This book examines the lasting impact of war on individuals and their communities in pre-modern Europe. Research on combat stress in the modern era regularly draws upon the past for inspiration and validation, but to date no single volume has effectively scrutinised the universal nature of combat stress and its associated modern diagnoses. Highlighting the methodological obstacles of using modern medical and psychological models to understand pre-modern experiences, this book challenges existing studies and presents innovative new directions for future research. With cutting-edge contributions from experts in history, classics and medical humanities, the collection has a broad chronological focus, covering periods from Archaic Greece (c. sixth and early fifth century BCE) to the British Civil Wars (seventeenth century CE). Topics range from the methodological, such as the dangers of retrospective diagnosis and the applicability of Moral Injury to the past, to the conventionally historical, examining how combat stress and post-traumatic stress disorder may or may not have manifested in different time periods. With chapters focusing on combatants, women, children and the collective trauma of their communities, this collection will be of great interest to those researching the history of mental health in the pre-modern period.

Chapter 1: Combat Trauma in Pre-Modern Europe: An Introduction.- Chapter 2: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: An ancient Greek case study in retrospective diagnosis.- Chapter 3: A collective war trauma in Classical Athens? Coping with the human cost of warfare in Aeschylus' Persians.- Chapter 4: Combat Trauma and Ajax: A Script-based Approach.- Chapter 5: Legal evidence for Roman PTSD?.- Chapter 6: Terrible but Unavoidable? Combat trauma and a change to legal proscriptions on Roman military suicide under Hadrian.- Chapter 7: Was there Combat Trauma in the Middle Ages? A Case for Moral Injury in Pre-Modern Conflict.- Chapter 8: Fear and Loathing in Eyrbyggja Saga: Combat Trauma in Medieval Iceland.- Chapter 9: Understandings of adversity and resilience amongst women and children during the seventeenth-century British Civil Wars.