sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

Johannes Wienand: Der politische Tod

As evidenced by the current book under review, the demosion sema and the burial of casualties of war in Classical Athens remain a fruitful subject, providing scholars with a rich archive for study and analysis. Johannes Wienand, in this revised and expanded publication of his 2018 habilitation thesis, offers a cogent and systematic analysis of the public burial of the war dead in Classical Athens as well as the related speech acts and later literary genre associated with this practice, the latter which Wienand labels specifically as epitaphioi logoi.

Wienand's work makes a series of interventions, offering a strong reevaluation of both archaeological and textual evidence, which he divides more clearly than earlier studies on this nexus of subjects. [1] For Wienand, there is a clear distinction between the oral performance at the annual burial of fallen soldiers (Gefallenenrede), in contrast to the later literary form which emerges in the fourth century (epitaphios).

The book is well produced and divided into two parts: after a concise introduction, Wienand provides in the first study a diachronic examination of the material evidence for public burials of the war dead in Athens (chapters 1-4). The second study focuses on the literary texts, the epitaphioi logoi, and adjacent prose works alluding to this specific rhetorical genre, forming a distinct corpus of literary evidence (chapters 5-8). The two parts of the monograph are well integrated and cross-referenced, but may also be consulted as separate works depending on a particular reader's needs or interests. Following a conclusion, weaving both parts of the monograph together, the reader is presented with two useful catalogues: the first enumerates the relevant literary sources in Wienand's study, with current surveys of textual editions, interpretive scholarship, and relevant commentaries. The second catalogue furnishes the reader with an epigraphic dossier, with updated bibliographical references for inscriptions related to the Athenian casualty lists and public burial of the war dead.

I note here that this second catalogue is particularly useful, concisely summarizing extensive scholarly discussion after the publication of Inscriptiones Graecae I³ (fascicle 2) along with other relevant inscriptions. Wienand naturally has more space to consider arguments in his monograph than the compressed annotations in IG. While the reader may still want to consult a particular epigraphic text elsewhere, the forty high quality illustrations, useful reference map, and handy chronological chart which complete the volume guarantee that this monograph will be a standard reference work on this topic for years to come.

Part 1 offers an excellent synthesis of earlier archaeological reports and studies, providing a cohesive image of the changes and evolution of public burial in Athens. While one may hold different views on a particular piece of evidence, Wienand's service to the reader here is presenting a coherent historical narrative. [2] The author deftly handles thorny chronological issues, particularly with reference to the Pentecontaetia and integrates recent discussions of Cimonian Athens into his own reconstruction of events. [3] For Wienand, the emergence of casualty lists represents a form of isonomic death or burial, a phenomenon which is almost immediately undermined by the emergence of ranked distinction in later casualty lists; he considers the public annual burial to begin as a civic ritual in 449/8 BCE, with the emergence of rank or distinction already in the 430s. Here, Wienand's analysis of isonomic death and its contestation complements Nathan Arrington's recent study of several private cenotaphs for Athenian casualties during the Peloponnesian War, found elsewhere in Attica. [4] Wienand argues forcefully for a significant deterioration in the practice of annual burial after the interment of the Spartans in 403 BCE. For Wienand, this Laconizing monument in the Athenian cityscape was an inversion of Athenian civic space, regardless of later rhetorical attempts at reconfiguration (Lysias 2.63). The author, in contrast to other scholarly views, emphatically rejects the continuity of burial practice in the fourth century, and thus, the later rhetorical epitaphioi, much like literary epigram, become detached from their subject.

The four chapters in part 2 are structured around dyads, with each chapter comparing two authors who authored epitaphioi or employed its generic qualities in other texts: Thucydides and Gorgias; Archinos and Lysias; Plato and Isocrates; and concluding with Demosthenes and Hypereides. Scholars and specialists of each of these individual texts and authors will be interested in Wienand's analysis here, particularly on the recuperation of both the Gefallenenrede and epitaphios of Archinos, neglected in earlier studies. In light of his clear separation of the archaeological evidence, it becomes apparent (and is well argued) that the Periclean funeral oration in Thucydides' text looks back at a past civic ritual, curating a memory of a form of public burial that was essentially on a nine-year hiatus following the regime of the Thirty Tyrants and subsequently abandoned in actual practice. Wienand's interest in the literary nature of the genre, in contrast to the actual speeches delivered at the demosion sema, is manifest since both Gorgias and Lysias were not Athenian citizens and would have never delivered such remarks. As Wienand demonstrates, the only two individuals we know of who presented both public remarks and published a literary epitaphios are Archinos and Demosthenes.

Wienand's monograph will be required reading for advanced students studying the institutions of ancient Athens in detail who need a precise overview of this topic. Cultural historians and archaeologists alike will need to engage with the book substantively in future publications, especially in considering the evolution of Athenian public burial in the fourth century. Wienand succeeds in his interdisciplinarity, combining archaeological analysis with close readings in Athenian historiography and rhetoric, as well as later issues of textual transmission. A parallel line for future inquiry, outside of Wienand's focus on the demosion sema, will surely be the contemporary burial of Athenian war dead elsewhere in Attica, and, naturally, the burial of foreign allies beyond the demosion sema. [5]

Notes:

[1] Wienand is responding especially to Nicole Loraux: The Invention of Athens. The Funeral Oration in the Classical City. Trans. Alan Sheridan, New York 2006 (French 1981). Wienand's survey of the varied Archaic and Classical evidence for the treatment of Athenian war dead replaces earlier studies such as W.K. Pritchett: The Greek State at War, Part IV. Berkeley 1985. (Chapter 2), but his focus is exclusively the demosion sema in contrast to Greek practice elsewhere.

[2] E.g., Wienand gives detailed analysis of the internal structure of the tomb of the Lacedaemonians, but this hierarchy (in contrast to the external inscription) would not be readily apparent to a later viewer of the monument.

[3] E.g., Matteo Zaccarini: The Lame Hegemony: Cimon of Athens and the Failure of Panhellenism, ca. 478-450 BC. Bologna 2017.

[4] Nathan Arrington: Ashes, Images, and Memories: The Presence of the War Dead in Fifth-Century Athens. Oxford 2016. See especially chapter 6.

[5] See now Matthew Sears: "Old Battles and New Funerary Monuments: Tombstones Along Sacred Routes in Classical Attica.", in: Hesperia 94 (2025), 95-141. For this reviewer, Wienand's analysis raises interesting issues of interpretation concerning e.g., Lysias of Tegea (IG I³ 1371bis; a casualty at Dekeleia?) or Anchimolios and the Archaic Spartans buried at Kynosarges (Hdt. 5.63).