I caduti in guerra, eroi necessari nella cultura greca

The paper offers some suggestions on ancient Greek attitude about the war dead, exploiting Athenian epitaphioi logoi and our information regarding the men fallen during the Persian wars. We cannot but conclude that only Athenians developed a mindset in this regard. However, they had a view open to the mixture of life and death offered to the city (see the story of Tellos in Herodotus or the so called epitaphios logos put into the mouth of Adrastus by Euripides in Suppliants), really becoming an example for the European culture.