The ancient massacre and the modern massacre : problems of historiography and representation

The massacre is an event in human history whose narrative presented Greek and Roman historians with enormous difficulties, both in its narrative construction and in its rational explanation. This lecture will show, firstly, how historiography and art concerned with the contemporary experience of genocide have re-edited, deepened and overcome these dilemmas, which the Ancients experienced with scientific perplexity and emotional anguish. Secondly, based on the Histoires diverses qui sont mémorables touchant les guerres, massacres, & troubles, advenues en France ces dernierses annees by Perrissin and Tortorel (1569), she will present ways of understanding and representing some modern massacres which, at the time of the Wars of Religion in France and the Thirty Years' War in Europe, take up ancient examples and images of Christian martyrdom.