Studies of ancient warfare are often regarded with some suspicion by scholars outside the field: in a world still marked by military conflict, further attention to the wars and violence of antiquity may seem difficult to justify. Yet ancient models and narratives of warfare remain deeply embedded in modern political and military discourse, from popular invocations of Sparta to appeals to Christian just war traditions. Understanding how cultural, political and ethical narratives of conflict functioned and circulated in antiquity, and how they continue to shape modern discussions of war, is the shared concern of two recent books, both demonstrating the continuing vitality of ancient warfare as a field of study.
Visualising War across the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by König and Wiater, examines how narratives of conflict interacted to shape dominant discourses on war in antiquity. Consisting of fifteen chapters spanning more than a millennium from Achaemenid Persia to late antiquity, the volume is the first major output of the ‘Visualising War and Peace’ research programme at the University of St Andrews. It explores how representations of war are shaped by earlier narratives that influence how we perceive, understand and experience conflict. In the introduction König illustrates this through an imagined tour of the Campus Martius, showing how monuments, myths, landscapes, historical events and literary works interacted to normalise war within Roman society. War-storytelling, she suggests, functioned as a kaleidoscope of ‘endlessly shifting connections’ (p. 13), reproducing and amplifying modes of representing conflict. Representations of war should therefore be understood as part of a wider intertextual network shaping both individual portrayals and broader narrative traditions.
The volume’s earliest representations of war come from Achaemenid Persia, as J. Hyland examines the Bīsotūn monument. Combining relief sculpture with inscriptions, it celebrated Darius I’s rise to power while drawing on earlier Near Eastern visual and textual traditions. Hyland shows how it repurposed the latter to present the Achaemenid dynasty as heir to – and surpassing – earlier Mesopotamian rulers. The monument asserted Darius’ legitimacy through military triumph, using casualty figures and precise dates to counter the uncertainty of exaggerated victory accounts. Questions of uncertainty are developed in J. Hesk’s chapter on the ‘fog of war’ trope in Euripides’ Suppliant Women, which contrasts chaotic close-up battle scenes with ordered long-shot perspectives. This tension comments on war decision-making in fifth-century Athens, suggesting that, if those deliberating could ‘see’ through the fog to its consequences – embodied by the grieving Chorus –, they might decide differently.
The focus on perception is developed further by Wiater, who compares J. Kromayer’s map of the Battle of Lake Trasimene with Polybius’ account. While modern maps appear objective, Wiater shows that they are artefacts of nineteenth-century military historiography. Polybius instead constructs space through internal focalisation, especially via Hannibal’s perspective, embedding movement within perception rather than treating it as fixed. Though unfamiliar to modern expectations of mapped landscapes, this offered a more cognitively realistic account of battle for ancient readers. Tactical theorists pursued similar aims: Asclepiodotus and Aelian, as C. Roby shows, drew on arithmetic, natural philosophy and diagrammatic traditions to produce models of warfare that rendered it intelligible, framing it as a technē capable of imposing order on chaos.
The volume shows how the same conflict can generate different narratives. This is evident in D.S. Ballentine’s analysis of Judean portrayals of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Daniel, 1 and 2 Maccabees and Josephus. Focusing on divine agency, Ballentine shows how each text negotiates divine involvement differently, from explicit intervention to more restrained or absent forms, reworking earlier traditions while reflecting different ideological concerns and audiences. Later, battle narratives remained sites of interpretative contest, as shown by M. Hanaghan. Examining Pollentia, Samarra and the Milvian Bridge, Hanaghan highlights intertextual interplay and competition – through echoing, correction and even concealment – in accounts shaped by Christian and non-Christian agendas.
The representation of warfare also differs by medium, as shown in A. Riggsby’s examination of the Roman army across documentary, historiographic and sculptural evidence. Drawing on Caesar, Livy, the monument of Aemilius Paullus, and the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, Riggsby highlights diverse representational strategies and a shared reluctance to project social structures onto battles. Instead, they favour compressed, combatant-centred representations that prioritise experiential immediacy over reconstruction, evoking warfare rather than documenting it. J. Oksanish explores how authors outside historiography reframe conflict narratives, looking at Vitruvius’ account of the siege of Massilia alongside Caesar’s version of the same event. Oksanish argues that Vitruvius uses the authority of technical expertise while obscuring the enemy due to its civil-war context, producing an unconventional account that subtly reworks Caesarian historiography.
Depictions of Caesar’s civil war, including the siege of Massilia, are examined by H.-M. Chidwick through Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Rather than glory, the poem is dominated by violence, dismemberment and destruction. Drawing on the concept of multiplicity, Chidwick argues that Lucan’s intertextual literary and bodily imagery makes the violence of civil war irreducibly multiple and fragmented. Multiplicity and fragmentation also shape H. Lovatt’s chapter, which examines bodily disintegration across three media: Silius Italicus’ Scaevola at Cannae, Martial’s Scaevola epigrams and Trajan’s Column. Using short ‘narrative panels’, Lovatt’s chapter mirrors the disjunctive nature of war representation. Comparing violent repetition to modern memes or GIFs, she argues that literary and visual narratives continually reconfigure warfare, reflecting the fractured nature of memory and trauma.
Visual narratives are further examined by Z. Newby, who analyses Trojan War scenes on sarcophagi from Attica, Rome and Dokimeion. Focusing on Achilles’ grief for Patroclus and the ransoming of Hector’s body, Newby shows how funerary art draws on Homeric authority to universalise death and grief, using visual and textual traditions to elevate the memory of the deceased through comparison with epic heroes. By contrast, the Panegyrici Latini – imperial orations praising Roman emperors – aim to elevate imperial achievement. C. Ware demonstrates how these texts present campaigns as unequivocally victorious while drawing on epic, historiography (e.g. Caesar’s account of the siege of Massilia) and visual media such as coinage and monumental sculpture. These intertextual references frame military success within a Roman tradition of exemplary warfare, sharpening imperial virtus and reinforcing victory as the expected outcome of imperial action.
The final two chapters place ancient war narratives in dialogue with modern examples. König examines the ‘feedback loop’ between war-storytelling and reality, showing how narratives shape perceptions of warfare, from Pericles’ epitaphios logos and ancient language about sexual violence to the militarised rhetoric of the Covid-19 pandemic and representations of childhood in conflict narratives. These recurring modes of storytelling reinforce elite habits of thought and normalise conflict. The final chapter, co-written by König, J. Dunne and J. D’Young, turns to alternative war-storytelling through their play Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us, inspired by Book 6 of the Iliad. Reimagining the exchange between Andromache and Hector in a modern military context, it shifts attention from soldier-centred narratives to military partners, offering a more intimate account of war’s domestic impact. Ultimately, arguing that what is needed is not greater war literacy but peace literacy, König ends by introducing initiatives from the ‘Visualising War and Peace’ research programme and calling for narratives of peace and peacebuilding to disrupt the feedback loop of war-making.
The volume is ambitious – spanning a longue durée frame while moving freely across the ancient Mediterranean and diverse forms of evidence. The absence of section divisions, while initially disorientating, encourages readers to trace recurring motifs and narrative threads across chapters, from the ‘fog of war’ trope and competing accounts of the siege of Massilia to the fragmented nature of war narratives. The chapters thus speak to one another, reinforcing the volume’s central concern with the intertextual and interdiscursive nature of war-storytelling. While the volume illuminates these dynamics, it also exposes the scale and complexity of the task, as seen in Lovatt’s exploration of repeated narrative reframing and Hanaghan’s attention to concealed and unrecoverable intertextual layers. This, however, is not a weakness: it underscores the vastness of the material and the scope for future work. Crucially, the volume also shows how ancient models of war-storytelling continue to inform modern discourse, particularly where the rhetoric of ‘just war’ remains influential. It is this tradition that Cox examines in his study of ‘just war’ in the ancient Near East.
Origins of the Just War examines ethical reflections on war in early Near Eastern civilisations, focusing on Egypt, Hatti and Israel. While ancient Near Eastern warfare is often associated with extreme violence, Cox argues that some of the earliest sophisticated thinking about war, ethics and justice emerged within these societies. One of the book’s central aims is to challenge dominant tendencies in just war studies, which often neglect pre-classical Greek evidence and locate the origins of just war theory in early Christian thought. Instead, Cox argues that just war traditions were ‘neither uniquely Christian nor exclusively Western’ (p. 16). From the third millennium bce Near Eastern societies developed concepts of morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’ wars that shaped later traditions.
The book is divided into three sections on Egypt, Hatti and Israel, preceded by an overview of Near Eastern warfare and followed by an extensive conclusion. Each section contains a historical introduction and two chapters structured around the categories of ius ad bellum and ius in bello, which, though anachronistic, are employed as analytical tools for comparison. Cox defines ‘just war thought’ broadly as ideas linking war and ethics, including norms governing conduct in warfare.
The historical introductions outlining historiographical, geopolitical and cultural contexts are necessarily concise but useful, especially for readers less familiar with Egypt, Hatti or Israel. They identify principal sources for reconstructing each culture’s ethical reflections on warfare. The richest yet most problematic evidence is the Hebrew Tanakh, which, despite providing extensive material on Israel’s cultural and military history, remains difficult for Near Eastern historians. Cox handles these controversies carefully, outlining current views on its composition and justifying the inclusion of Israel in the study through the Tanakh’s later influence on global traditions.
The core of the argument unfolds in the ius ad bellum and ius in bello chapters. Examining broader frameworks and immediate causes for war (e.g. self-defence, vengeance, alliances, suppression of rebellion), Cox situates each civilisation within its politico-cultural context. In Egypt across the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms ethical thought rested on three principles: the semi-divine authority of the pharaoh; the opposition between order (Ma’at) and chaos (Isfet); and the superiority of Egypt over foreign lands. Together, these framed all military action as the pharaoh’s sacred duty to uphold and spread Ma’at, forming the basis of Egyptian just war thought.
A similar combination of universalism and chauvinism characterises Israelite just war thought. As in Egypt, Israelite ideology centres on El/Yahweh – reflected in the name Israel (Yisra’el, ‘El fights’). Although authority to wage war was exercised through individual leaders, it ultimately derived from Yahweh, whose sanction ensured legitimacy and victory. Cox argues that ethical or legal considerations regarding other peoples are secondary in the Tanakh: war’s justice is determined solely by Israel’s covenant with Yahweh. Military defeat is therefore not punishment for wrongdoing against others, but for Israel’s violation of the Covenant.
According to Cox, the first kingdom to develop a more objective concept of just cause was Hatti. While the Hittites, like the Egyptians and Israelites, believed royal authority derived from the gods, they also acknowledged that it could be abused, including in warfare. War therefore required justification and was framed in moral and legal terms. Drawing on Hittite prayers and royal texts, Cox shows that military actions could be recognised as unjust, as in Šuppiluliuma’s treaty violation and war against Egypt, indicating that the Hittites ‘recognised that justice and injustice in war existed independently of the kingdom of Hatti’ (p. 230). He locates this framework in the legalistic and pluralistic character of Hittite society, arguing that the Hittites were the first to develop a more self-reflexive concept of justice in war.
However, even in Hatti the justice of one’s cause and divine approval were revealed through victory, as war functioned as a form of divine judgement in which ‘might equals right’ and ‘right equals might’ were complementary principles. Yet this comparatively self-reflexive concept did not extend to conduct in war. In this respect Hatti differed little from Egypt or Israel, which developed few identifiable ius in bello norms. Examining declarations of war, tactics, the treatment of prisoners, non-combatants and envoys, Cox argues that restraints were limited and ad hoc. While some customs existed, warfare remained highly permissive, with ius ad bellum traditions legitimising rather than restricting violence. Among the starkest examples are the biblical herem massacres of entire populations during the conquest of Canaan at Yahweh’s command. Although their historicity is doubtful, the didactic nature of the Tanakh prevents their exclusion from assessments of war ethics.
Indeed, the accounts and images of impalement, mutilation and mass executions of prisoners discussed throughout the volume, combined with the extreme partisanship of Near Eastern ius ad bellum traditions, raise the question of how such systems can meaningfully be described as just war doctrines. Cox addresses this in the extended conclusion, tracing broadly the development of just war thought from antiquity to the modern era. Modern objections to these traditions, he argues, stem partly from expectations of what just war theory ought to entail. Within their own cultural contexts, however, these doctrines provided coherent ethical frameworks that legitimised warfare. Ancient societies engaged in ethical reflection on war because of the necessity and desire to wage it; consequently, Cox characterises these traditions as forms of ius pro bello aimed less at restraining violence than legitimising it. He extends this argument beyond antiquity, warning that absolutist moral claims risk undermining meaningful ius in bello restraints, whether in the ancient Near East or in modern liberal-democratic military interventions justified through claims of moral superiority and the defence of the ‘rule of law’.
The volume is an impressive and elegantly written study whose significance extends beyond ancient history. One of the book’s greatest strengths is the accessibility with which Cox handles a vast body of material, moving across textual and visual representations of war in Egypt, Hatti and Israel while engaging with specialist scholarship. Inevitably, the book’s ambitious scope creates some limitations, particularly the long chronological span under discussion (3150 to 450 bce), which leaves less room for nuance and for tracing changes in ethical concepts over time. Although Cox explains the selection of Egypt, Hatti and Israel over kingdoms such as Assyria or Babylon, the sections remain uneven, with Israel receiving considerably more attention than Egypt or Hatti. The concluding discussion, which connects the book’s findings to modern debates, is especially thought-provoking and rewards readers who persist through this substantial study. Its contribution to contemporary discussions of just war theory, which continue to reappear in public discourse and military conflicts across the regions studied by Cox, could hardly be more timely.
All in all, both König and Wiater’s volume and Cox’s study shine a powerful light on how ancient war narratives functioned to normalise, perpetuate and legitimise conflict, and how they continue to exert influence on modern discourses and practices of war. Taken together, they demonstrate not only that ancient warfare remains relevant, but also that the narratives through which wars are justified, remembered and normalised remain deeply entangled with intellectual traditions inherited from antiquity.
