[split] Psychology of the Roman soldier

[Bryan]

my few lines on this topic:

Human Psychology is the same, it doesn't changes just because society values life less or more. 

Do you regular beat your family's slaves when they are insolent? Do you abandon girl babies to their deaths? Do you murder your wife if she surrenders her virtue? As a military officer, did you execute one in ten soldiers when they show cowardice? Did you have soldiers who'd fallen asleep on guard stoned to death in the morning. 

All of these were accepted in the ancient world. All of them would be seen as horrific if they happened now. Therefore human psychology changes, because the ways people interpret and deal with stimuli changes. 

Its well known that certain ancient peoples didn't have what it took, culturally, to fight well as "heavy infantry", that they shy'd away from close combat, they didn't take to the Roman level of discipline, but meanwhile they still excelled at other roles in battle. Romans couldn't take Africans or Gauls or Syrians and simply turn them into legionaires overnight, it took Romanizing them. Because culture plays a major part in how people fight. 

Even to this day, this is well known. Ask any combat veteran of the Global War on Terror and they'll tell you that Iraqis and Afghans don't fight like us, they fight much differently, and even when we try to teach them to fight like us they don't do it well. Because it isn't natural to them. Why Arabs Lose Wars This shows that even in the current age, we're not all similar at all.

This is all about learned behavior. The learned behavior you possess is not the same as myself. And it most certainly isn't the same as a Roman infantrymen in the 1st Cent. BC.