Fear, Self-Pity, and War in Fifth-Century Athenian Tragedy: Ethos and Education in a Warrior Society,

In Greek culture, the natural connection between war and fear was acknowledged since Homer. However, during the Hellenic era (507-323 BC), war began to be represented on the stage in tragedies, in which the connection between war and fear included the emotion of desperation. During the Persian War, in which Athens began the symbol of Greece’s freedom, the citizens experienced for the first time war-fear and the anguish over the threat of slavery. The educational task of tragedians, therefore, was twofold: on the one hand, they highlighted the heroic values in order to keep alive in the Athenians the civic duty of defending their homeland; on the other hand, they voiced the war-fear of the people, which had to endure the worst effect of the conflict. This paper will offer insight into the Greek conceptualization of warrelated fear in two different historical contexts: in the aftermath of the Persian War, by analysing Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes (467 b. C.); and during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, by analysing Euripides’s The Trojan Women (415 b. C.).