How does War Tactics from Homer’s the Iliad differ from War Tactics Today
How does War Tactics from Homer’s the Iliad differ from War Tactics Today
The enduring and growing popularity of Homer's Iliad offers the most persuasive testimony of all that the vision of life celebrated in the poem still reaches deeply into the human imagination, spanning more than two thousand five hundred years. Cultures since Homer's time have constructed social and personal lives on systems of meaning very different from the harsh demands of the warrior code, but the continuing power of the work reveals just how strongly the significance of that ancient way of living still speaks to the human imagination. Over the years, some scholars and critics have described the Iliad as the first piece of anti-war literature. This is true in some respects, though ultimately misleading. It is true in that the Iliad portrays war in a completely unvarnished way. Its battle scenes are disgusting and brutal. The Iliad leaves little doubt that the capture of Troy will result in widespread murder, theft, and the enslavement of its women and children. At the same time, however, it portrays war as an almost inevitable part of human life. Whereas modern day is not that different from the Iliad due to the battle scenes being disgusting and brutal but different in the aspects of theft and enslavement o women and children. According to Warrior Ants: Elite troops in the Iliad "the nature of infantry battle in the Iliad has long been one of the more problematic questions in Homeric scholarship. On the one hand, the great heroes at troy enjoy seemingly limitless freedom of movement, retiring from and returning to battle." while in modern days men cannot leave a battlefield as they please. The first modern total war, fought with mass armies and modern firearms, was the U.S. Civil War. It demonstrated the importance of industrial mobilization; modern communications (especially railroads and the telegraph), and the deadly effect of new small arms, such as the rifled musket, on mass
The enduring and growing popularity of Homer's Iliad offers the most persuasive testimony of all that the vision of life celebrated in the poem still reaches deeply into the human imagination, spanning more than two thousand five hundred years. Cultures since Homer's time have constructed social and personal lives on systems of meaning very different from the harsh demands of the warrior code, but the continuing power of the work reveals just how strongly the significance of that ancient way of living still speaks to the human imagination. Over the years, some scholars and critics have described the Iliad as the first piece of anti-war literature. This is true in some respects, though ultimately misleading. It is true in that the Iliad portrays war in a completely unvarnished way. Its battle scenes are disgusting and brutal. The Iliad leaves little doubt that the capture of Troy will result in widespread murder, theft, and the enslavement of its women and children. At the same time, however, it portrays war as an almost inevitable part of human life. Whereas modern day is not that different from the Iliad due to the battle scenes being disgusting and brutal but different in the aspects of theft and enslavement o women and children. According to Warrior Ants: Elite troops in the Iliad "the nature of infantry battle in the Iliad has long been one of the more problematic questions in Homeric scholarship. On the one hand, the great heroes at troy enjoy seemingly limitless freedom of movement, retiring from and returning to battle." while in modern days men cannot leave a battlefield as they please. The first modern total war, fought with mass armies and modern firearms, was the U.S. Civil War. It demonstrated the importance of industrial mobilization; modern communications (especially railroads and the telegraph), and the deadly effect of new small arms, such as the rifled musket, on mass