From Melos to My Lai: A Study in Violence, Culture and Social Survival

237 Pages·2000·6.81 MB·English

by  Lawrence A. Tritle

FROM MELOS TO MY LAI

In this absorbing account, Vietnam veteran and classics scholar Larry Tritle
offers an incisive analysis of war and its impact upon the soldier and civilian
from the classical age to the present day.
Tritle discusses the links between battlefield experiences that affect the
participants and victims of war in every age, drawing examples from sources
as diverse as the Iliad, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, Thucydides’ account of
the Peloponnesian War, and the Oliver Stone film Platoon. Each instance
sheds light on some of the most puzzling phenomena of war and shows how
warriors of epic and real-life struggles responded to battle with their own
forms of “shell shock,” “battle madness,” and bonding.
Tritle examines such issues as:

(cid:127) how ordinarily decent men can commit acts of extraordinary savagery
(cid:127) attitudes toward the “enemy” or Other
(cid:127) the impact of war on waiting wives, lovers, and civilian bystanders
(cid:127) remembering the fallen soldier: from the classic Athenian funeral speech
to the Vietnam Wall
(cid:127) how veterans live with physical and psychological injury

This memorable book is for readers who wonder about the meaning and
experience of battle, about the impact of war and violence on our culture,
and for anyone interested in the culture of ancient Greece.
Lawrence A.Tritle is Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University
in Los Angeles, California. He has written extensively on Greek history and
is the editor of The Greek World in the Fourth Century: From the Fall of the
Athenian Empire to the Successors of Alexander (1997), also published by
Routledge.

FROM MELOS
TO MY LAI

War and survival

Lawrence A.Tritle

London and New York
First published 2000
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

© 2000 Lawrence A.Tritle
The right of Lawrence A.Tritle to be identified as the Author of this Work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tritle, Lawrence A., 1946–
From Melos to My Lai: War and Survival/Lawrence A.Tritle.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Violence—Greece—history. 2. Violence—United States—history.
3. Violence—cross-cultural studies. I. Title.
HN650.5.Z9 V58 2000
303.6’09495–dc21 99–055816

ISBN 0-203-46248-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-77072-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-17160-1 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-21757-1 (pbk)
FOR MY PARENTS AND MARGARET,
WHO WAITED

CONTENTS

List of plates ix
Preface and acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction: a twentieth-century American odyssey 1
2 Listening to Thersites 12
3 Achilles and the heroic ideal 34
4 Clearchus’ story: the heroic ideal transformed 55
5 Penelope and waiting wives and lovers 79
6 War, violence, and the Other 101
7 The historiography and language of violence 124
8 Remembrance, rhetoric, and memory 143
9 The visibly dead: monuments and their meaning 165
10 The unanchored dead: mental cases and walking wounded 184
11 Afterword 199
Bibliography 202
Index 215

vii

PLATES

1 The Bema or speaker’s platform in the Pnyx, a meeting place
of the Athenians in the later fourth century BC 18
2 President Johnson and his advisers at work, July 26, 1965 22
3 The Wrath of Achilles 38
4 The Monument of Chabrias in the Athenian agora
(mid-fourth century BC) 46
5 Achilles in Vietnam I. US Marines in Operation Texas,
March 1966 49
6 Achilles mourns the death of Patroclus 57
7 Achilles in Vietnam II. Marine Casualty Clearing Station
during Operation Texas, March 1966 67
8 At “the Wall,” November 10, 1982 72
9 Penelope at her loom 80
10 A Greek farewell 84
11 Modern-day Andromaches mourning? The Vietnam
Veterans’ Memorial, “The Wall,” Washington D.C. 88
12 US Marines salute fallen friends, 1969 145
13 The stele of Dexileos in the Kerameikos, Athens 147
14 Memorial of the la Drang Valley Association, 1st Cavalry
Division 155
15 An Athenian casualty list, c. 450 BC 167
16 “Mourning Athena,” relief carving c. 460 BC 169
17 Detail of Boeotian grave stele of Athanias, c. 425–375 BC 176
18 A community honors its heroic dead. An American casualty
list, Westchester (Los Angeles), California 180
ix