because he has no physical origin to his symptoms so he's always a model people want to use he's always the best model the problem is his story is tiny and so you then go epizelos had this now let's talk about something else uh so it's kind of in passing, which is a bit frustrating because then they don't get to talk about the really interesting things. So my work collated these examples, not to show that this phenomenon has always existed, but actually to show that modern medical literature is ignoring the more important bit of his story. So the important bit of his story is no longer that he went blind in battle.

We've done that to death. And we've shown that, you know, throwing diagnoses at him just kind of make us look a bit silly, because it keeps changing. And the reason for that is because medicine is not a hard science. Medicine is a social science. So it evolves, it changes, and society impacts it as much as biology does. So what interested me, and then what very quickly concerned me, was that stories like Epizelos, stories like Clearchus,

I mean, they've even said it of Alexander the Great. These stories have started to be used, not to say that PTSDtsd existed in every time period but to actually argue for modern therapeutic ideas so clearchus had this epizelos had this and the greeks cured it through these methods and we should use those methods this for me is now a problem. This is no longer an academic debate. This is no longer that, oh, it's just an interesting conversation to have. You are now talking about effecting therapy. You're now talking about

directly affecting the lives of veterans. We have taken a big leap from Jonathan Shea, who used the Iliad and the Odyssey, that we talked about at the beginning, who used them to help veterans talk about their own experiences. You're now using ancient history to come up with anti-pharmaceutical solutions, I've seen. You're talking about particular talk therapy ideas. You're talking about the use of rituals to help veterans. This is, for me, dangerous if you're using the ancient world to validate this. So that's where I got really interested. So we've seen this evolution in the 20th and 21st century from, oh, isn't this interesting, to to actually i now want to use the ancient world to validate my new idea and this is where for me this is this is not acceptable this cannot be done without

historical diligence so this is where this is really frustrating you'll have this as a massive historical lover um and many of the rest of us have had it which is where science is now being used in place of historical methods. Because it's the idea the scientific method is the best one. That's all well and good until you start talking about medicine. Medicine is a social science. You cannot remove medicine. Psychiatry cannot be removed from the society who's talking about it.

So Xenophon, let's go back to him, describes Clearchus as a war lover. Now, modern day, a war lover, that's someone addicted to war, surely. But is that what Xenophon actually meant? A war lover in the ancient Greek world, he's not unique. Philopolemos is used at other times. Alexander the Great, inevitably, is referred to as one a couple of times. Agesilaus, he's the Spartan commander. And another friend of Xenophon's, oddly enough, he's described as one as well. Now, Xenophon is not describing Agesilaus as a war lover because it's a bad thing. Because Xenophon loved the man.

He really looked up to Agesilaalios. So you've got to really start to pick apart, well actually, what do they mean when they say that? When we hear that someone is exhibiting mania in the Greek sources, what we would literally translate as madness. To the Greeks, madness did not just exist in the head.

It did not exist as an intellectual state. This may be getting a bit heavy, but you didn't separate mind from body until basically did not exist as a as an intellectual state this may be getting a bit heavy but you know uh we you didn't separate mind from body until basically is it um descartes you know i think therefore i am it's kind of the building block of modern psychiatry before then how you think how your psychological state works is as much biological as it is psychological so when they're talking about mania they mean physiological issues as well um so you can't unpick these things easily you need a historian

a sociologist a psychologist a medical expert to kind of work together to do it uh but ultimately historians at this point we're pretty ignored uh so so we're trying to you know punch our way into the conversation of course because you've really got to consider the importance of warfare, the normality of warfare in ancient Greek culture. Spot on. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And of course, the experience of death. This is where this becomes really interesting. PTSD as a diagnosis is a diagnosis determined by its origin if you do not have a traumatic event that can be pointed to ptsd becomes a very hard label to give you not impossible don't get me wrong but it becomes a very hard label to give you because it is driven

by um its origin the main thing they're looking for is in particular an experience of death or the threat of death. We're talking at this point about combat. PTSD really gets lumped in as a military diagnosis, and it's not one. You know, anyone who's undergone violence, sexual assault, things like this, this in no way diminishes their PTSD, their complex PTSD. And we should never forget that but ultimately the debate in history at the moment is about military so that's what i'm talking about here and for military induced ptsd the most common origin is the threat of death or indeed experiencing death whether that's killing someone or having someone next to you die or someone you

know die things like that it's the idea of mortality, that exposition of mortality, inverting the way you look at the world and so on. Now, exactly as you say, experience of war, experience of death is very different culturally. In the ancient Greek world, yes, there was a lot more death. That death is particularly gruesome and violent in warfare. This is very physical, very close. You don't have long range weaponry that is killing people at a distance. If you're killing someone or someone near you has died, they are doing it, you know, a distance of a breath. So yeah, absolutely. You're right here. And of course, also mortality rates are generally

higher. So they experience a lot more death than perhaps is normal in certain societies, such as our own here in the UK, for instance. And this must affect it. So actually, one of the things I often raise is whether or not death or killing or experiencing death is actually universally traumatic or not. And the inversion of that, of course, is could they experience something that you and I wouldn't consider traumatic, but would be to them, that actually would be very traumatic for them. And again, this is the difficulty. This is the real issue we have when we're looking at the historical sources. And it just kind of identifies, again, I feel like a broken record uh but the diagnosis issue is

difficult the phenomenon is less difficult um if we can find it if we're to talk about because the other thing we haven't discussed here and the reason why epizelos's story is probably more well received in athens is because athens was their citizen body so not the um the majority of their society it was a democracy but not a very inclusive one but their citizen body, so not the majority of their society, it was a democracy, but not a very inclusive one, but their citizen body were all veterans because it was required of you. So another element of this is actually how does coming home to a society where everyone is a veteran or will be a veteran, how did that affect their experience? Does that nullify it in any way? Or indeed, one of the things I'm starting to look at now is, could it make it worse?

If everyone's a veteran, your veterancy means nothing. So your value or your performance in war is no longer potentially admired, but normal. And therefore, any deviance from acceptable norms is in particular looked down on you know these are the kind of questions you've got to start to ask it started with such an interestingly fun basic question at the beginning didn't it but yeah there's you're absolutely right there's just so much to unpick and there's so much to look at but as a result we will learn more about ancient greek society and we will learn more about the potential experience of our own veterans today oh and that was an amazing chat thank you so much for coming on the show no no thank you very much thank you for letting me um let me talk about this this is not uh this is often a very controversial topic in the public field.

I think you navigated it very well. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.