The recent exchange of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers for five living Hezbollah (and much else) has produced outrage in some sections of the Israeli press. Admittedly, it lays Israel open to further blackmail from Hezbollah who, glowing with high-minded idealism, long to capture and murder as many Israeli soldiers as they can. But the press is wrong.
Last time, we saw how important it was for ancient Athenian families that their dead be properly buried and their graves tended. This was felt to be even truer of its soldiers who died in battle, whom Athenians deemed worthy of hero-cult. Breaking with the normal Greek custom of burial on the field of battle, they demanded that the ashes of the dead be repatriated and buried in a special location in ‘the finest suburb of Athens’ (those killed at Marathon were the only exception).
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