War Poetry

Abstract

Abstract The use of poetry to celebrate military victories, praise heroic acts, and mourn the slain is much older than alphabetic writing. Biblical scholars believe that the “Song of Miriam” in the book of Exodus—“Sing ye to the L ORD , for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15:21, KJV)—preserves part of a poem actually sung to celebrate the defeat of Pharaoh's pursuing army (ca. 1450 BCE ). The longer and more elaborate “Song of Deborah” (Judges 5), commemorating the defeat and death of the Canaanite captain Sisera, is also among the oldest portions of the Hebrew Bible. It probably dates from the eighth century BCE —the same century in which the Greek oral poet Homer composed the Iliad . Poetry in ancient cultures was a way to preserve knowledge, and wars were among the events these cultures most wished to remember. But ease of memorization was not the only reason why poetry became a preferred medium for tales of war. In the ancient world as in many later periods, poets embraced warfare as an opportunity to display their creative powers, and soldiers trusted poets to make their deeds immortal. So powerful were the images of war poems that allegorical poems on other topics had already begun to draw upon them in ancient times. The Sanskrit Bhagavad‐Gita (first written down in the first century CE , but composed much earlier) stages its philosophical and moral dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna in a chariot on a battlefield; the Christian Psychomachia of Prudentius (405 CE ) depicts the struggle between vices and virtues as a battle.