The solider who wouldn’t go home

Sometimes, stories from the ancient world inspire within us a sense of awe, at other times disgust, and sometimes shock; but then there are times when ancient stories can make us rather amused. I was very much in the latter emotional state when I came across a fascinating letter from Ptolemaic Egypt.

In my academic research, I am currently exploring the concept of ancient veteranality – the state of being a military veteran in the ancient world. While my focus is on the 5^th and 4^th centuries BCE in Greece, much of our evidence for veterans comes from this slightly later period and usually in a different part of the world; as regular readers well know, Egypt is so often our best location for written evidence from the people themselves.

Something that ignited this interest of mine was researching about the transition men went through when coming home from war. In ancient Greece this was a very common experience and one that the people of Athens, in particular, would often portray in their dramas. From Agamemnon’s murder, to Ajax’s suicide, the Athenians did not always see a military homecoming as a simple or purely joyous occasion. It was a period of transition, one wrought with potential barriers and problems to be faced by both the veteran and their family.

Now, we need to always be careful assuming that experiences are shared across the centuries. However, there is little reason to believe that issues surrounding military homecomings were not still the case during the Hellenistic period – as this letter shows, expectations of homecoming did not always match reality.