EVENT CANCELLED – Open lecture: Dulce et Decorum – To Die for the Fatherland in Ancient Greece and Rome

Open lecture

BRIDGES. SWEDISH INSTIITUTES AT ATHENS AND ROME JOINT LECTURE SERIES

DULCE ET DECORUM – TO DIE FOR THE FATHERLAND IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME 

Ida Östenberg (University of Gothenburg)

We regret that the lecture has been postponed for a future date (to be announced).

The Roman poet Horace famously wrote Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s fatherland’, an expression that Wilfred Owen, poet and soldier during the First World War, called ‘the old lie’. However, my research suggests that Horace’s verse did not, contrary to the common opinion, represent a traditional Roman view. In Rome, victory was the only acceptable outcome. Thus, Rome as a society did not celebrate their fallen, nor did they bury them with honours. Instead, in my view, Horace gives voice to a Greek view that lauded the fallen youth and treated them as heroes. I believe further that Cicero was instrumental in introducing the concept in late Republican Rome, and that the idea was exploited by the novel imperial dynastic family, to make sense of the premature deaths of several young male members.  In my lecture, I will analyse and discuss the difference in the Greek and Roman view, while also providing a few examples of how the ancient ideas have been used and misused in other wars, historical and present.

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAlce6trzgrHNNAdWFjhTmsACrBjWR7iCdc

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