ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the political and social context of the Greek ideologies of war. The causes of war in early Greece, like many of the Greek practices of war, retained a primitive simplicity. But Greek religion was not totally manipulative, and sacrifices and vows were not sufficient to win the favor of the gods. The greatest and most original contribution of Homer to the literature of war was his invention of a narrative form that inspired the precocious Greek historical spirit. Many ancient societies had some kind of narrative battle poetry, but none other produced a poetic medium capable of describing action with the empathy, psychological subtlety, mimetic vividness, and compositional technique of the Iliad. The Greeks were awakened to the possibilities of strategy, especially the maritime variant. For a century to come, they would often assume that truly grand strategies aiming at conquest and empire had to be based on sea power.
