Ancient Warrior Culture, Concubines, and Slaves, Ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel

What can we learn by reflecting on the ancient warrior cultures
of Greece, Rome, and Israel?
Why were most ancient cultures warrior cultures?
Who served in the military in the ancient world?
Was slavery and seizing concubines an integral part of a warrior
culture? Were women slaves subject to sexual abuse?
Why was Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey so key to understanding
ancient Greek culture?
How did the ancient warrior cultures differ from our modern
world?

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video.
Please feel free to follow along in the PowerPoint
script we uploaded to SlideShare.

Ancient Warrior Cultures
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Ancient societies were warrior societies, they had no choice, all citizens had to fight
for their city in time of war. There were no conscientious objectors in the ancient
world, the ancients would have found the concept absurd. Battles between
neighboring cities could be somewhat ritualized, with the winner negotiating terms
with the losing side, but if the battle was more brutal all the men on the losing side
could be slaughtered and all women and children could be enslaved, or sometimes
they were also slaughtered.
You cannot understand the culture of ancient Greece and Rome, nor can you
understand the culture of the Old Testament, until you realize that these were
warrior cultures out of necessity. Most of the cruel stories and hard sayings of the
Old Testament are easier to interpret if you understand the warrior culture of the
ancient world, which was first expressed in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

The Greeks and the Trojans claiming the Body of Patrocles, Antoine Wiertz, 1844

Briseis mourns the
death of Patroculus,
best friend of Achilles.
Julien-Michel Gué,
Painted 1815

The Roman armies enslaved many cities and tribes
they conquered, though maybe they could show
leniency towards cities who opened their gates to
their armies, or maybe not. Warfare accounted for
most of the slaves in the ancient world, in Athens an
estimated one in four people were slaves, in Rome
the portion of slaves was much higher.

Battle of
Corinth,
146 BC,
Roman legions
looted and
burned the
Greek city of
Corinth,
by Tony
Robert-Fleury,
1870

War was part of life, we read in the Old Testament
how King David was tempted by the sight of
Bathsheba bathing on her roof when he let his
general go to battle, for it was spring, after harvest,
the time when all kings go to war.

Bathsheba at her Bath, by Sebastiano Ricci, with
David peering over his roof parapet, circa 1724

We read how Socrates served in the Athenian hoplite
infantry in the Peloponnesian War, all noblemen
bought the weapons and armor and helmet and
shield to serve as a hoplite, and most freeman
without landed property served as rowers in the
Athenian triple-decked fleet of trireme warships.

Battle of Potidaea (432 BC): Socrates saving Alcibiades, 1700’s
Battle of Potidaea
(432 BC): Socrates
saving Alcibiades,
1700’s

Warrior Society of Ancient Greece

The Greeks were the most formidable fighting force in the Near
East. In the first Greco-Persian War, the mighty Persian empire
loaded their army on ships to fight what they thought would be
an easy victory at the Battle of Marathon, but they were
decisively defeated by the outnumbered Athenian hoplite
infantry. Later, both Sparta and Athens and their allies, both on
land and on sea, also achieved resounding defeats against the
Persians in two separate wars. In our discussion on the Histories
of Herodotus, we reflect on both hoplite infantry combat as well
as naval trireme combat.

Battle of
Marathon,
Georges
Rochegrosse
1859

The Greek playwright Aeschylus has an eyewitness
account of the naval Battle of Salamis, where the
Greeks, led by the Athenian triremes, decisively
rammed and defeated the Persian fleet.

This established the reputation of the Greeks as the most formidable
warriors of the ancient world. Later, a Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger,
hired a Greek hoplite infantry army to grab the crown of Persia from his
brother, King Artaxerxes. The Greeks dominated the battle, but Cyrus was
killed in the fighting. Losing first their patron, then many generals
through Persian perfidy, Xenophon was elected to lead the Ten Thousand
Greek army as they fought their way through the Persian Empire to the
Greek colonies on the shores of the Black Sea, and on to the coast of
Ionia. At the end of their adventures, most continued to fight the
Persians under a Spartan commander; and others, including Xenophon,
returned to Greece. This showed that the mighty Persian Empire was
vulnerable, later Alexander the Great of Macedon would conquer all of
Persia and some of India also.

Route of
Xenophon
and the Ten
Thousand
(red) in the
Achaemenid
Empire. The
satrapy of
Cyrus the
Younger is
delineated in
green.

Alexander the Great, victorious over Darius at the battle of Gaugamela, by Jacques Courtois, late 1600's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)

When reflecting on the Iliad and the Odyssey, I was
struck by the similarities between the stories of the
Iliad and stories of Indian courage and stoic fortitude
when facing life’s struggles, when facing your enemy,
when risking all to argue for the life of your loved
ones in the camp of the enemy.

There were several camp meeting stories in both the Iliad and the Tales
of the Northwest, a collection of Indian stories. In the Iliad, in addition to
the priest Chryses boldly walking into the Greek camp to ask for the
return of his daughter Chryseis, later King Priam of Troy boldly walked
into the tent of Achilles in the heart of the Greek camp to ask for the
body of his son Hector so he could properly bury him. In the Tales of the
Northwest, the half-breed Charles Hess boldly walked into the hostile
Indian camp, past the scalps of his wife and sons, to ask for the return of
his only daughter. In these camp meeting stories, warriors respected the
personal courage of the supplicants, and often the supplicant shared a
meal with their enemy before departing with their loved one.

Priam at the feet
of Achilles, by
Jérôme-Martin
Langlois, 1809

Five Indians and a Captive, Karl Ferdinand Wimar, 1855

Another example of a successful camp meeting story
was when later, after the fall of the Roman Empire,
the courageous unarmed Pope Leo the Great met
Attila the Hun in his camp, persuading him not to
sack Rome.

Raphael's The Meeting between Leo the Great and Attila depicts Leo, escorted by St Peter and St Paul,
meeting with the Hun emperor outside Rome, 1514

The Greeks may have been the founders of Western Civilization,
but they were first and foremost a warrior society. If the Greeks
weren’t formidable warriors they would have been conquered by
the mighty Persian Empire, which means that there would be no
Socrates, no Plato, no Xenophon, the Greeks would not have
been able to leave us a cultural legacy. Some of the Greek
yearning for battle was satisfied by the ancient Olympic games
open only to Greek cities, most of the Olympic competitions were
competitions by warriors, it was not unusual for contestants to
perish during the Olympic competitions.

Throwing the Discus, by Édouard Joseph Dantan, 1875

Crowning the
Victors at Olympia:
Hiero of Syracuse
and victors, by
James Barry. 1784

In the Iliad, the Greek heroes chose to fight for ten long
years for honor of King Menelaus, whose wife, Helen, was
kidnapped by the Paris, Prince of Troy. The mighty men of
Troy chose to fight to the end, though they knew their
fight was futile, though they know that in the end Troy
would be sacked and their women and children would be
enslaved in distant Greece. The wife of Hector of Troy begs
her husband Hector not to return to the battle, not to
make her son an orphan, not to make her a widow.

Abduction
of Helen,
ceiling
fresco,
Venetian,
mid-18th
century

The Farewell of Hector
to Andromaque and
Astyanax, by Carl
Friedrich Deckler, 1918
Hector's Departure from
Andromache, by Johann
Heinrich Wilhelm
Tischbein, 1812

Triumphant Achilles dragging the body of Hector around the walls of Troy, by Franz von Matsch, around 1900

But Hector answers her in the Iliad:
“I would die of shame to face the men of Troy
and the Trojan women trailing their long robes
if I would shrink from battle now, a coward.
Nor does the spirit urge me on that way.

I’ve learned it all too well. To stand up bravely,
always to fight in the front ranks of Trojan soldiers,
winning my father great glory, glory for myself.
For in my heart and soul I also know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die,
King Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear.”.

Raphael, Council of the gods, painted 1517
This section in the Iliad expounds the stoic fatalism of the Greeks:
“There are two great jars that stand on the floor of Zeus’s halls,
and hold his gifts, our miseries one, now good times in turn.
When Zeus who loves the lighting mixes gifts for a man,
now he meets with misfortune, now good times in turn.
When Zeus dispenses gifts from the jar of sorrow only,
he makes a man an outcast – brutal, ravenous hunger
drives him down the face of the shining earth,
stalking far and wide, cursed by gods and men.”

The modern criticism that the ancient Greeks had an oppressive patriarchal society,
but they fall far short of the mark, for the Greeks and indeed the Romans and all
other long-lived ancient cultures were not merely patriarchal, they were instead
downright brutal, true warrior societies.
If you have any doubts, consider the main theme of the Iliad, the very first word is
the RAGE that is raging in the heart of Achilles, the rage Achilles feels towards King
Agamemnon. During the years before the sack of Troy the Greeks had been
marauding the towns surrounding Troy, capturing many of the local women to serve
as concubines, Briseis belonged to Achilles, while King Agamemnon had Chryseis,
daughter of Chryses. Chryses was a priest of Apollo who brought a plague to the
Greeks when they refused to release his daughter, Chryseis. Angry that he was
compelled to release his slave girl to halt the plague, Agamemnon seized Achille’s
girl, Briseis, reasoning, Chryseis, Briseis, they both sound alike, what’s the
difference?

Priest Chryses
Persuading
Apollo to Send
the Plague upon
the Greeks, by
Jacopo
Alessandro
Calvi, 1815

Slaves and slavery, and women forced to be
concubines, were part of the ancient warrior culture.
The fear that one day your city-state would be
defeated, and your women and children would be
sold into slavery was a fear that all classes of society
faced. In one painting, after the defeat of Troy we see
the timid demeanor of the Trojan Queen
Andromache at Greek slave auction.

Should we define slavery only as chattel slavery, where slaves are the
personal property of another? Should medieval serfs, who are not chattel
slaves and are permitted to marry and hold property, be considered
slaves? Although chattel slavery was addressed in the Torah, or Old
Testament, there were also many mentions of servants where it was
unclear whether they were chattel slaves, or really serfs, or perhaps
servants who had nowhere else to go, and were often part of the family.
What we do know that although the systems of slavery varied by culture,
there was always the problem that women slaves could be sexually
abused, since the master could as he wished with his property, and since
there were no police in the ancient world.

Rebekah draws
water for the
servant of
Eleazar and his
camels, by
workshop of
Pedro Orrente,
1600’s.
Abraham
trusted his
servant Eleazar
to deliver a
dowry to Laban
to request a wife
for his son Isaac.

Slave Market in Ancient Rome, Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1884 / Roman mosaic of slaves performing agricultural tasks

Should black sharecroppers be considered serfs, or effectively
slaves? Are minimum wages employees who do not earn a living
wage really slaves?
The Bible doesn’t condemn this or that social system, because
the real question is: Does our society treat laborers on the
bottom rung of the social ladder fairly? Are all who work a forty-
hour-week entitled to a living wage, where they can feed, clothe,
and house their family with dignity? Should everyone live their
life free from fear, and free from want, as the Four Freedoms and
the Atlantic Charter of FDR proclaim?

The Cotton Wagon, by William Aiken Walker, around 1900

The Cotton Picker’s Family, by William Aiken Walker, 1915

Freedom of Speech
Freedom of Worship Freedom From Fear
Freedom From Want
The Four Freedoms

The fact is that the Old Testament prophets, the
Jewish rabbis, the Stoic Philosophers, and the
Christian Apostles and Church Fathers over the
centuries do exhort us to treat the poor and
immigrants with fairness, ensuring sure they can live
with security and dignity.

Why doesn’t the Bible Condemn Slavery? Why don’t
we also ask: Why doesn’t the Bible condemn
serfdom? Why doesn’t the Bible condemn a
minimum wage too low feed your family with
dignity?

Modern scholars argue that the Iliad and Odyssey affected
the Greek language and culture as profoundly as
Shakespeare and the King James Bible affected the English
language and culture. Some scholars even speculate that
Greek literature and literacy were born when the Greeks
sought to record these Homeric epics for posterity.
What distinguishes the Greek culture from other later
warrior cultures like that of the American Indian several
hundred years ago? Mainly literacy, and with literacy came
the questioning of cultural values.

While Homer celebrates the glory of war and the
ancient Greek heroes, his hero Achilles also questions
the futility of war, viewing Briseis not merely as a
concubine, but as a sympathetic character who
returns the affection of Achilles, who is willing to
withdraw from combat, suffering possible
humiliation, to force Agamemnon to return her to his
arms.

Briseis
restored to
Achilles,
by Rubens,
1600’s

Many of these same themes are echoed in the
Odyssey. The misadventures of Odysseus in his
decade long journey home from the Trojan War
begin when his tribe raids a coastal town, seeking
plunder and capturing women as slaves, but they
linger too long and are attacked by the men of all the
surrounding towns. Were the ancient Greeks the
Vikings of the ancient world?

Were the ancient Greeks also pirates? Famously,
Julius Caeser was captured by pirates, who ransomed
him rather so he would not be sold into slavery. The
Cynic Philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, who famously
lived in a pot in the marketplace of Athens, was
captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Corinth.
He refused to be ransomed and, like a good Cynic
Philosopher, spent the rest of his life raising the sons
of the Corinthian who purchased him.

Julius Caesar, captured by pirates, gives them imperious commands, Etching by Bettmann, 1820

Likewise, the Odyssey begins with a romanticized account of
Odysseus’ trustworthy slave Eumaeus, who was a prince
captured by pirates and sold into slavery. The tables are turned
on Odysseus when twice he is forced to be a sex slave both the
witch Circe and the nymph Calypso, helpless to leave for his
beloved Penelope, until the gods force Calypso to release him so
he can continue his journey. Modern scholars wonder why he
feels free to discuss these adventures with his wife Penelope
after he arrives home, but this simply could indicate that those in
the ancient world simply accepted that this is sometimes part of
your fate.

Hendrick van Balen - Odysseus as guest at the nymph Calypso, 1616

Jan Brueghel the Elder - Odysseus and Calypso, 1616

Another later example of women being captured in war is in
the later Roman conflicts between the Visigoth Alaric and
the Roman Republic. First, Alaric’s wife and children were
captured in his disputes with Rome, then after he sacked
Rome, he captured the Emperor’s sister, Galla Placidia. As
Alaric was previously a Roman general, this conflict was
more a civil war than a barbarian invasion. Shortly after her
capture she is briefly married to the Visigoth ruler Ataulf
until his premature death. Then she remarries back into the
Roman and Byzantine ruling families.

Alaric entering
Athens, 1920s
The Sack of Rome
by the Visigoths,
410, by J-N
Sylvestre, 1890

During the tales of the misadventures in the Odyssey
the entire crew is lost due to their hubris, and only
Odysseus is left on the shore of his native Ithaca. This
tale resembles a Clint Eastwood western movie,
Odysseus, his son Telemachus and some loyal slaves,
armed with bows and arrows and some swords, face
down and slaughter over a hundred suitors seeking
the hand of his wife, and who seek to confiscate his
home and estates.

The Greeks did not look forward to a happy place when they
crossed the River Styx after death. When the heroes of the Iliad
descended into Hades, they were but mindless shades that flitted
about forgetfully in the dark abyss below. When Odysseus calls
up the souls of the underworld, he could only converse with the
shades of the dead through an offering of blood to revive their
memories. What survived the death of the heroes was their
cleos, their honor, the memories of their valor displayed on the
battlefield, their valiant deeds of war that would be sung by the
bards to their children and grandchildren.

Pieter Brueghel el Joven, Museum El Prado, Greek Underworld

We reflect on other aspects of Ordinary Life and
Justice in ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel. Ancient
medicine, though surprisingly sophisticated, was
nevertheless primitive compared to modern times,
aspirin was unknown, many people died from fever,
infant mortality was sky-high, fewer than half of
infants survived to adulthood, and many women died
in childbirth.

In this video we reflected on how the stresses of
battles and wars affected the cultures of ancient
Greece, Rome, and Israel, including its effect on how
slaves and women were treated. Next, we will reflect
on how warfare differed among these three cultures.

Reflecting on the Iliad and Odyssey is essential if you wish to
understand Greek history and philosophy, and IMHO, the Old
Testament as well.
Furthermore, since the Greco-Persian Wars and Peloponnesian
Wars are also important in understanding Greek culture, we
recommend reflecting on the histories by the Greek historians
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, and the Roman historian
Plutarch.
In particular, several of the main Platonic dialogues draw from
the history of the Thirty Tyrants installed in power and
overthrown soon after the end of the Peloponnesian Wars.

We discuss the Greek and Roman historians in depth
in our Book Reviews on Greek History and
Philosophy.

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