Ancient War Monuments of the Greeks and Romans DOCUMENTARY

In modern times, trophies show up all over the place. Sporting events, spelling bees, eating contests, beauty pageants, and more. They can be awarded for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes for no reason at all. However, it's interesting to consider where trophies come from. In this video, we'll be taking a look at the gruesome origin of the trophy from antiquity. I spend a lot of time reading history books to make these documentaries, yet I still find myself with a growing list of titles I just don't have time to get to. I'm sure in your own busy life, it can be tough to find the time to explore as many books as you'd like. Thankfully, our sponsor Blinkist has a solution. Blinkist is an app that takes thousands of non-fiction books and uses experts to distill them down to their most essential ideas for you to easily digest with text or audio in just 15 minutes. This can be super helpful for engaging with subjects you'd never otherwise get to or for making a shortlist of the books you definitely want to read in full. As an example, I've finally been able to delve into Stephen Levitt's Freakonomics, Yuval Harari's Sapiens, and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It's honestly been extremely liberating and a huge breath of fresh air for my ever-curious mind. You can check it out right now by clicking the link in the description below to get a 7-day trial. In addition, the first 100 people will get 25% off a full membership. So check it out! I want to start by saying that no one can really be credited with the invention of celebrating a victory. After all, it's a quite natural human reaction to have, especially in the face of overwhelming adversity. This happens a lot when it comes to warfare, which is also quite common across our species. Looking around the world, one can find all sorts of ways that people have celebrated their victories. In this video, though, we'll be tracing the evolution of one specific practice of celebration, that of the tropaeon, from which the English word trophy is derived. The word itself comes from Greece, and it is here where our story begins. In the Bronze Age period, the feuding people of the Aegean often found themselves at each other's throats. Combat in this age was generally less organized than it would be in later years, and thus had a greater focus on the individual. It seems that this translated to the practice of more personalized war celebration. For example, the defeat of a foe was marked by the removal of their gear and its dedication to the gods. This practice features quite prominently in the work of Homer. For instance, in Book 10 of the Iliad, after Odysseus and Daomede killed Dalon, they strip him of his weapons and armor, holding them up for Athena the spoiler. Odysseus is then quoted Hail goddess, these are yours. To you first of all the immortal on Olympus, we will give you your due share. Only guide us once again to where the Thracians sleep and their horses lie. Homer then writes of how the Greek heroes wrapped up the spoils and later laid them down by the stern of the ship, presumably to bring them to one of the goddess' temples. This sort of practice would continue for centuries, into the early classical age. If you were to visit the ancient temples, you would find them filled with many spoils of war and other rich treasures dedicated to the gods. However, as time went on, things would begin to change. This period was marked by the rise of the polis and of hoplite warfare where an emphasis on the community grew more pronounced. This led to a greater sense of collectivism in battle as opposed to the individual victory of heroes from before. As a result, the way of celebrating victory over an enemy changed. It appears that now, the Greeks were marking out where their army had prevailed over the enemy. Rather than where I won, it was where we won. Often this came at a critical point on the battlefield where combat was said to have broken one way or another. This turn, or tropie, in Greek is what gives rise to the term tropaeon. The tropaeon could take many forms, but basically amounted to an ad hoc monument put together with what you readily had on hand. This meant erecting a statue of wood dressed in some of the best war gear from the field. The statue might be hoisted in the air from a tree branch or stood up on a pole rammed into the ground. Around it were often laid additional pieces of weapons and armor. As such, they were quite ephemeral. Our first evidence of the practice occurs in the Greco-Persian wars of the 400s BC. For example, trophies were following the important victories of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. By the time of Thucydides, this practice appears to have become quite commonplace. In his writings on the Peloponnesian War, we find 41 occasions in which a tropaeon is raised. Yet despite their common appearance, or perhaps because of it, we are never told by ancient authors why these trophies went up. Sure they celebrated victory, but how exactly? We get a clue by turning to a line from the tragedian Aeschylus who writes of how Aetiocles vowed to make an animal sacrifice, to dedicate spoils in a temple, and to erect trophies for the gods if they were to grant him victory. Thus we see that the trophies are bucketed into a category of their own. Obviously, the fact that these monuments went up on the battlefield also bears great significance. Some have posited that they may have been the focal point of directed prayers and offerings in the immediate aftermath of a fight, or that the trophies themselves were imbued with some power that would grant victors future glories. Indeed, they were seen as having some holy property to them, as it was considered a sacrilege for any to destroy an existing tropaeon. Thus, some hotly contested areas of territory might even see several monuments at a time. One could try to get around this religious protection by passive-aggressively hiding a trophy from view with a wall, as the Rhodians are supposed to have done. Yet the most probable explanation for why the tropaea existed is that they had been integrated into the formulaic process surrounding the end of battle. Ancient combat after all was quite ritualized, especially amongst the Greeks, and it was very important to officially recognize who had won. For instance, the victor was usually the side which could claim dominion of the battlefield, having driven the enemy from it. This victor, thus, had free reign over the despoiling of enemy soldiers and the burial of their own undisturbed dead. The defeated, on the other hand, had to send heralds to formally request permission to gather their own fallen. The erection of the tropaeon by one party would take place at this time and represent a further memorialization of victory. In some close-fought battles though, both sides might wish to claim victory and thus race to erect a tropaeon. At the naval battle of Sibota, for instance, the Corinthian left wing defeated the opposing Athenians while their own right wing was defeated by the opposing Corcyans. Both sides had access to spoils and could recover some of their dead, which appears to have been enough to see each side establish monuments to victory. Apparently, after the battle of Leuctra, the Spartans even considered sending forces to prevent the Thebans from raising a tropaeon, but eventually sent heralds instead to recover the dead, bowing their head formally in defeat. In addition to the primary tropaeon established on or near the battlefield, there could be one or more secondary tropaeon. These were typically meant to be more permanent symbols of victory, made of bronze or stone, which were located in key locations such as temples, city gates, or highly trafficked roads. They could vary in size, with some actually becoming quite monumental. In addition to decorative carvings and statues, would be an inscription. This often included the following components. The name of the battle, the name of both sides and sometimes their leaders, and the dedication to a specific god. It's quite obvious what sort of propagandic value these could have. The Greeks, it turns out, were more than willing to build them in commemoration of vanquished foreigners, but had a sort of gentleman's agreement not to do so when it came to fighting fellow Greeks. For instance, when the Thebans erected a permanent monument at Lutra to commemorate their victory over the Spartans, they were heavily criticized by their peers, who stated, it is not right for Greeks to set up a permanent memorial to their quarrels with Greeks. As with many other things, it seems that the Romans were quick to adopt the tropaeon from the Greeks. We have records of primary trophies being erected in the field in manner similar to what we have described. However, the Romans were far more eager to adopt the use of permanent monuments than their neighbors. For one, the Italians were almost always fighting a new group of foreigners, and so had less to worry about when it came to the sensitive topic of celebrating a victory over one's countrymen. We see this come into play, for example, with trams, in which trophies likely featured prominently, when the general public was all cool with cheering on the destruction of the Gauls, for instance, but could find it in bad taste to cheer such things during a civil war. Another reason why the Romans seemed to have preferred the permanent monuments is because they were highly visible. It was quite important for politicians to be able to flaunt their victories before the voters, and what better way than with a great big monument? It's from this idea that we get things like triumphal arches and columns that still prominently feature in Rome today. The symbol of the tropaeon became so widely recognized that it even became a common symbol used on coins to depict victories over various foes. Later on, as future civilizations looked to the Greeks and Romans for cultural inspiration, they would pick up on the symbolism of the tropaeon as well. It's at the end of this long process of imitation that we finally get the trophies of today. I hope you remember that the next time you see one. A huge thanks to the patrons who fund the channel, and to the many researchers, writers, and artists who made this video possible. Be sure to like and subscribe for more content, and check out the rest of these related videos. Thanks for watching!