Hello, welcome to another episode of the Ancient Warfare Magazine podcast. In this episode,

we're going to be discussing the concept of death and dying in the ancient world. It's thanks to

Vim, one of our patrons who suggested the topic. If you do enjoy the podcast, why not become a patron of the

show? Throw a shekel or two in the virtual ball each

month. We do try to give something back to our patrons who get to watch us record live, and Mary

has been recording some bits and pieces exclusively for patrons. So to find out more, have a look at

patreon.com slash ancient warfare podcast. So to find out more, have a look at patreon.com slash ancient warfare podcasts.

So to get to the main feature, joining me today are Yesboretage, Murray Darm, Mark McCaffrey

and Mark DeSantis.

So the concept of death, dying, killing, how is it described and perceived?

Murray, you had some thoughts which might kick us off, thinking of great deaths.

How important was it to die well?

Well, I think the ancient world has a whole pile of great death, sort of obsession, if you like.

I mean, probably Leonidus, King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae is one of the sort of the most famous great deaths of not just King Leonidus, but his entire bodyguard.

But when you start to spread the net widely, you've got lots of anecdotal and historical accounts which concentrate on

the deaths of heroes and warriors, you know, all the way from the Iliad onwards and in both

Greek and Roman contexts and not just military ones. So, you know, when you look at the Iliad,

the Iliad is mostly about killing and quite gory, you know, the sword point passing between the third and the fourth ribbon coming out the shoulder blade and, you know, eyeballs getting stomped on and Julius Caesar and all sorts of amazing imagery.

Well, just, I'm trying to be inclusive of the entire period. You know,

there's, there's accounts of great deaths, you know, and even Amiensis Mycelinus has people

dying at the siege of Armida in such a crush that they couldn't, the body couldn't fall over

because there were so many people around them holding the body up, you know, and Amelia's Paulus being skewered by so many spears that he couldn't fall over,

...