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War, Peace and Resilience in the Ancient World Narratives

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Throughout their history, all cultures of the ancient world have experienced periods of war and peace, demonstrating great resilience in overcoming long battles or in restoring the social order destroyed by the conflicts. Since man is a homo narrans and narration is one of the main means he uses to organise the reality in which he lives, even war and peace have been explained and made intelligible through processes of narration.

Taking into account that religion is as well subjected to continuous narrative processes, this book investigates how and to what extent religious elements were used to narrate peace and war in various cultures of the ancient world. In particular, the different essays reflect on: the role assigned to specific extra-human agents in the outbreak of wars or in the stipulation of peace pacts; the reuse of known mythical motifs to explicate, justify, or establish war and peace; the narration of the relationships between political and military leaders with religious practitioners and extra-human agents; the creation ad hoc of new narratives featuring extra-human agents as main characters of war and peace.

Published: May 1, 2026

Series

Section Chapter Authors
Chapter 1
‘I did not want war; the gods did!’ Ancient Near Eastern Justifications for War in the Late Bronze Age Sasha Alessandro Volpi
Chapter 2
Myth to Epic: The Imagination of War in Syro-Mesopotamia Jérôme Pace
Chapter 3
Divine Aid in Military Campaigns of South Mesopotamian Rulers in the Late Third and Early Second Millennia BCE Iakov Kadochnikov
Chapter 4
'Reconcile the gods of Babylonia with your gods!': Rewriting of the Past and Storytelling of the Present at the Time of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon (681-669 BC) Marinella Ceravolo
Chapter 5
The Practical Dimension of Neo-Assyrian Militarism. Terror of War or an Ideological Path to Power? Krzysztof Ulanowski
Chapter 6
The Phoenicians’ Impiety in the Narrative Process of Herodotus’ Work: The Theft of the Statue of Apollo as an Omen of Barbaric Defeat Jérémy Bonner
Chapter 7
Anchored in Resilience during Wars: The Eleusinian Mysteries KATIA RASSIA
Chapter 8
In the Name of Jupiter: Prodigies and Omens in Silius Italicus’ Punica Diletta Vignola
Chapter 9
When Rome Spared Capua: The Intervention of God Pan in Silius’ Punica (XIII, 314-347) Émilie Borron
Chapter 10
'Heaven, however, resented this haughty spirit': Religion in the Caudine Forks Narration and Historiographical Interventions Davide Morelli
Chapter 11
Inter febres morbosque reipublicae: Orosius on Roman Wars in Hist. 3, 8 Elisa Manzo
Chapter 12
Scourges in Late IV Century, a Syriac Point of View Matteo Poiani