Author: Kathy L. Gaca, Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies, Vanderbilt University

Abstract: »The androcentric model of warfare as lethal force among fighting men in battle makes the inflicting of injuries on noncombatant civilians seem peripheral damage in war, not a deliberate goal. Further, the currently prominent idea that civilians should have immunity in warfare, which stems from just war theories from Augustine to Vitoria, adds the problem of wishful thinking — the belief that targeting noncombatant civilian groups for serious harm cannot have been deliberate because that is not how warfare should be conducted. This makes civilian-targeting seem “dirty warfare” by contrast with adult male battle, for it muddies the sanctity of warfare as men’s mutually armed rituals of bloodshed to harm enemies and help friends and allies. As a result, civilian-assault warfare for ravaging conquest and the pivotal functions of enslaving and lethal martial rape against the girls and women of peoples subjected to this aggression have failed to be seen as credible as a mainstream norm of warfare in the Mediterranean and Near East in antiquity and later. However, this religiously extremist organized violence carried out by martial cults and companies of men became prevalent by the Bronze Age and thereafter. Women, children, and men trying to abide by their productive Neolithic-derived civil lifeways have regularly been deliberate targets of civilian-assault warfare for conquest. No mere rhetorical trope, martial rape against girls and women is integral to the ravaging conquest and has had a major role in damaging and depleting productive self-determining civil society as developed over the Neolithic, turning much of this society into institutions of slavery under state-sponsored martial religious rule by conquest from the Bronze Age onward.« (Source: Brill)

Contents:

	1 Introduction (p. 278)
	2 Conquering Productive Civil Groups (p. 281)
	3 Historiography and Morality (p. 288)
	4 Denying and Validating the Historicity of Martial Rape (p. 290)
	5 Ammianus on Martial Rape (p. 295)
	Acknowledgements (p. 300)
	Works Cited (p. 300)

Reviews: -

Wikipedia: Ancient history: Sex and the law: Rape / Wartime sexual violence | War: Ancient warfare