Peace and Reconciliation in the Classical World

Warfare has long been central to a proper understanding of ancient Greece and Rome, worlds where war was, as the philosopher Heraclitus observed, ?both king and father of all?. More recently, however, the understanding of Classical antiquity solely in such terms has been challenged; it is recognised that while war was pervasive, and a key concern in the narratives of ancient historians, a concomitant desire for peace was also constant. This volume places peace in the prime position as a panel of scholars stresses the importance of ?peace? as a positive concept in the ancient world (and not just the absence of, or necessarily even related to, war), and considers examples of conflict resolution, conciliation, and concession from Homer to Augustine. Comparing and contrasting theories and practice across different periods and regions, this collection highlights, first, the open and dynamic nature of peace, and then seeks to review a wide variety of initiatives from across the Classical world.

1 Introduction: Imagining, Establishing, and Instituting Peace

E. P. Moloney and Michael Stuart Williams

PART I IMAGINING PEACE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

2 Solon the Peacemaker

William Allan

3 Aristotle on Peace: Biological, Political, Ethical, and Metaphysical Dimensions William Desmond

4 (What’s so Funny ’bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding? Imagining Peace in Greek Comedy

Ian Ruffell

5 Reconciliation in Later Classical and Post-Classical Greek Cities: a Question of Peace and Peacefulness?

Benjamin Gray

6 Negotiating Ideas of Peace in the Civic Conflicts of the late Republic

Hannah Cornwell

7 Peace and Empire: Pacare, Pacatus and the Language of Roman Imperialism

Myles Lavan

8 Blessed are the Peacemakers: Visions of Christian Peace from Christ to Constantine David M. Gwynn

PART II ESTABLISHING PEACE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

9 Cyrus the Great: an Unconventional Peacemaker

Selga Medenieks

10 International Arbitration in Archaic Greece

Aideen Carty

11 Once an Ally, Always an Ally: Sparta’s Approach to Policing the Oaths of her Allies in the late-Fifth and early-Fourth Centuries

Andrew Bayliss

12 The Compromise of Kings: Philip II and Macedonian Peace

E. P. Moloney

13 Deditio in the Second Century BC: Subjugation and Reconciliation

John Richardson

14 How Wars End: Three Thoughts on the Fall of Jerusalem

John Curran

PART III INSTITUTING PEACE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

15 Identity Building as a Means of Conflict Resolution, or: Thucydides’ Struggle with Hellenic Discourses

Christoph Ulf

16 Monuments to Victory and Symbols of Peace and Reconciliation? Re-viewing Post-War Building in Classical Athens and Achaemenid Persia

Janett Morgan

17 Peace and Reconciliation, Athenian-Style

M. J. Edwards

18 Beyond War, Imperialism, and Panhellenism: Xenophon’s Eirenic Thought

Joseph Jansen

19 Punishment and Reconciliation: Augustine

P. I. Kaufman

20 Reading Reconciliation in Late Antique Altercationes

Michael Stuart Williams

E. P. Moloney is Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Winchester. Specializing in classical Greek culture and history, with a focus on ancient Macedon, Dr Moloney has published recently on the early history of that kingdom. Building on that work, a monograph on the cultured courts of the Argead kings is now near completion.

Michael Stuart Williams is lecturer in the Department of Ancient Classics at Maynooth University. His primary research interest is the intellectual history of Christianity, and he has published on ancient biography and hagiography in his book Authorised Lives in Early Christian Biography (2008). He has also edited two volumes under the title Unclassical Traditions (2010 and 2011). He is currently completing a book entitled The Politics of Heresy in Ambrose of Milan.