The Communalization of Trauma through the Visual Arts: Images of War in Greece and Etruria in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE

Abstract

This thesis explores the cathartic potential of the visual arts through an investigation of images of the war dead on painted vessels and gems from 6th and 5th century BCE Greece and Etruria. My research builds on the large body of work on the cathartic properties of the arts, an idea first proposed in Aristotle’s Poetics and investigated in modern scholarship by authors such as Jonathan Shay. My goal is to frame the ancient visual arts as a mode for cathartic release through the communalization of trauma and grief as a result of war. I investigate imagery on painted vessels, largely from tomb assemblages in Etruria and Athens as well as a group of mostly unprovenanced intaglios and gems attributed to the Etruscans and/or Greeks. This research will demonstrate that, when placed correctly within their social, mythological, and historical contexts, these objects and their imagery of the war dead would have aided in grieving, healing from trauma, and loss of agency in times of war.