In Spanish, the word "defeat" has two fundamentally distinct meanings. One refers to the path, course, route, or direction, primarily that followed by a vessel or ship. The other, which is of greater interest to us here, refers to the loss of a battle, to failure in a war, confrontation, or dispute. Thus, the verb "to defeat" is equivalent to conquering, destroying, or, in the context of bullfighting or navigation, making a change of direction (abrupt in the case of the bull, when it turns its horns from one side to the other). "To defeat" essentially means to provoke the flight, disorganization, or rout of the enemy, to achieve their surrender, or, as we said, to carry out their eventual destruction.

The etymology derives from the French word déroute and carries the same connotations linked to the military sphere, to the disorderly flight of the enemy, to division and rupture. The same elements appear in the English word defeat , the French word défaite , the German word Niederlage , and the Italian word la sconfitta.

The influence of everything related to the military on shaping the organization of European and Western culture is well-established, both in terms of the weight that this function still retains today from a political, budgetary, and organizational standpoint, and in the mark it has left on our vocabulary, customs, and institutions. Given this importance, "defeat," in principle, would have a clearly negative connotation. Honor, glory, and fame were linked from their origins to military successes, and defeat was considered worse than death. This is an orientation that has remained constant since the origin of our culture; it appears in Indo-European, in Homeric compositions, in the poetic harangues of Callinus and Tyrtaeus in archaic Greece, or in practically all of the preserved work of Pindar of Thebes—almost a poet specializing in compositions dedicated to victors—we can also find it in a multitude of verses, proverbs and popular sayings, in topics ranging from the famous Spartan "return with the shield or on the shield" to Cicero's In fuga foeda mors est, in uictoria gloriosa ("Death in flight is shameful, glorious in victory") in the fourteenth of his Philippics ; the value given to victory and, in general, the expansion of warlike vocabulary and its values ​​beyond the military sphere is a cultural constant that undoubtedly still has repercussions in our days. Thus, although the term "defeat" does not appear in the recent Glossary of Joint Use Terminology of the Defense Staff - perhaps because it is not included or because, like "victory", which also does not appear, its meaning is so basic for said institution that it is understood - we do find a definition that is as forceful as it is relevant to what concerns us here:

WILL TO WIN This is the firm resolve of the command and troops to overcome the adversary and accomplish the mission in any situation, however unfavorable it may be. It implies faith in victory, tenacity to achieve it, and unsurpassed activity in its execution. It is based on the moral values ​​that constitute the primary expression of the worth of a military force (General Staff of the Defense 2018, 30)

Following the historian Jacob Burckhardt, we must assume that in the context of ancient and classical Greece, honor ( timē ) was one of the principal virtues and was linked to victory, something that is not surprising in a culture that was, moreover, fundamentally agonistic and competitive. Victory was a way to protect oneself from oblivion and achieve a certain form of immortality by entering the memory of present and future generations through commemoration, presence in narratives, myths, rituals, songs, and monuments aimed at fostering social cohesion. The value of victory was not limited to war or military feats, but extended to areas such as art, politics, and athletic competition, and was expressed in the form of the cult of the hero and his success.

The honors, moreover, lasted beyond life, and sometimes even developed into a cult of heroism for the respective champion. Even the most insignificant city erected a monument to its Olympic victor. […]

Cities that had been destroyed or deprived of their former status or independence by synoecism survived in the collective memory, primarily through the recollection of some of their champions, the victors of the agonistic games. Some battles continued to be discussed even centuries later. If a city had been defeated by one of its leading champions, it would sometimes deny such defeats, even in later times, through stratagems (as, for example, the Thessalians did with the defeat of Polydamas), and if people believed this, the desired success could be achieved through simple lies. Even stranger is the phenomenon of usurped victors: an Olympian victor was bribed to represent another city instead of his own (Burckhardt 2005b, 511).

A 19th-century man like Burckhardt sought the reader's complicity and at times seems to look condescendingly upon the Greeks' excessive valuation of success. But, despite the centuries that have passed since this description, we can surely find many similarities with our present culture, also devoted, sometimes in a rather childish way, to the celebration of success and victory. We believe, however, that there are some positive or redeemable aspects of defeat, precisely linked to honor and influence, and we can highlight some relevant precedents.

One of the strategies humans employ to combat the fear of death is to attempt to achieve a kind of immortality by entering the memory of those who will outlive them. We have already mentioned this in relation to victory and monumentality. But if memory and remembrance are key, there are times when certain forms of defeat prove more advantageous. This is where the notion of "moral victory" or "moral victor" comes into play: figures, situations, or events that, from a warlike, agonistic, or competitive perspective, ended in defeat, but which continue to be evoked by the conditions and manner in which they fell, revealing plastic, ethical, or aesthetic qualities that confer upon them some kind of superiority over the objective victors and even retaining for themselves the honor usually reserved for success.

In the famous Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), during the Second Persian War, Spartan troops managed to hold off the advance of the vastly superior Persian army for several days, taking advantage of the terrain and demonstrating great courage and tactical discipline. Ultimately, the Persian soldiers prevailed and annihilated the Spartans. From a strictly military perspective, it was an unequivocal defeat, but it is also one of the most commemorated, celebrated, and reenacted battles of all time, a testament to heroism and virtue whose echo resonates to this day.

The so-called "Charge of the Light Brigade" by British troops during the Crimean War (1853-1856) is another example of defeat—if not military incompetence—in which the losers—the British cavalry attacking Russian positions—are treated as heroes and even as models of warrior virtue, as Tennyson's well-known verses in the poem of the same name published in 1854 read:

Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the Valley of Death
Around the six hundred

(Forward, Light Brigade!)
Did anyone collapse?
None of them, even though they knew
that someone made a mistake.
Answering wasn't his thing,
Reasoning wasn't his strong suit.
His duty was to fulfill his obligations and die.
In Death Valley.
The six hundred rode on

Honor and glory are bestowed by virtue of fulfilling one's duty ("their duty was to fulfill it and die"), once again fidelity to a code—usually opposed to rational, calculating, or survival-oriented behavior—prevailing over objective results. Something similar occurs with the siege of the Alamo during the Texas Revolution (1835-1836), in which a group of Texan secessionists entrenched at the Alamo Mission (San Antonio, Texas) faced a siege by vastly superior Mexican troops. Figures vary, but curiously, some sources speak of three hundred Texans—like the three hundred supposed Spartans who defended the pass of Thermopylae against the Persian troops—and a Mexican force five times larger. Ultimately, the Mexican army prevailed, and the defenders of the Alamo were killed, but since then they have also been honored through stories, songs, and films that belong more to the realm of legend than to that of rigorous historical research.

One of the most famous episodes in this regard, one that combines heroic behavior bordering on suicidal acts and in which mythology prevails over reliable facts, is the alleged charge of the Polish cavalry against German tanks in World War II. What greater expression of romanticism could there be than the impossible battle between the valiant, anachronistic horseman and the modern, impersonal technology at the service of National Socialism? Apparently, this image of the horsemen riding against the German tanks never actually occurred, but it undoubtedly constitutes a magnificent example of the kind of heroic defeat or moral victory we are discussing.

We could also discuss influence as another element linked to these particular defeats. The paradigmatic case might be that of Greece itself, defeated by Rome—a fact consolidated with the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC—but perhaps victorious in another sense: Greece was subjected militarily, politically, and economically to Rome, but Rome was seduced by Greek philosophy and culture and ended up incorporating, translating, and adapting many of its elements.

Within the very heart of the Greek cultural canon, there was also room for recognizing the honor of the vanquished based on their conduct in battle. One of the clearest examples might be Hector, the Trojan commander and enemy of Achilles, who is defeated and killed in the Iliad. Yet, the honors he receives are documented, leaving the reader with the impression that he is perhaps the true hero of Homer's epic (more prudent, judicious, and mature than the irascible and capricious Achilles), as James Redfield attests to. It is also plausible to interpret Attic tragedy—the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—as a genre dedicated to the loser. Are we not, in Antigone or Oedipus Rex , dealing with stories in which the protagonist loses in their defiance of fate or the order of the polis?

We could even suggest that the origin of modern literature coincides with the leading role given to the loser, the defeated, the exiled , or the shipwrecked , as is the case in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and, even more emphatically, in Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605-1615). Don Quixote's story can be seen as that of an eternal loser, someone disoriented in a world that does not conform to the parameters of honor, heroic deeds, and victory omnipresent in the chivalric romances with which he has structured his experience, and who is defeated in each and every one of the "battles" he undertakes. The playwright and poet Erri de Luca carries out a reading of Cervantes' classic that is as paradoxical as it is beautiful in Quixote and the Invincibles : Quixote is invincible not because he never loses, but because after each defeat, each fall , he always gets up to fight again.

The weight of the anti-hero, the importance of the defeated, and the aura and magnetism surrounding certain losers are aspects that cannot be underestimated in the history of our culture. We dare say that from Romanticism onward, these elements became increasingly frequent, and that in the modern and contemporary sphere, the examples are countless. In the literary field, there are veritable specialists in defeat, such as John Cheever, Charles Bukowski, and Lucia Berlin, for whom certain characters and stories by Chekhov and Dostoevsky can be considered clear antecedents. Defeat can also be a powerful stimulus for artistic creation, both from a collective perspective—as in the case of the Generation of '98 following the loss of Spain's last overseas colonies—and from an individual one—as in William Faulkner, whose literary work constitutes a hymn to nobility, tradition, and the harmonious integration with nature that he associates with the American South, defeated in the Civil War by the industrial and capitalist North. Without leaving this context, we can also interpret a musical genre as influential as the blues , whose rhythmic patterns can be considered the foundation from which most contemporary popular music originates, as an elegiac genre where stories of failure and defeat predominate.

Parallel to what we have discussed in the field of war, in the strictly sporting field we can also witness paradoxical situations in which the defeated is as much or more remembered than the victor, not to mention the sadly frequent cases of sports heroes who, after their retirement and/or in their personal lives, have experienced serious setbacks or even profoundly (self-)destructive stories.

Victory and defeat may have more to do with how we interpret or understand an experience than with a clear-cut, definitive outcome, especially if, as we are seeing, they possess a relative and temporary nature that transcends the immediate participants of the feat, the encounter, the adventure, or the battle; if, like myths, they are subject to constant reinterpretation by future generations. Perhaps true victory does not necessarily lie in immediate and verifiable success, but in that other form of permanence so aptly intuited by Sócrates, the charismatic Brazilian footballer, when he stated, surely apocryphally, "We don't play to win, we play to be remembered."

Bibliography:

Burkhardt, J. 2005. History of Greek culture I , Barcelona: RBA

Burkhardt, J. 2005b. History of Greek culture II , Barcelona: RBA

Burkhardt, J. 2005c. History of Greek culture III , Barcelona: RBA

Corominas, J. 1987. Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana , Madrid: Gredos

De Luca, E. 2016. Quixote and the InvinciblesMadrid: Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid

Dumézil, G. 1971 (1990). The destiny of the warrior. Mythical aspects of the warrior function among the Indo-Europeans , Madrid: Siglo XXI

Defence Staff 2018. Glossary of Jointly Used Terminology , Madrid: Government of Spain, Ministry of Defence, Defence Staff, https://www.defensa.gob.es/ceseden/Galerias/ccdc/documentos/PDC-00_GLOSARIO_DE_TERMINOLOGIA_DE_USO_CONJUNTO.pdf

García Gual, C. 1980 (2013). Anthology of Greek Lyric Poetry (7th-4th centuries BC) , Madrid: Alianza

Royal Spanish Academy: Dictionary of the Spanish Language , 23rd ed., [online version 23.3]. https://dle.rae.es [13/10/2020].

Tennyson, A., L. 2007. Selected poems , London: Penguin Books

Zaloga, SJ 2009, The invasion of Poland 1939. Blitzkrieg, Madrid: RBA

Index of illustrations:

Fig. 1: Leonids at Thermopylae , Jacques-Louis David, 1814. Public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le%C3%B3nidas_en_las_Term%C3%B3pilas,_por_Jacques-Louis_David.jpg

Fig. 2: Scene from Oedipus Rex , by Sophocles. Lugo Greco-Latin Theater Festival (2011). Public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OEDIPEROI5539580870_a2948bd1e5_o.jpg