War and Masculinity in Roman and Medieval Culture

The chapters in this volume highlight the complexity and diversity of approaches to how ancient and medieval cultures understood martial masculinity and the significance warfare had on masculine values during the premodern era. They also point to how these ideals were manifested in numerous environments, covering topics from multiple points of view and using a variety of sources and methods.

In the ancient and medieval periods, “manliness” was often understood as the ability to demonstrate bravery in war and eagerness to use violence in different situations. While certain marginal groups, such as philosophers and Christians, promoted more peaceful ideals of masculinity, war and masculinity were tightly connected to the cultures and societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Indeed, in Roman and later medieval culture, warfare played an essential role in constructing ideals of proper manliness and masculinity. This constructed masculinity manifested itself not only in written culture but also in everyday life, both visually and bodily.

War and Masculinity in Roman and Medieval Culture is intended for those interested in ancient Roman and medieval culture, particularly researchers and students of gender and masculinity in Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Jaakkojuhani Peltonen is Adjunct Professor (title of Docent) at Tampere University, Finland. In 2018, he joined the Department of Classics at King’s College London, working there for two years as a Visiting Fellow. Routledge published an expanded version of his doctoral thesis, Alexander the Great in the Roman Empire: 150 BC to AD 600, in 2019, as well as a monograph titled Masculine Ideals and Alexander the Great: An Exemplary Man in the Roman and Medieval World in 2023. His research interests include the use of history, ideas of masculinity, and the ideology of war in ancient Rome.

Elina Pyy is a historian of antiquity based in the University of Helsinki, Finland. She specializes in the Roman late Republican and early Imperial periods; her research interests include ancient gender studies, classical reception studies, and themes of violence and the body. Pyy has published two monographs, The Semiotics of Caesar Augustus (2018) and Women and War in Roman Epic (2020), as well as several articles dealing with the themes of identity, gender, and heroism.

Jussi Rantala is Adjunct Professor (title of Docent) at Tampere University, Finland. Rantala’s publications include Travel, Pilgrimage and Social Interaction from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (2019, as an editor); Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World (2019, as an editor); and The Ludi Saeculares of Septimius Severus: The Ideologies of a New Roman Empire (2017). He has published several articles dealing with his research interests, including historiography, identity, and ideologies of war in ancient Rome.