These attempts to resolve disputes in a legalistic way rather than through force imply that peace was generally considered preferable to war. Nevertheless, those historians who have tried to evaluate the extent and depth of Greek criticisms of and objections to war have come to widely divergent conclusions. On the one hand, several scholars have searched through all the major classical authors and collected, categorized, and discussed the passages critical of war, of which there are many. They have tended to come to optimistic conclusions. For example, Gerardo Zampaglione was confident that “the problem of universal peace was posed, sometimes overtly, sometime less so, at the center of classical and ancient Christian thought,” and Wallace Caldwell wrote of “a strong peace movement” in ancient Greece. Others have argued that this or that particular work or author was, in one sense or another, anti-war. On the other hand, several prominent and influential scholars have impatiently dismissed such investigations as well as the conclusions they have reached. For example, M. I. Finley contrasted the Greek attitudes with “our” modern condemnation of violence and attacked those “who blunderingly attribute similar values to the Greeks and Romans.”

Disagreements about the actual content of ancient thought are not quite so stark as one would think from such polemics. To begin with, “pacifism” has a different and much broader meaning in mainland Europe than in the United States or United Kingdom.