Can an Ancient Truth Become an Old Lie? A Few Methodological Remarks Concerning Current Comparative Research on War and its Aftermath

Explicitly comparative studies which analyse aspects of ancient history with reference to comparanda from the modern world are becoming more and more frequent in historical research. War and its aftermath have always been a favourite topic of comparative historical research, in the political, military and socio-economic spheres, and, more recently, in relation to collective emotions, psychological reactions and forms of commemoration. Serving, to some extent, as an introduction to the whole book, this essay discusses several case studies concerning the experience of war and post-war (commemoration of war and war dead in public discourse and monumentality; the multimedia representation of war; post-war trauma), which scholars have already approached from a relatively consistent comparative stand-point. Its aim is not to treat each case study in detail, but to comment on them from a methodological perspective, in order to show, through a few relevant examples, the need to avoid perfunctory comparisons between ancient and modern phenomena, and instead to pursue a coherent historical contextualization.