
Contents
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‘Cutting Open Pregnant Women’: The Rhetoric of Genocide ‘Cutting Open Pregnant Women’: The Rhetoric of Genocide
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The Cities of Men: Targets for Annihilation The Cities of Men: Targets for Annihilation
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Alternatives to Annihilation: Genocide in Context Alternatives to Annihilation: Genocide in Context
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Conspicuous Destruction: Profit, Power, and Genocide Conspicuous Destruction: Profit, Power, and Genocide
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Conclusions: Genocide and its Limits Conclusions: Genocide and its Limits
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Select Bibliography Select Bibliography
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12 Genocide in the Ancient World
Get accessHans van Wees is Grote Professor of Ancient History in the Department of History at University College London. He is the author of three books, including Ships and Silver, Taxes and Tribute: A fiscal history of Archaic Athens (2013) and editor of several volumes, including A Companion to Archaic Greece (with Kurt Raaflaub, 2009) and Archaic Greece: New approaches and new evidence (with Nick Fisher, 1998).
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Published:18 September 2012
Cite
Abstract
This article examines genocide in the ancient world, by examining European literature and comparing the atrocities committed during the events of the Trojan War. The massacre of all Troy's male inhabitants and the enslavement of its women and children were fictional, but it had many counterparts in ancient history. It was almost the normative form of genocide in ancient Greece and some other parts of the ancient world, although mass enslavements and mass executions which made no distinctions of gender or age are also widely attested. The Greeks' reasons for treating the Trojans so brutally were typical of the motivations for genocide in antiquity: it was usually an act of ‘conspicuous destruction’, a display of force designed to assert the power and status of the perpetrator in the face of a perceived challenge. Ancient genocide sometimes had a religious dimension.
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