Programme & Abstracts :: Registration Details :: Accommodation

THE CLOTHED BODY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
17-19 January 2002

Eva Parisinou
Leicester

Disguise and Military Ethics

This paper aims to re-visit issues of shaping and definition of male personality through dress with a particular focus on the use and implications of clothes as means for disguising real identities. Discussion of the range of types of concealing one's body will evolve around the main areas of men activities in the ancient Greek world, namely the battlefield and other related aspects of men's life, such as hunting. The aims for which disguise was employed will be studied on the basis of literary and artistic accounts with the purpose of revealing more about its significance and efficiency as a means to achieve desired aims, as well as its moral connotations in its contemporary society in relation to the status of the man-warrior who associated himself with such practices.