Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- Thinking about Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society / Brian Turner and Jessica H. Clark -- Ideology, Politics, and the Assyrian Understanding of Defeat / Sarah C. Melville -- The Assassination of Tissaphernes: Royal Responses to Military Defeat in the Achaemenid Empire / Jeffrey Rop -- Achaemenid Soldiers, Alexander’s Conquest, and the Experience of Defeat / John O. Hyland -- Military Defeat in Fifth-Century Athens: Thucydides and His Audience / Edith Foster -- Demosthenes, Chaeronea, and the Rhetoric of Defeat / Max L. Goldman -- Spartan Responses to Defeat: From a Mythical Hysiae to a Very Real Sellasia / Matthew Trundle -- “No Strength To Stand”: Defeat at Panium, the Macedonian Class, and Ptolemaic Decline / Paul Johstono -- Defeat and the Roman Republic: Stories from Spain / Jessica H. Clark -- The Ones Who Paid the Butcher’s Bill: Soldiers and War Captives in Roman Comedy / Amy Richlin -- Defeated by the Forest, the Pass, the Wind: Nature as an Enemy of Rome / Ida Östenberg -- Imperial Reactions to Military Failures in the Julio-Claudian Era / Brian Turner -- “By Any Other Name”: Disgrace, Defeat, and the Loss of Legionary History / Graeme A. Ward -- Recycling the Classical Past: Rhetorical Responses from the Roman Period to a Military Loss in Classical Greece / Sviatoslav Dmitriev -- The Roman Emperor as Persian Prisoner of War: Remembering Shapur’s Capture of Valerian / Craig H. Caldwell -- Looking Ahead / Nathan Rosenstein -- Index.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

In Brill's Companion to Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society , Jessica H. Clark and Brian Turner lead a re-examination of how Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman societies addressed – or failed to address – their military defeats and casualties of war. Original case studies illuminate not only how political and military leaders managed the political and strategic consequences of military defeats, but also the challenges facing defeated soldiers, citizens, and other classes, who were left to negotiate the meaning of defeat for themselves and their societies. By focusing on the connections between war and society, history and memory, the chapters collected in this volume contribute to our understanding of the ubiquity and significance of war losses in the ancient world.