ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book focuses on the diversity and particularity of the experience and representation of violence in the period, and the importance of treating the widest range of source material in constructing histories of violence. It suggests that a key cultural phenomenon of violence in the period is the collapse of the categories of public and personal, or at least a dangerous interplay between them. Investigating this dynamic in more detail may provide ways to connect apparently different situations and cultural semiotics of violence in the Hellenistic age. Representations of violence which cast the spectator into the role of audience member offer competing emotional scripts. The book argues that much violence and its representation are deeply rational: thought through and intentional from the different perspectives of aggressor, victim and observer.
