Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rachel M. Stein, Vengeful Citizens, Violent States. A Theory Of War And Revenge, Jamie Gonzalez

Comparative Civilizations Review

From the very outset, Western civilization postulated revenge as a significant cause of armed conflict. The Iliad’s storyline, the first extant literary text in our Western tradition, revolves around the concept of a Greek retaliatory military campaign against a foreign enemy. The Greeks sail to Priam’s city, intending to make the Trojans pay for the abduction of Helen. The first historiography work in the Western canon (Herodotus’ Histories) posits a framework of an eternal cycle of revenge between East and West. The “Father of History” structures the narrative at the beginning of his work as a cycle of abduction …