Ajax carrying 'his best friend' Achilles off the battlefield. AJAX was known as 'The Shield.'
This is a printed excerpt from Episode Five: “The 24th Shitkickers Were Never the Same after the Peloponnese.” I thought it important enough to put on the blog.
(Beginning of recorded section.)
I’m visiting Washington, D.C. I’m told that Sophocles is in town. He’s at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences on the same ground as the famous Bethesda Naval Hospital. He’s behind a gate guarded by Marines. Well, not the real Sophocles, but his play, his words have wound up here close to Washington, D.C.
The question is, what does Sophocles have to do with a bunch of doctors and psychologists who have gathered here in this medical theater? Well, we have been invited to the reading of the Sophocles play titled, Ajax.
It is a workday and many of the audience have left their jobs and offices to take an hour or two to listen. A reading is where actors sit at a table and say the words from the scripts that lay in front of them. This is a cheap way to put on a show, no costumes, no staging. In the audience are doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists from the university and probably from Bethesda Naval Hospital. There are many different types of uniforms; Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and in the audience are wounded veterans, men and women without arms, legs and service members who have experienced battle firsthand. They have scars; they’re just scars that cannot be seen.
This theater is wood paneled and has approximately 300 seats and has hosted more lectures on medicine and more words on symptom, treatment, and result than the words that are about to be spoken here today. They will talk of ancient heroes, the will of the gods and the state of men.
What is happening is unique.
Amari Cheatom seemed to play the part of the Greek Chorus -- many voices telling truths and inner thoughts.
In front of me is a table with four or five seats and the actors are warming up for the performance to come. They seemed familiar, they should be. From left to right; Amari Cheathom, Broadway and off Broadway actor starred in a play called, Book of Grace, many other stage roles and recently graduated from the prestigious Julliard School of Acting; Chad Coleman, star of many films and television series, recently shot the Green Hornet which will be out in December; Karen Young from the series, The Sopranos, play the female FBI agent, she was recently in a Sam Shepherd play called, A Lie of the Mind; and finally, we have Reed Birney, New York City actor, recently in a play called, Blasted, a very respected TV and stage actor.
Chad Coleman read the part of AJAX and KING AGAMEMNON. He is powerful. He shouted out, "Athena, Daughter of Zeus!" As if he expected her to show up on the stage itself.
Chad Coleman you may recognize from the HBO hit TV show, The Wire. Upon entering the theater, I caught him testing his voice. He kept on shouting out, “Athena, daughter of Zeus,” looking up at the rafters sending his voice out like a ballista sending out a rock against a fortressed wall. He has a powerful voice and a powerful presence. In the reading today, he plays two parts; Ajax and King Agamemnon.
In readings, actors usually double up on the roles. Karen Young plays Athena and Ajax’s wife, Tecmessa.
I caught Mr. Coleman after the show.
Karen Young played ATHENA AND TECMESSA. She was a goddess and a tragic wife, power and pain from one person.
ROB CAIN: That the words that are spoken are older than me, older than this country, older than many nations that exist today, how does it feel like to speak the words that have come over thousands of years and they seemed like something that could have been written yesterday.
COLEMAN: It’s a testament to the human experience. The human experience defies time, you know, there are buildings, there is geography, there is you know the clothes we wear, and all of that, that’s more identifiable with time than human behavior. Human behavior transcends time, obviously, the same things they experience then we are absolutely experiencing now, which is what makes Sophocles so brilliant. Can you get to the epicenter, to the core of human behavior because if you can it’s going to be relatable forever.
(End of COLEMAN Interview)
ROB CAIN: And then there is the director. Mr. Doerries is a New York based writer, translator, director and educator. He is the founder of a theatrical organization called Theater of War. A project that presents readings of ancient Greek plays to service members. In addition to his work in the theater, Bryan serves as an advisor for the nonprofit Alliance for Young Artist and Writers. He lectures on his work at colleges and universities. Over the last couple of years, Mr. Doerries has directed film and stage actors and readings of his translations.
Bryan Doerries, director and Translator of the play AJAX. His work is touring the country telling service members “You are not alone in this room, you are not alone across the country, and you are not alone across time.”
INTERVIEWEE: My name is Bryan Doerries. I’m the founder of Theater of War and I started the project in 2008.
ROB CAIN: Did I hear you correctly that you say that you translated it?
DOERRIES: Yes. I translated the play, Ajax that was performed today, and another, Philoctetes. My background is in classics, Greek and Latin and I came to theater through classics because I love ancient plays and I came to directing through my desire to make those plays come alive and I came to the military because I wanted to find an audience for those ancient plays.
ROB CAIN: What made you decide to translate it yourself as oppose to relying on somebody else?
DOERRIES: There are thousands of translations of every Greek play that exist in every possible language in the Western world. Unfortunately,
Reed Birney (r.) played TEUCER. An archer deadly accurate in his aim. His outrage was powerful, and his criticism on target.
most of them sound like they were written in the 19th century. I’m interested in creating a translation that speaks to the moment, to now and engages people with idioms that they can relate to. That’s not in any slight to the original text. We are always re-inventing the Greeks, the Italians did it in the Renaissance, our founding fathers did it as they built neoclassical architecture throughout this country and our democracy did it, our aesthetics have done it in this country. We have appropriated many things but always with our American perspective. This is a new American translation of this ancient Greek play.
ROB CAIN: When I was listening to Ajax’s wife. She turned to her husband and she said a word that seemed very military to me. She said affirmative. Now, I’m having a hard time understanding the choice of that word. I can’t believe it was in Greek language but was that chosen or was that actually a word?
DOERRIES: Actually, it wasn’t Ajax’s wife, it was Athena who is the head of all…she’s the goddess of war. She is the highest ranking officers of all officers in all armies. And so for her to say affirmative as a word choice is actually quite natural. She is the highest ranking person in the entire Greek army. And to Odysseus, she says affirmative and many other words in the scene to continue to reinforce for Odysseus who is a high ranking officer in the Greek army that she’s in charge. I’ll also say this, you know, let’s not get hung up on what ancient Greek words would sound like in English because there’s no way to do that. A translation is a text along side another text. There is no chemical process by which you distill an ancient word into a modern word. There is no original into English, that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, I think many people are not aware of the role of the translator in making texts vital. These are performed text. The only way for them to work is for them to sound natural and spoken and clear coming out of actor’s mouth in front of audiences. They’re not to be read, they are to be heard and so that’s the aim that I have in mind as a translator writing affirmative.
ROB CAIN: I read a book, The Last Days of Pompeii, which sounded very much 19th century. I see what you’re trying to get.
DORRIES: Yeah. I mean the Greek lexicon, the dictionary from which most classicist work was codified the 19th, so all the translations of what Greek word sound like and what the idiom sound like sound Victorian, well that’s because that’s when the dictionary was written. The Greeks sounded no more Victorian than the characters in the Hebrew bible, but that’s a choice and we can choose to make them sound like us because in their own time they sounded like them.
ROB CAIN: In taking this performance around to different places, what has it given you?
DORRIES: Oh man, it has been a dream come true. To do something that is meaningful in the theater for an audience that responds the way you heard the audience this morning responds emotionally, presently, as if the place were written for them. There is no greater gift as an artist than to be given an opportunity to do that and I think that’s why so many great actors have joined me on this journey. I have about 50 actors have joined me to perform these plays over the last year and a half and many of them are well-known actors who are giving their time to do it, it’s a rare opportunity to be able to do something with your craft that is helpful to others and you could see a meaningful difference being made through it and also what it gives to me. Well, you know, every week I go up against several hundred military service members in dialogue and conversation. I try to facilitate conversations everywhere from the Department of Defense to Army bases to the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton, and I’ve done more than 60 of them and I’ve gotten really comfortable figuring out what things need to be said or not said in order to get an audience talking and about difficult subject matter and I feel like it’s been kind of a Jedi knight training. I mean something that you can’t acquire unless you do it 65 times or a hundred times unless you step out and take the risk of people not talking and you try to figure out how to get them to talk. And so for me, I’ve just grown so much as a human being, as a facilitator over this last two years doing this work.
ROB CAIN: Just one more question, in looking at this ancient text, do you think people really change?
DOERRIES: I think there are elements of the human experience that have not changed for thousands of years and probably will not change and I think what Theater of War points to is the universality of the human experience of war across cultures, across time. If we had one message, it’s not a negative message that we’re repeating history, it’s a positive message which is, “You are not alone in this room, you are not alone across the country, and you are not alone across time.” I had a veteran come up to me after one of our performances and say, “Bryan that PTSD is from BC makes me feel less alone in the world.” It’s precisely that we can relate to ancient stories and see our own experiences reflected in ancient narrative and know that others who have come before us have struggled with the same things we’re feeling that allows us to know that we are not the only ones who have had these experiences and that’s really the aim of Theater of War.
ROB CAIN: Thank you very much.
DOERRIES: Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for coming.
(End of Recording, segment from Episode Five, “The 24th Shitkickers Were Never the Same after the Peloponnese.”)
If you are interested in finding out more about Mr. Bryan Dorries, AJAX and his company THEATER OF WAR go to: http://www.philoctetesproject.org/
Rob Cain has traveled extensively through Europe, Italy, and Egypt. He was formerly on active duty with the United States Army. He is a fan of history, and enjoys reading books on the history of Rome. He currently has a podcast presentation on itunes and hipcast. The blog is for the free and open discussion of Ancient Rome based on Mr. Cain's observations noted in his podcast. Most episodes start out with an original dramatic narration written by Mr. Cain. In the podcasts he will include his own unique commentary, and interviews with subject matter experts. Comments are welcome and will be highlighted on the show. 
Episode 10, “Nothing New Under the Sun. Get Over it”, features the book, “The Ancient Guide to Modern Life” written by author, comedian, and TV commentator Natalie Haynes.” Whether political, cultural, or social, there are endless parallels between the ancient and modern worlds. Whether it's the murder of Caesar or the political assassination of Thatcher; the narrative arc of the hit HBO series, The Wire, or that of Oedipus; the popular enthusiasm for the Emperor Titus or President Obama – over and over again we can be seen to be living very much like people did 2,000 or more years ago. It's time for us to re-examine the past. Our lives are infinitely richer if we take the time to look at what the Greeks and Romans have given us in politics and law, religion and philosophy and education, and to learn how people really lived in Athens, Rome, Sparta and Alexandria. 
This is a book with a serious point to make but the author isn't just a classicist but a comedian and broadcaster who has made television and radio documentaries about humor, education and Dorothy Parker. This is a book for us all, not for an elite.
You might be interested in this recent blog post about PTSD in antiquity:
http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2010/11/rage-of-achilles-and-ptsd-in-antiquity.html
I went to the web site suggested by rwmg and contacted Dorothy King for permission to post this article. For a better presentation go to her web site at:
http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2010/11/rage-of-achilles-and-ptsd-in-antiquity.html
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by Dorothy King
Saturday, November 27, 2010
The Rage of Achilles and PTSD in Antiquity
Then said Achilles, “Son of Atreus, king of men Agamemnon, see to these matters at some other season, when there is breathing time and when I am calmer. Would you have men eat while the bodies of those whom Hector son of Priam slew are still lying mangled upon the plain? Let the sons of the Achaeans, say I, fight fasting and without food, till we have avenged them; afterwards at the going down of the sun let them eat their fill. As for me, Patroclus is lying dead in my tent, all hacked and hewn, with his feet to the door, and his comrades are mourning round him. Therefore I can think of nothing but slaughter and blood and the rattle in the throat of the dying.”
Iliad 19.226
The Iliad might have been better named the Wrath of Achilles, because that’s the theme of the book. His rage after the death of his friend Patroclus is often described as a classic sign of PTSD. Achilles features in Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character which is one of the classic studies of PTSD, although I have no read it. Wrath and anger are signs associated with PTSD, and every time some man goes on a rampage and shoots people, then PTSD seems to get brought up. Shay wrote a follow-up on Odyssey, and those sorts of wanderings – ten years to get home?!? – seem closer to the mind-set of the vets I was in Group with that ended up homeless. (An NPR interview with Shay can be found here).
A lot of people are reluctant to discuss their PTSD publicly, because they don’t want to be tared with this association. I didn’t do the anger / killing spree / Rambo style massacres, and nor did the many others I know who were treated for PTSD. In some ways the term used in World War I – ‘shell shock’ – is more appropriate; people go into shock rather than exhibiting anger or rage. I’ve already covered why I came ‘out’ – I would rather do so than be blackmailed – and I was worried initially that people would fear I’d turn around and stab them with a kitchen knife or something, but luckily anyone who spend more than two minutes with me quickly works out that that’s not the case.
I’m writing a book on ancient women who led armies, and although I’ve only written a quarter or so, I’ve done all the research, and it surprises me that there are so few mentions in Greek or Roman sources of peoples’ reactions to battles. Mostly war was glorified.
There are a few ancient accounts however that do fit in with the ‘shell shock’ type of PTSD. Herodotus mentions a soldier at Marathon who lost his sight during the battle:
A strange prodigy likewise happened at this fight. Epizelus, the son of Cuphagoras, an Athenian, was in the thick of the fray, and behaving himself as a brave man should, when suddenly he was stricken with blindness, without blow of sword or dart; and this blindness continued thenceforth during the whole of his after life. The following is the account which he himself, as I have heard, gave of the matter: he said that a gigantic warrior, with a huge beard, which shaded all his shield, stood over against him; but the ghostly semblance passed him by, and slew the man at his side. Such, as I understand, was the tale which Epizelus told.
Histories 6.117 (see also PseudoPlutarch)
I can be a bit OCD, and like to point out that only 298 Spartans died at Thermopylae. In this context it’s also worth pointing out that Leonidas also gave his allied men a ‘mental health’ break at the battle, realising that they were emotionally exhausted from previous fighting, and wouldn’t be of much use, he ordered them to retreat:
It is said that Leonidas himself sent away the troops who departed, because he tendered their safety, but thought it unseemly that either he or his Spartans should quit the post which they had been especially sent to guard. For my own part, I incline to think that Leonidas gave the order, because he perceived the allies to be out of heart and unwilling to encounter the danger to which his own mind was made up. He therefore commanded them to retreat, but said that he himself could not draw back with honour; knowing that, if he stayed, glory awaited him, and that Sparta in that case would not lose her prosperity.
Histories 7.220
The shell shock type of PTSD made soldiers incapable of fighting further, but others were functional as warriors and warred on. A big part of PTSD is the flash-backs and nightmares, which in turn prevent people from sleeping, so the first course of treatment tends to be tranquilisers or sleeping pills so that patients can get the rest they need.
The suicide of Ajax is interesting as a phenomenon, because although in Judeo-Christian society suicides tend to be hushed-up, his was told in literature, and depicted in art. I suspect that this is because, in an era when most citizens took part in military life, that many men could relate to his story which reads like a textbook case of rage PTSD. Ajax the mighty warrior took out his anger on a flock of sheep, in a delusion thinking they were the enemy, then took his own life.
Robin Lane Fox, Oxford academic and biographer of Alexander the Great, wrote in a column on Gardening Therapy for PTSD “Ignorantly, I used not to believe in PTSD. I thought that veterans should get out into the fresh air and stop whingeing” (FT) … I have to admit, that the ‘pull your socks up and get on with it’ form of therapy was the one I chose for a long time. It doesn’t work. But Prof Lane Fox should have been aware of this description of PTSD from Plutarch’s Life of Alexander:
All which made such a deep impression of terror in Cassander’s mind that, long after, when he was King of Macedonia and master of Greece, as he was walking up and down at Delphi, and looking at the statues, at the sight of that of Alexander he was suddenly struck with alarm, and shook all over, his eyes rolled, his head grew dizzy, and it was long before he recovered himself.
If that’s not an anxiety attack, then I’m not sure what is. There have also been studies that see Alexander the Great as having suffered from PTSD (see here). I’ve seen people de-bunk these on the grounds that he couldn’t have led an army whilst suffering from PTSD, but … I’ve seen plenty of soldiers do so, and it is possible to function whilst suffering from PTSD amazingly well (people tend to use disassociation and use throwing themselves into work as a way of avoiding dealing with the issues)
When I was researching Gaius Marius (someone recently published a book on him, so that one is alas on the back-burner), like many other historians I had a huge problem with him – for most of his life he was this great man, a brilliant soldier, a leading political reformer, then at the end he goes a bit mad and has a lot of enemies killed. I’ve read countless theories about what made him ‘flip’ in this way, but the only one that makes sense to me is that he was deeply traumatised by having to flee Rome into exile and being hunted down by Sulla’s men as an enemy of Rome. The vacillation about wanting to enter the city he had re-captured but waiting to be invited into Rome officially, make sense to me. I can’t relate to the rage of killing people, but this is a textbook symptom of rage PTSD. Even Plutarch mentions Marius’ anxieties on his death-bed, including the irrational fear of Sulla marching on Rome – since Sulla was stuck in Greece fighting Mithridates (Life of Marius):
45.2 But Marius himself, now worn out with toils, deluged, as it were, with anxieties, and wearied, could not sustain his spirits, which shook within him as he again faced the overpowering thought of a new war, of fresh struggles, of terrors known by experience to be dreadful, and of utter weariness. He reflected, too, that it was not Octavius or Merula in command of a promiscuous throng and a seditious rabble against whom he was now to run the hazard of war, but that the famous Sulla was coming against him, the man who had once ejected him from the country, and had now shut Mithridates up to the shores of the Euxine Sea.
3 Tortured by such reflections, and bringing into review his long wandering, his flights, and his perils, as he was driven over land and sea, he fell into a state of dreadful despair, and was a prey to nightly terrors and harassing dreams, wherein he would ever seem to hear a voice saying:—
“Dreadful, indeed, is the lions’ lair, even though it be empty.”
And since above all things he dreaded the sleepless nights, he gave himself up to drinking-bouts and drunkenness at unseasonable hours and in a manner unsuited to his years, trying thus to induce sleep as a way of escape from his anxious thoughts.
4 And finally, when one came with tidings from the sea, fresh terrors fell upon him, partly because he feared the future, and partly because he was wearied to satiety by the present, so that it needed only a slight impulse to throw him into a pleurisy, as Poseidonius the philosopher relates, who says that he went in personally and conversed with Marius on the subjects of his embassy after Marius had fallen ill.
5 But a certain Caius Piso, an historian, relates that Marius, while walking about with his friends after supper, fell to talking about the events of his life, beginning with his earliest days, and after recounting his frequent reversals of fortune, from good to bad and from bad to good, said that it was not the part of a man of sense to trust himself to Fortune any longer; and after this utterance bade his friends farewell, kept his bed for seven days consecutively, and so died.
6 Some, however, say that his ambitious nature was completely revealed during his illness by his being swept into a strange delusion. He thought that he had the command in the Mithridatic war, and then, just as he used to do in his actual struggles, he would indulge in all sorts of attitudes and gestures, accompanying them with shrill cries and frequent calls to battle.
7 So fierce and inexorable was the passion for directing that war which had been instilled into him by his envy and lust of power. And therefore, though he had lived to be seventy years old, and was the first man to be elected consul for the seventh time, and was possessed of a house and wealth which would have sufficed for many kingdoms at once, he lamented his fortune, in that he was dying before he had satisfied and completed his desires.
The mention of drinking to drive away the nightmares and the lack of sleep are classic signs of PTSD. Unfortunately too many people self-medicate with alcohol and drugs, because the underlying mental health issues are undiagnosed – and that’s why too many veterans end up homeless, living on the streets. I’m amazed nobody else has suggested that Gaius Marius was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I’ve covered examples of PTSD suffered by soldiers in this post, because these are the ones we have in the sources. The victims of war tend to get ignored by history, but those that were tortured, enslaved or rape by the soldiers probably suffered from PTSD too. My only advice is that if you think you’re having issues, then ask for help and talk to a doctor. Ignoring them won’t make them go away.