Empathy Across Enemy Lines in Glorious Exploits

Thematic Claim: Theatre as a Bridge Across Hatred

In Glorious Exploits, Ferdia Lennon argues that shared grief and artistic creation can generate empathy across enemy lines, even when hatred is fresh and wounds are raw. The novel shows that empathy is not a natural feeling but a deliberate act—one that requires imagination, ritual, and the willingness to see a foe as a fellow human. The production of Euripides’ tragedies inside the Syracusan quarry becomes a laboratory for this empathy, where victor and vanquished briefly trade roles.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

The Casting of Enemies as Fellow Sufferers

The theme first takes shape when Lampo and Gelon visit the quarry to find actors. They encounter Paches, an Athenian prisoner about to be killed by the vengeful Biton. Lampo intervenes, claiming he needs Paches for the role of Jason. This rescue is the first concrete act of empathy: Lampo sees not an enemy but a potential performer. More powerfully, Numa, a terrified Athenian, auditions for Medea and delivers a fierce monologue that moves Lampo to curse the character of Jason. In that moment, the prisoner is no longer a captive but an artist commanding an audience’s emotions. The casting process forces the Syracusans to see the Athenians as people with skill, memory, and pain—not merely as spoils of war.

The Funeral Pyre: A Shared Prayer for the Dead

In a pivotal scene, Gelon and Lampo encounter six children armed with swords and human leg bones. The children have discovered the skeletons of six Athenians under a willow tree. When Gelon insists on a funeral pyre, the children object because the Athenians killed their relatives. The youngest, Strabo, tearfully says the enemy killed his brother. Dares, the leader, persuades Strabo that a prayer for the enemy can also honour their own dead. Strabo agrees, and they build the pyre. This scene dramatises the mechanics of empathy: it requires the bereaved to expand their circle of mourners, finding a way to honour their own loss while acknowledging the humanity of those who caused it. The prayer is for both the Athenian dead and Strabo’s brother—a single ritual containing two griefs.

The Performance of Trojan Women: Athenians Playing Trojans

The climax of the empathy theme comes during the performance of Trojan Women. The Athenian prisoners, starved and broken, play the Trojan women who have lost everything. The Syracusan children perform as guards and the boy Astyanax. The character of Cassandra, played by the Athenian Linar, dances with a prophecy that insists there is always something left for the person who remembers. The audience includes not only Syracusans but also other Athenian prisoners who have crept forward to watch. In this moment, the lines between victor and vanquished blur entirely: the Athenians embody the Trojans they once defeated in story, and the Syracusans watch their own enemies grieve on stage. The production becomes a shared space where both sides confront loss—the Athenians their freedom and comrades, the Syracusans their own dead in the war. The empathy is not abstract; it is felt as the audience leans in, rapt.

Character and Symbol Connections

Gelon: Grief as the Source of Empathy

Gelon is the engine of the empathy theme. His own losses—his wife Desma and his son Helios—drive him to see the Athenians not as enemies but as fellow mourners. He cuts his own arm to smear fresh blood on the armour they plan to sell, telling Lampo, “It’s poetry we’re doing; it wouldn’t mean a thing if it were easy.” This grotesque act literalises the idea that empathy demands a personal cost. Gelon’s vision of his dead family in the water, promising reunion, suggests his empathy is partly a way to process his own trauma. He is not a saint; he is a broken man using theatre to rebuild a world that makes sense.

Lampo: The Reluctant Heart

Lampo begins as a cynic, lying about his war wounds and mocking the aristocrats. Yet he is the novel’s narrator, and his growth tracks the slow work of empathy. He initially sees the prisoners as tools for a scheme, but he weeps during their rehearsals, hiding his face in bread so the children won’t see. His final act—dragging himself to the empty quarry as an old man, tending Gelon’s grave, and dictating the story—shows that the empathetic connection forged in that quarry outlasts the war itself.

Symbols

The quarry is the novel’s central symbol. It is both a prison and an amphitheatre, a place of suffering and performance. The transformation of the quarry into a theatre mirrors the transformation of prisoners into actors and enemies into fellow humans. The broken aulos and the theatrical masks represent the fragility of art and identity—the props are cheap, the performances rough, but they work. Blood on armour is the most direct symbol of the cost of empathy: Gelon’s blood on Athenian armour shows that honouring the enemy means staining oneself with their memory.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel does not sentimentalise empathy. After the performance, the Syracusan authorities crack down on the prisoners, reducing rations and opening the quarry wider. Lampo begs Gelon to help rescue Paches, but Gelon refuses, saying it is a capital offence and the show only made things worse. Lampo then savagely blames Gelon for the deaths of Numa, Linar, and the others, calling him a selfish prick. This explosion reveals that empathy has limits—it can be a luxury that the powerless cannot afford. The production that united them in grief cannot protect them from the real-world consequences of their actions.

Furthermore, Gelon’s empathy is partly self-serving. His vision of Desma and Helios in the water promises reunion, suggesting his motives are personal, not purely altruistic. Strabo’s agreement to pray for the enemy comes only after Dares frames it as a way to honour his own brother. Empathy here is not pure; it is entangled with grief, guilt, and the need for meaning.

The novel’s frame also complicates the theme. The story is dictated by an old Lampo to a grown Strabo, now a scholar. Memory becomes a tool of empathy: the act of telling the story decades later is itself an act of reaching across time, keeping the dead and the enemy alive in imagination. But the novel ends with Syracuse under siege by Carthaginians, and Lampo refuses to flee. The cycle of war continues. Empathy does not end conflict; it only offers a way to endure it.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the casting of Numa as Medea generate empathy across enemy lines?
   When Numa auditions, his fierce monologue moves Lampo to curse the character Jason. This moment transforms Numa from a terrified prisoner into an artist who commands an audience’s emotions. The Syracusans begin to see him not as an enemy but as a person with skill and pain, establishing that theatre can humanise the dehumanised.

2. What does the funeral pyre scene reveal about the mechanics of empathy?
   When Dares persuades Strabo to allow prayers for the Athenian dead, he frames it as an act that can also honour Strabo’s brother. This shows that empathy often requires linking the enemy’s loss to one’s own. The pyre becomes a shared ritual where two griefs coexist, proving that empathy is not about erasing difference but about finding common grief.

3. Why does Gelon refuse to help save Paches after the performance?
   Gelon explains that trying to free a prisoner is a capital offence and that the performance made the authorities more watchful. His refusal reveals the limits of empathy: the emotional connection forged in the quarry cannot override the political realities of power and punishment. Empathy, the novel suggests, is risky and cannot always survive outside the safety of art.

4. How does the symbol of blood on armour connect to the theme?
   Gelon cuts his arm to smear fresh blood on the Athenian armour they plan to sell. This act literalises the idea that empathy requires personal sacrifice. The blood turns the armour from a trophy into a relic of shared humanity, showing that honouring the enemy means staining oneself with their memory and pain.

5. What role does memory play in sustaining empathy across enemy lines?
   The novel is framed as Lampo’s dictated memory of the events, told decades later to a grown Strabo. This framing suggests that empathy is not a single event but a practice that must be maintained through storytelling. The act of remembering and retelling keeps the Athenians alive in imagination and allows the Syracusans to continue seeing them as fellow humans, even as war rages on.