Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film

Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film is the first volume exclusively dedicated to the study of a theme that informs virtually every reimagining of the classical world on the big screen: armed conflict. Through a vast array of case studies, from the silent era to recent years, the collection traces cinema’s enduring fascination with battles and violence in antiquity and explores the reasons, both synchronic and diachronic, for the central place that war occupies in celluloid Greece and Rome. Situating films in their artistic, economic, and sociopolitical context, the essays cast light on the industrial mechanisms through which the ancient battlefield is refashioned in cinema and investigate why the medium adopts a revisionist approach to textual and visual sources.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments List of Figures Notes on Contributors Part 1: Introduction 1 Swords Made of Rubber: Cinematic Antiquity through the Lens of War  Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos Part 2: Cinema vs. History: Testing the Accuracy of Celluloid Battles 2 Form and Function: The Importance of Military Formations in Cinematic Depictions of the Roman Army  Jeremy Armstrong 3 Alexander in Ares’ Mirror: Armed Conflict in Oliver Stone’s Historical Epic  Elias Koulakiotis Part 3: The Leading Men of Celluloid Armies 4 “Hail! The Sign of the Cross”: Industrial Campaigns and Commanding Performances in The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934)  Michael Williams 5 Richard Burton in Alexander the Great (1956) and the Mechanisms of Hollywood Stardom: Fashioning an Ancient Military Icon in Post-WWII American Cinema  Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos 6 Brad’s Biceps and Dwayne’s Delts: Stardom as Physicality and Digital Spectacle in Troy (2004) and Hercules (2014)  Djoymi Baker Part 4: Women and Military Conflict 7 Atalanta as Celluloid Warrior in Jason and the Argonauts (2000) and Hercules (2014)  Patricia Salzman-Mitchell 8 Women on the Battlefield: Ancient Warrior Queens and Female Military Commanders on the Millennial Screen  Irene Berti 9 “She Wants to Be Married and Give the Children Names!”: Women and the Roman Army in Post-Gladiator Films  Jorit Wintjes 10 Women in Captivity: The Human Cost of Armed Conflict from the Trojan War to Modern Greek Cinema  Anastasia Bakogianni Part 5: Western Colonialism and Racist Attitudes 11 Rome vs. Carthage: Imperial and Racist Aspirations in Italian Films of the Twentieth Century  Arthur J. Pomeroy 12 Porus vs. Alexander in Modi’s Sikandar (1941) and Stone’s Alexander (2004–2014)  Seán Easton Part 6: Ancient Warfare on Film and Modern Politics 13 Armed Conflict in Italian Historical Films of the Fascist and Post-WWII Era (1937–1954)  Óscar Lapeña Marchena 14 The Noise of War: Sound, Politics and Space in the Italian Peplum  Robert A. Rushing 15 “Make Love, Not War”: Roman Soldiers and 1960s Countercultural Masculinity in Fellini-Satyricon  Renata Senna Garraffoni 16 Epic Combat in Ancient and Modern History: A Comparative Analysis of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and The Longest Day (1962)  Jonathan Stubbs 17 Lysistrata (1972): Political and Sexual Refractions of the Peloponnesian War during the Greek Junta  Kaiti Diamantakou Part 7: Ancient Battles for Millennial Spectators and the Impact of the Hollywood War Film 18 Sensational Violence: Brutality in Twenty-First-Century Cinematic Depictions of Roman Battles  Hannah-Marie Chidwick 19 Rockules’ Revenge: The Portrayal of the Veteran Warrior in Brett Ratner’s Hercules  Owen Rees 20 Romans and Zealots in the Global War on Terror: Asymmetric Warfare and Counterinsurgency in Risen (2016) and Ben-Hur (2016)  Oskar Aguado-Cantabrana Part 8: Epilogue 21 To Be Continued: Considerations of Ancient Warfare in Film  Lee L. Brice Index