The aftermath of battle

War dead in ancient Greece

Ancestral
custom
In the aftermath of battle, those who survived were left to con-
template an eerie spectacle. What confronted them was a scene
of distorted humanity: a field of broken bodies, abandoned
weapons and the mournful cries of the wounded and dying.
Birds circled expectantly overhead, whilst dogs scavenged ea-
gerly on the periphery. The field itself was littered with the dead
of both sides, now indistinguishable in their shared and final
fate. Indeed, the ancient Greeks offer us a complex picture of
the glories and triumphs of war, but few scenes strike the mod-
ern reader as strongly as the pathos of the aftermath of battle.

By Cezary Kucewicz dead and wounded. At the scenes of

A
n eyewitness account of such
carnage and chaos is provided to
us by Xenophon, whose graphic
illustration of the aftermath of
Coronea (394 BC) relates the spectacle of the
world turned upside down (Agesilaus 2.14):
Now that the fighting was at an end,
it was possible to see, where they fell
upon one another – the earth stained
with blood, friend and foe lying dead
side by side, shields smashed to pieces,
spears snapped in two, daggers bared
of their sheaths, some on the ground,
some embedded in the bodies, some
yet gripped by the hand.
A narrative of battle itself could be told
through the scattered positions of the
hardest engagement, bodies of friend
and foe alike lay two or three deep,
as happened at the Battle of Coronea,
where Agesilaus’ Spartans met the The-
ban phalanx head on. According to an-
cient sources, the formation of these hu-
man mounds was no rare occurrence.
At Leuctra (371 BC), after the Spartan
king Cleombrotus had succumbed to his
wounds, Diodorus speaks of the “great
mound of corpses” that formed immedi-
ately around his body (15.55.5); while
in Xenophon’s account of fighting about
Corinth in 393 BC, so many warriors
fell that bodies “seemed to be heaped
together like heaps of corn or piles of
wood or stones” (Hellenica 4.4.12).
Aside from the masses of corpses dis-
persed around the main engagement, a trail
of bodies, often several kilometres long,

28 Ancient Warfare IX-6

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would usually wind its way from the centre
of the battlefield towards the side of the de-
feated: a poignant reminder of the desper-
ate retreat of the wounded, many of whom
would often be slaughtered by victorious
pursuers, or trampled by their own com-
rades, such as at the Battle of Cynoscephalae
in 364 BC (Plut., Pel. 32.7). Inevitably, the
act of finding, identifying and retrieving the
fallen after such events, was no easy task.
Before anyone could consider the
fate of the dead, it was normal for the
winning side to set up a trophy (tropaion),
consisting of captured armour and weap-
ons, often at the place the enemy had
fled, upon a post or tree stump. The
erection of a trophy provided symbolic
confirmation of victory, and was usually
accompanied by sacrifices and the sing-
ing of the paean to recognise the gods
who aided in the battle. It was only then,
after tending to the wounded and those
with a chance of survival, that the victors
would collect their dead and strip the
enemy corpses of their armour, weapons
and any other valuables they possessed.
The defeated side, by contrast, was
required to send heralds to the victors,
requesting a truce for the retrieval of the
dead. Such a request could not be re-
fused, since it was regarded both as a for-
mal admission of defeat, and as a revered
Greek custom, referred to in Euripides’
Suppliants as “the laws of all Greece”
(311). Occasional exceptions to the rule,
such as the Theban denial of Athenian
burial after the Battle of Delium (424
BC), were nearly always regarded as pun-
ishment for a bigger sacrilege committed
by the enemy, and only make rare ap-
pearances in the sources. In effect, such
post-battle assumptions and procedures
entailed the mastery of the dead on the
battlefield, which itself became the only
clear-cut criterion of victory.
The fate of the fallen
As noted earlier, carrying out the retrieval
of the dead was no easy matter, compli-
cated yet further by the heat of the Greek
aw_9-6_ver2.indd 29
The aftermath of battle
summer, and the rapid decomposition it
caused. The total number of dead aver-
aged around 15% for the defeated and
5% for the victors, which amounted to
over four thousand bodies in the cases
of larger engagements, such as those at
Acragas (472 BC) or the Nemea River
(394 BC). Furthermore, a number of fac-
tors made the process of identification all
the more difficult, including disfiguring
facial wounds, the process of decay and
rigor mortis, and the work of scavenging
animals. The efforts of the defeated side
were further hindered by the lack of per-
sonal items or identifiable tokens, since
much was stripped by the victors in the
immediate aftermath.
Any delay in the process inevitably
increased such difficulties. Xenophon, for
instance, reports the unfortunate fate of
some Arcadians, who, having been isolat-
ed and killed in Bithynia, had laid unbur-
ied for five days in the burning sun. When
these individuals were eventually found
by Xenophon and his men, the bodies
had to be buried “at the spot where each
had fallen”, as “it was no longer possi-
ble to bring them away” (Anabasis 6.4.9).
Similar problems accompanied the re-
trieval of casualties of naval battles, as
the bodies had to be recovered before
they sank, normally within a few hours of
death. After a few days, bacterial action This grave stele from Megara
in the abdomen would have brought the dates from 480 BC. It is par-
bodies back to surface, but due to cur- ticularly interesting due to its
rents, adverse weather conditions, bloat- detailed inscription: "I speak,
ing and marine predators, a potentially I, Pollis dear son of Asopichos,
large number of fallen rowers would be not having died a coward, with
either lost or quite beyond recognition. the wounds of the tattooers,
Yet, despite the difficulties, the re- yes myself." Not only do we
trieval, identification and burial of the war find out specifically that Pollis
dead was of utmost importance to ancient died in battle, but that he was
Greek armies. To fail in such universal killed by the 'tattooers'. This
obligation was always seen as evidence is probably a reference to the
of extreme calamity and utter moral col- Thracians, who are thought to
lapse, as in the case of the disastrous Athe- have tattooed or painted their
nian retreat from Syracuse in 413 BC. As skin. Now in the collection of
Thucydides relates, having been forced to the J. Paul Getty Museum.
© Public domain
neglect the wounded and their unburied
comrades, the retreating Athenians were
Ancient Warfare IX-6 29
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 The aftermath of battle
(Opposite page) A view of an
ancient Greek battlefield af-
ter the dust has settled. Note
the trophy set up in the mid-
dle and the two heralds in
the background.
© Juhani Jokinen
30 Ancient Warfare IX-6
aw_9-6_ver2.indd 30
filled with grief and self-reproach at the
necessity of the abandonment (7.72–75).
The tragedy must have been especially
deep for the Athenian general Nicias,
whose famous action a few years earlier
following the Battle of Solygeia (425 BC),
provides perhaps the clearest demonstra-
tion of the moral obligation to retrieve the
war dead. On this occasion, after victory
and the setting up of a trophy, Nicias real-
ized that two of his Athenian fallen were
missing. He immediately decided to re-
turn to the region, and sent heralds ahead
to the defeated Corinthians, asking for a
truce to take up the corpses. Yet in this
remarkably egalitarian act, Nicias thereby
admitted defeat. As Plutarch summarized,
he “preferred to renounce the victory
and his personal triumph rather than al-
low two of his fellow-countrymen to lie
unburied” (Nic. 6). The episode no doubt
served to highlight Nicias’ piety, but in
other cases, failure to retrieve the dead
was nothing short of disastrous for army
generals. After the sea battle of Arginusae
(406 BC), for example, the victorious
Athenian generals failed to bring back the
dead and wounded because of the onset
of a sudden storm. Upon their return, they
faced the outrage of the community, and
were all ultimately condemned to death
(Diodorus Siculus 13.101).
The importance ascribed to the proper
treatment of the war dead helps to justify
the immediate attention received by the
dead following any battle or military en-
gagement in the Classical period. Indeed,
the surviving evidence of burial sites, war
monuments, casualty lists, and funeral
orations, confirms further the homage
conferred on the war dead by the Greek
poleis. Such norms, referred to as long-
held “ancestral custom” (patrios nomos) in
Athens by Thucydides, also highlight the
reveals that they were not as ‘ancestral’ as
egalitarian nature of Greek practices, as
each fallen man was almost guaranteed to Thucydides would have us believe.
be buried and commemorated by his com-
munity. But these attitudes towards the war Homeric war dead
dead had not always been so universal. In Any study of Greek attitudes towards the
fact, even a cursory glance at their origins war dead, or indeed any military matter,
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must begin with Homer. The verses of the
Iliad, which describe the final year of the
legendary war between the Achaeans and
Trojans, contain a famous mass burial
scene at the end of the first day of fight-
ing. After concluding a temporary truce,
aw_9-6_ver2.indd 31
The aftermath of battle
each side sets out at dawn to collect and
bury their dead (Il. 7.423–429). The im-
mediate attention given to the dead seems
to mirror Classical practices and attitudes
towards the fallen. Surprisingly, however,
the episode is an exception. Although the
Ancient Warfare IX-6 31
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 The aftermath of battle
Iliad does have a burial truce after the first
day, it does not have one on any subse-
quent day. The recovery of the war dead,
in fact, is conducted in a radically differ-
ent way; instead of being retrieved after
the battle, the Homeric dead were nor-
mally dealt with during the fighting.
The usual course of events follow-
ing the death of any Homeric warrior
follows a clear pattern. The killer would
try to strip the dead of his armour, itself
treated as a trophy and a mark of mili-
tary success. The friends of the deceased,
by contrast, were obliged to prevent the
killer from stripping the armour and, if
possible, to carry the slain comrade to
safety. A failure to do so inflicted shame
on the dead warrior and his followers,
which in turn led to some of the fierce
fights over the fallen that dominate large
parts of the Iliad. One of the most graph-
ic scenes depicts the struggle over the
corpse of Kebriones, brother of the Tro-
jan prince Hector (Il. 16.755-764):
So above Kebriones these two, ur-
gent for battle, Patroclus, son of Me-
noitios, and glorious Hector, were
straining with the pitiless bronze to
tear at each other; since Hector had
caught him by the head, and would
not let go of him, and Patroclus had
his foot on the other side, while the
other Trojans and Danaäns drove to-
gether the strength of their onset.
After being retrieved in the heat of the battle,
the leading Homeric men (basileis) would
be given an individual and highly conspic-
uous burial. These burials, accompanied by
feasts and games, could often last well over
a week, as the splendour and duration of
The main scene on this At-
the funeral celebrations were meant to ex-
tic black-figure krater from
press the social rank and glory of the fallen
Pharsalus, dated ca. 530 BC,
elite warrior. The Iliad, in fact, ends with
depicts an epic struggle over a
just such a burial, as the poet marvels over
fallen warrior, perhaps intend-
the grave-barrow and ‘glorious feast’ which
ed to represent Patroclus. Cur-
concluded the burial of Hector.
rently in the National Archae-
The overwhelming impression that
ological Museum of Athens.
Homer gives us, nevertheless, is that of
© Livius.Org
32 Ancient Warfare IX-6
aw_9-6_ver2.indd 32
unburied bodies. In stark contrast to the
closing lines of the Iliad, the very first lines
reveal that the poem is not only a story of
Achilles’ wrath, but also an account of the
fallen, whose unburied bodies are feasted
on by the dogs and birds (Il. 1.1–5). Such
corpses were certainly not those of the Ho-
meric elites – who, as we saw, were normally
retrieved during battle – but rather, those of
common warriors. The macabre image of
unburied corpses scattered across the battle-
field is one constantly present in the poem:
for instance, both the Trojan and Greek as-
semblies are specifically said to take place on
“clean ground, where there showed a space
not cumbered with corpses” (8.491; 10.199).
Unless a rare truce was agreed, we are, there-
fore, led to believe that the majority of Ho-
meric warriors were simply left unburied and
might lie on the battlefield for days, before
eventually ending up in a mass grave.
The poetic image of the war dead con-
veyed in the Iliad was drawn largely in ac-
cordance with the deep social divisions
which permeated Homeric society. In this
way, the bodies of the leading men (basileis)
were dealt with during the fighting, and dis-
tinguished with funerals worthy of heroes.
The corpses of common warriors, on the
other hand, remained where they had fallen
until a truce could be agreed. In short, this
‘hierarchical’ model was very different to the
egalitarian norms and attitudes of the Clas-
sical Greeks. It was not, however, confined
only to the mythical world of the Trojan War.
Archaic war dead
Just how far the Homeric epics reflected the
historical reality of Archaic Greece has long
been a matter of considerable disagreement
among scholars. Despite this, the poems,
most likely completed during the first half of
the seventh century BC, are one of the most
valuable sources we have for the study of
early Greek war and society. Moreover, the
ideals and norms they depict on the fallen
are reflected in the precious few pieces of
evidence that survive for Archaic warfare.
To begin with, the motifs of fight-
ing over and retrieving the dead during
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combat – so prominent in the battle de-
scriptions of the Iliad – were particularly
popular in the late Archaic art of Athens.
Painted on both black- and red-figure pot-
tery, there are over 250 representations of
fighting over and recovering the dead in
the sixth century BC, where Ajax’ recovery
of the fallen Achilles’ is the most popular.
These images have often been dismissed
by scholars as heroic depictions, bearing
little relation to contemporary practice of
war; fighting over the dead, as they main-
tain, would have been highly unlikely in
the tight and cohesive phalanx formations
that featured on Archaic battlefields. Yet
from the beginning of the fifth century BC,
such depictions suddenly disappear, with
almost no surviving representations after
480 BC. But since the epics themselves
persisted in influence and popularity, it
seems reasonable to assume that Archaic
depictions must have always represented
something quite different: that the fight-
ing over and retrieval of the dead during
battles would likely have been the norm
in Archaic custom. Pausanias’ account
of the First Messenian War (ca. 743–724
BC), which mentions the practice of com-
bat despoliation, lends further support to
this conclusion (4.8.7): “The most remark-
able was the death of those who tried to
strip any of the fallen. For if they exposed
any part of their bodies, they were struck
with javelins or were struck down while
intent on their present occupation, or
were killed by those whom they were
plundering who still lived.”
Such fragments, along with the evi-
dence of early Greek iconography, brings
the Homeric practices regarding the fallen
much closer to the historical realities of Ar-
chaic war. Since combat despoliation and
recovery of the dead were incompatible
with the nature of the phalanx formation,
the first appearance of the latter would con-
sequently have to be down dated to the end
of the Archaic period, at just that time when
such images disappear from the artistic re-
cord: a theory which has found increasing
support in most recent scholarship.
aw_9-6_ver2.indd 33
The aftermath of battle
Similarly, the status difference inherent
in the burials of elite and common warriors
in the Iliad, is also visible in our Archaic re-
cords. Elite warriors, as one can judge from
surviving Attic tombstones, received individ-
ual burials commemorated with elaborate
grave statues, reliefs, and brief epigrams. The
most famous of them include that of Croe-
sus, dated to the middle of sixth century BC:
Stay and mourn at the monument of
dead Kroisos, whom mighty Ares de-
stroyed in the front ranks.
Another is that of Tettichus, from the sec-
ond quarter of the sixth century BC:
Attic black-figure amphora,
Let everyone, whether townsman or
dated ca. 520–500 BC, depict-
stranger from abroad, before he pass,
ing Ajax carrying the body of
mourn Tettichus, valorous man who died
Achilles from the field of battle.
in battle and yielded up his tender youth;
Currently in the National Mu-
lamenting this, proceed to worthy tasks.
seum of Antiquities in Leiden.
Both belonged to wealthy Athenian fami- © Josho Brouwers
lies and, as their funerary epigrams suggest,
died in combat. These monuments com-
memorated the valour of the individual de-
ceased, securing their fame (kleos) among
future generations. At the same time, they
provided an opportunity for a family to dis-
play their wealth. The elitist and individu-
alistic nature of such gravestones gives us,
therefore, an important indication of the so-
cial division within Archaic armies, as elite
warriors clearly did not wish to be buried
with the rest of the fallen. Instead, their
bodies would have been rescued during
the fighting and given conspicuous burials
at home by their families, perhaps not un-
like those described in the Iliad. In a clear
allusion to the Homeric poems, the Archaic
Spartan poet Tyrtaeus reinforces this ideal
by stating that the name and glorious repu-
tation of a fallen warrior would never die:
“His death is mourned alike by young and
old; the whole community feels the keen
loss its own. People point out his tomb, his
children in the street, his children’s children
and posterity” (fr. 12.26–33).
Finally, the archaeological evidence
for the burial of non-elite warriors in the
Ancient Warfare IX-6 33
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 The aftermath of battle
A modern reconstruction
of what the grave stele of
Aristion might have looked
like originally before all the
paint had faded. This copy is
on display in the Glyptothek
in Munich; the original from
ca. 520 BC can be found in
the National Archaeological
Museum in Athens.
© Marcus Cyron (Wikimedia)
34 Ancient Warfare IX-6
aw_9-6_ver2.indd 34
Archaic period is extremely scarce, since
the number of surviving burial mounds
(polyandria) is few and far between. The
lack of any archaeologically visible mate-
rial, however, may in itself be an indication
of the relative unimportance of such buri-
als, which again lends itself to comparisons
with the Homeric standards concerning the
non-elite battle-dead. A few fragments of
Archaic poetry suggest that some corpses,
presumably those of common warriors,
would remain on the battlefield unburied.
Hesiod, for instance, speaks of the souls of
fallen warriors whose “flesh has decayed”,
as “their bodies rot away on the black earth
under parching Sirius” (Shield of Heracles
150–153); whilst Archilochus similarly ex-
pects that the bodies of his comrades “will
parch up” by “the burning Dog-star (…)
shining fiercely down” (fr. 292).
In short, Archaic treatment of the war
dead was far removed from the norms and
standards of the Classical period. Moreover,
the divide between a hierarchical (Archaic)
and egalitarian (Classical) standard was
most likely a feature of the organisation of
Archaic fighting forces more broadly. The
latter were considerably smaller in size
than the armies of the Classical period, and
offer no indications of mass mobilization,
as most conflicts consisted of raids and bor-
der disputes, settled by privately organised
war bands. Burial of the war dead, there-
fore, was originally a private affair. It was
only from the fifth century BC onwards that
it became the responsibility of the state.
Classical war dead
By the end of the Archaic period, the Greek
poleis were transformed by a number of
political and military changes, which had a
profound effect on the ideals and treatment
of the battle-dead. The political changes
that swept through the Greek world – per-
haps symbolized most prominently by the
introduction of democracy in Athens (508/7
BC) – led to the creation of the first citizen
armies. These armies, mobilized and con-
trolled by the state, became responsible for
the post-battle fate of each and every one
of its fallen warriors. Every warrior, alive
or dead, was now equally important to the
success of a campaign. Indeed, fights over
the dead during combat disappeared as
the new phalanx formations took over as
a dominant way of fighting. Finally, it be-
came essential to retrieve all the dead after
battle, even if that meant admitting defeat.
Similarly, the Persian invasions of 490
and 480/79 BC had a widespread and sig-
nificant effect on the victorious Greeks. In
fact, one way the Greeks recovered from
this trauma was to establish a new, Pan-Hel-
lenic identity; one fundamentally different
to that of the ‘barbarian invader’. Proper re-
spect for the war dead became a large part
of this new Greek ideal, since the Persian
practices of the mistreatment, exposure and
mutilation of the dead were now radically
condemned by fifth century BC authors.
These customs concerning the fallen
were most prominent in Classical Athens.
Following recovery and identification,
the Athenian armies cremated all of their
dead on the battlefield, and brought the
remains home for a public funeral. Such
celebrations, as Thucydides relates in de-
tail, took place annually in the winter,
and involved a number of rituals (2.34):
(…) two days before the ceremony the
bones of the fallen are brought and put
in a tent which has been erected, and
people make whatever offerings they
wish to their own dead. Then there is a
funeral procession in which coffins of
cypress wood are carried on wagons.
There is one coffin for each tribe, which
contains the bones of members of that
tribe. One empty bier is decorated and
carried in the procession: this is for the
missing, whose bodies could not be
recovered… The bones are laid in the
public burial-place, which is the most
beautiful quarter outside the city walls.
Here the Athenian always bury those
who have fallen in war.
The graves of the war dead, located in
the public cemetery known as Demosion
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Sema in the Kerameikos district, were
marked with a stela and an inscription
listing all casualties buried there. Finally,
the ceremony was concluded with a fu-
neral oration (epitaphios logos) in praise
of the dead, given by a distinguished citi-
zen chosen by the city, as well as funeral
games (agon epitaphios).
As we have seen, the democratic and
egalitarian aspect of Athenian burial and
commemoration stood in a clear contrast
to Archaic, hierarchical standards. The
cremated remains of all warriors, regard-
less of status or family affiliation, were
placed together in a single coffin, one for
each of the ten tribes. Likewise, the casu-
alty lists inscribed on the stelae made no
social distinction between the dead, as all
were equal in their sacrifice for the city.
All these customs, referred to famously by
Thucydides as “ancestral custom”, were a
product of the new spirit of egalitarianism
in Athens which followed the introduc-
tion of democracy at the end of the sixth
century BC. And although their exact ori-
gins have been a matter of considerable
debate among scholars, the overall cer-
emony most likely crystallised in the first
quarter of the fifth century BC.
The customs and ceremonies accom-
panying the burial of the war dead differed
from one Greek polis to another in the
Classical era, but all of them were char-
acterized by a similar attitude of respect
towards the dead, and an assumption of
equality between fallen warriors. The Spar-
tans, for instance, inhumed their dead on
the field of battle, making exceptions only
for their fallen kings, who were carried
back home and preserved in honey. This
shared, Pan-Hellenic ideal is best illustrat-
ed by the new procedures concerning bat-
tlefield truces for the recovery of the dead,
which appear in our sources in the second
half of the fifth century BC. These, as we
witnessed earlier, became an essential part
of the aftermath of any Greek battle, pro-
viding an official procedure to determine
the winning side. The date of the first truce
is again a matter of controversy; however,
aw_9-6_ver2.indd 35
The aftermath of battle
an oath reputedly sworn by the Greeks on
the eve of the Battle of Plataea (479 BC),
provides a possible candidate. Facing a
crucial battle against the Persians, the co-
alition of the Greeks swore: “And I shall
bury on the spot the dead of those who
have fought as my allies, and shall leave
behind none of them unburied” (29).
The story of the Greek war dead, then,
is one of gradual development from the hi-
erarchical standards of the Archaic period,
to the egalitarian, Pan-Hellenic customs
of the Classical era. As such, it reflects a
number of political, cultural, and military
changes which transformed the Greek
world at the end of the sixth century BC. As
the responsibility for the war dead moved
from private to public hands, the proce-
dures for their retrieval and burial changed,
culminating in the standards of Classical
Athens. Eventually, the principles of patrios
nomos, emphasizing the importance of the Athenian casualty list for the
retrieval and celebration of every warrior tribe Erechtheis, dated ca. 460
who died for their polis, came to define BC. Currently in the Louvre.
ancient Greek attitudes towards the war © Livius.Org
dead. These basic ideals, first formed nearly
2,500 years ago, remain largely unchanged
down to our own day. 0
Cezary Kucewicz is a postgraduate re-
searcher at the Department of History at
University College London.
Further reading
• Nathan T. Arrington, Ashes, Imag-
es, and Memories: The Presence
of the War Dead in Fifth-Century
Athens (Oxford 2015).
• W. Kendrick Pritchett, The
Greek State at War: Part IV
(Berkeley 1985).
• Pamela Vaughn, ‘The identifica-
tion and retrieval of the hoplite
battle-dead’, in Victor Davis Han-
son (ed.), Hoplites: The Classical
Greek Battle Experience (New
York 1991), pp. 38–62.
Ancient Warfare IX-6 35
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