Papers by Philip de Souza
Oxbow Books, Mar 11, 2015
Journal of Roman Studies, Nov 1, 2005
The cities and smaller urban centres of the ancient Mediterranean did more than merely fulfil the... more The cities and smaller urban centres of the ancient Mediterranean did more than merely fulfil the basic human need for shelter. They were the social, economic and religious focal points of communities that identified themselves with their city, so that to lose one’s city was to forfeit one’s place in the world. The ubiquity of what are conventionally termed ‘small wars’ in Antiquity meant that cities were frequently the targets of raids, assaults, blockades and, occasionally, prolonged sieges. Walls and warriors often failed to deter or defeat attackers, and if the inhabitants could not then negotiate a peaceful end to hostilities, they would be exposed to pillaging and destruction of their homes, rape, and enslavement of their persons, and sometimes the wholesale slaughter of some or all of the population. For ancient urban communities, therefore, a direct attack on their homes represented one of the most fearful aspects of warfare, and a negative outcome too often meant a dreadful fate. The contemporary, non-combatant’s perspective on sieges in ancient Greek warfare is elusive. Chapter 10 analyses passages from the Homeric epics, the Classical historians Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, and a selection of the plays by the great Athenian tragedian Euripides in search of the voice of the victims of ancient Greek siege warfare.
Journal of Roman Studies, Nov 1, 2005
School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester eBooks, 1996
... The back cover is based on an African carving of a 19th-century Englishman from Julius E Lipp... more ... The back cover is based on an African carving of a 19th-century Englishman from Julius E Lipps, 1940, The ... 2 British imperialism and the Roman Empire Philip Freeman ... 9 'They are the enemies of all mankind': justifying Roman imperialism in the Late Republic Philip de Souza ...
Journal of Roman Studies, 2005
Brill’s Companion to Aineias Tacticus combines studies of the fourth-century BC Greek military ha... more Brill’s Companion to Aineias Tacticus combines studies of the fourth-century BC Greek military handbook. Thirteen scholars discuss Aineias’ historical and intellectual context, his literary contribution and unique insights into ancient warfare, as well as the reception of his work.
Classical Review, Apr 1, 1994
This book is described on its dust jacket as an ' inquiry into the collective psychology of t... more This book is described on its dust jacket as an ' inquiry into the collective psychology of the ancient Romans', focusing on 'extremes of despair, desire and envy'. It is a highly individual attempt to 'articulate the darkest riddles of the Roman psyche'. B.'s aim is to explain why the Romans were fascinated by gladiators and ' monsters', the latter being a collective term for grotesque individuals of various kinds, including deformed persons like dwarves and hunchbacks, as well as clowns, mime actors, certain emperors and gods. The book contains an introduction and six chapters. The first chapter is a revised version of an earlier article (' The Scandal of the Arena', Representations 27 [1989], 1-36). The rest is published for the first time with footnotes, bibliography and an index, containing mostly abstract nouns. The work is aimed at a popular audience, not just Roman historians. Many readers may be put off", however, by the author's repeated tendency to quote Latin, Greek, French and German, sometimes a word or phase, sometimes whole paragraphs, without translations. In some places translations are given, leading one to wonder why they are omitted elsewhere. In addition B.'s allusive, complicated style and her profusion of catchy sub-headings, enigmatic epigraphs and unexplained references obscure rather than elucidate her basic thesis tha t ' the Romans' were fascinated by the emotional intensity of gladiators and 'monsters' because they were mentally tormented by insatiable desires. A further weakness of B.'s approach is her refusal to contextualize any of her source material. In the introduction she attempts to deflect criticism by claiming that it does not matter in what context a particular story is told. ' For my purposes all of the sources are equally true and equally fictive' (p. 4). Yet this leads to a situation in which all evidence is given equal weight, be it an anecdote in Tacitus, a letter of Seneca, or a collection of phallic good luck charms from Pompeii. It is all grist to the mill in an attempt to discover hidden fears and longings in Roman minds. But those minds cannot be explored without some attempt to prioritize different types of evidence. B. draws very heavily on Seneca, but what Seneca says is manifestly not true for all Romans, or even the majority. Nor does it follow that B.'s observations amount to a credible analysis even of his particular psyche. She has scoured a wide range of ancient sources for 'clues' to the psychological significance of various passages, and the field is widened further by constant resort to modem parallels, from works on psychology and modern literature. As a result the kaleidoscopic picture which B. draws of these 'darkest riddles' seems, as the book goes on, increasingly diffuse and, despite her insistence on the strangeness of Roman behaviour, quite r familiar. If, as she asserts in her introduction, the common ground between ourselves t I and the ancient Romans is extensive, and this can be demonstrated through ; comparison of ancient behaviour with modem psychological observations, then there are few 'riddles' in Roman attitudes to gladiators or monsters, and no amount of structuralist window-dressing can change that. The proper focus for exploration of : the differences between the Romans and ourselves is not the stylized, literary expressions of mental anguish favoured by a few of the senatorial elite, but rather the
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Osprey Publishing. Elms Court. Chapel Way. Botley, Ox... more First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Osprey Publishing. Elms Court. Chapel Way. Botley, Oxford OX2 9LR UK Email: info@ospreypublishing.com Previously published as Essential Histories 36: The Greek and Persian Wars 499-386 BC. Essential Histories 27: The Pe/ ...
Times literary supplement, TLS, 2004
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, Mar 7, 2016
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, Mar 7, 2016
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Dec 1, 2020
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Papers by Philip de Souza