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Killing and The Psychological Cost.
#16
I suspect there is an acculturation process for warriors both ancient and modern. The difference might be the starting place: ancient societies were often at war every year. Children grew up knowing that war was coming and necessary (from their point of view). They had close relatives--father and brothers perhaps--who were warriors. Some societies made warfare "normal" and peace the rebuilding period between wars. (You know who I'm talking about.)

Roman society would have been much more hands on than modern society. Even if one didn't grow and slaughter his own meat, he was intimately close to the process. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a hands-on experience is worth a thousand pictures. We see things on television and think we understand what's going on--think we could do it. It's not the same at all.

That said, the real shift into being a warrior probably started upon his assignment to a century. As he learned to wear and use his equipment, he also learned what was expected of him. He was (hopefully) surrounded by veterans who had their own means of initiating and preparing the man who would soon protect their shoulder. The discipline of standing in ranks and practicing maneuvers would help prepare the soldier for the day when he would have to thrust his gladius into a man rather than a wooden post. Some still weren't ready, but we know little of them because they were quickly dead.
"Fugit irreparabile tempus" (Irrecoverable time glides away) Virgil

Ron Andrea
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#17
Quote:Agreed there's always a danger in transferring modern situations to another time. And agreed there were ways to get people to kill.

That being said while killing an animal can be hard (If you've worked with the family Ox for days on end you'll build an attachment) shoving a blade in a human being's guts and then feeling the blood spurt all over your hand and arms and looking that person in the eyes while that person screams. . . After all PTSD was quite prevalent in the Middle Ages, so it must have bothered them.

I think adrenalin can be like an anaesthetic in certain circumstances. There are tales of people performing amazing feats of strength or endurance when they are in a situation which cannot be averted and has to be faced.

I also think that in a time when ritual slaughter, and the general slaughtering of animlas was a lot more common and the sight of blood, guts and gore far more a routine and daily activity there would be a higher threshold of tolerance which could, perhpas, have made killing easier.

The other consideration of course is would a man from the ancient world even understand why we are even asking this question? Perhaps with our moral background that taking anoter life is wrong and our remoteness from anything as final as one on one combat we will never understand the psyche of killing?
Moi Watson

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, Merlot in one hand, Cigar in the other; body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, what a ride!
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#18
Quote:we will never understand the psyche of killing
I wish that would be the prevailing mindset, but there are forces and groups in the world who don't share it. Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum, unfortunately, is the best way to survive as a culture/nation, it seems.

[edited in] The corollary to the quote is that culture/nation must be willing to follow the war preparations with war prosecution to whatever extent is needed to bring about the end of the war. Skirmishes and half-hearted mini-wars don't win the campaign or result in lasting peace....
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)

Saepe veritas est dura.
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#19
Quote:The other consideration of course is would a man from the ancient world even understand why we are even asking this question? Perhaps with our moral background that taking another life is wrong and our remoteness from anything as final as one on one combat we will never understand the psyche of killing?

Very true. Their attitudes toward death and killing may be so remote from ours that they wouldn't even understand why we ask.
"Fugit irreparabile tempus" (Irrecoverable time glides away) Virgil

Ron Andrea
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#20
Quote:I think we should be careful in transferring the modern situation to antiquity. As E. Muir has shown in "Mad Blood Stirring" there were ways to make killing easy, in that case e.g. treating the "prey" like animals, when killing, and afterwards. Especially in a society where almost everybody is used to butcher animals the kill is much easier.
Yes, it is hard to say because nobody has studied willingness to kill in a society much like Greece or Rome, and because modern and ancient warfare are so different. We don't even know for sure how many infantry tried to kill their opposite numbers in World War II, so its almost impossible to know for earlier periods. And many of the things that soldiers would do to keep safe overlap with things they would do if they weren't keen on killing. For example, running away, keeping out of the front ranks, or posturing at a distance rather than closing in. Similarly, if soldiers missed a lot in combat, was that because they deliberately tried to miss or because combat is messy and stressful and confusing? So what we know about how ancient soldiers behaved doesn't necessarily tell us why they did so.

Its a very complicated question, and it really deserves a book by someone expert on both ancient warfare and human responses to combat. We also need more studies of modern societies outside the Anglosphere. I suspect that many Greeks and Romans were not eager to kill other soldiers, and that for most of them killing had a psychological cost, but I won't claim I'm certain.

There are lots of interesting anecdotes, and as Jona says several ancient cultures had rituals to help men make a mental transition to a warrior role. There is even the theory by Jonathan Shays that Greek tragedies were used as group therapy for veterans!
Nullis in verba

I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
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#21
Quote:Historical studies on killing, which began in the 1800s, revealed startling truths about men's ability or desire to kill others. Prussian guardsmen's musket accuracy was tested against targets and then against men in a battle. It was found that 70% or so of them could hit a target without difficulty, but when faced with a real man, less than 10% of their shots were accurate. A musket from Gettysburg was found with 20-something balls in the muzzle. Comparisons between the number of rounds fired and the number of casualties in WW2 bear no comparison - something like 3,000 rounds per fatality. There are many similar findings from different periods, and they reveal that despite everything occurring in the savagery of battle, many/most men do not want to kill. Once it has happened a second time, however, and as I mentioned above, it becomes easier. The third time is easier again, and so on.
That is a good example of the weaknesses of Grossman's argument. For example, hitting a moving target, on ground that isn't clear and level, with the air full of dust and powder smoke, while people are shooting at you and horses are screaming and people are shouting, must have been a lot harder than shooting at a wooden target. So this could be a result of soldiers being reluctant to kill, or of combat being much more complicated than target practice, or both. Similarly, did those over-loaded muskets at Gettysburg result from soldiers wanting to look like they were fighting without risking killing anyone, or from them repeating the loading routine again and again but leaving out the "pull the trigger" step (or not noticing that the gun had failed to fire) in the stress and confusion? In stressful situations, people often repeat the same action again and again even if it is not working.

He's got some very interesting ideas, and armies today take him very seriously (he lectured the Patricias when a friend of mine was serving with them), but a lot of his supporting evidence is weak, and he doesn't seem greatly concerned with that.
Nullis in verba

I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
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#22
Ancient peoples lived in a world rather different from our own. Bloodshed was an integral part of religion, for instance. In Rome, not only religious ceremony but public business was accompanied by slaughter. government transactions literally had no legal standing unless blood had been shed first. And this doesn't even take into account the venatio and gladiatorial games. Romans in particular seem to have been greatly reassured by bloodshed. It meant all was right with the world. Add to this a civic moral code that held that compassion was a weakness and compassion for an enemy was positively evil and you have the formula for a soldiery of compunctionless killers.
Pecunia non olet
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#23
There was an interview with a combat officer from Vietnam with some actual CBS footage of his unit in a city during the Tet offensive, who said that combat was the most thrilling thing a man could experience. Didn't seem to bother him. There was that Styker colonel quoted as saying it's good to kill the bad guys. At any time there are folks who like killing and those who don't mind and lose no sleep. A good number of RATters probably could.
Richard Campbell
Legio XX - Alexandria, Virginia
RAT member #6?
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#24
Chances are, if you see friends and known comrades killed by the same enemy, after a while your threshold for resisting killing would be lowered, and your desire for revenge would increase.
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)

Saepe veritas est dura.
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#25
Quote:Chances are, if you see friends and known comrades killed by the same enemy, after a while your threshold for resisting killing would be lowered, and your desire for revenge would increase.

Agreed - and combined with the ageless post-combat de-stresser of drinking yourselves under the table to salute departed comrades and perhaps there is no more to it than that!
Moi Watson

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, Merlot in one hand, Cigar in the other; body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, what a ride!
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#26
There's a passage from Tacitus about the killing of Christians:
Quote:But all human efforts, all the emperor's gifts and propitiations of the gods, were not enough to remove the scandal or banish the belief that the fire [summer, 64 C.E.] had been ordered. And so, to get rid of this rumor Nero set up as culprits and punished with the utmost cruelty a class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called Christians. Christus, from whom their name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Checked for the moment this pernicious superstition broke out again, not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome, the place where everything that is sordid and degrading from every quarter of the globe finds a following. Thus those who confessed (i.e.. to being Christians) were first arrested, then on evidence from them a large multitude was convicted, not so much for the charge of arson as for their hatred of the human race. Besides being put to death they were made objects of amusement; they were clothed in hides of beasts and torn to death by dogs; others were crucified, others were set on fire to illuminate the night after sunset. Nero threw open his grounds for the display and put on a show at the circus where he mingled with the people dressed like a charioteer and driving about in his chariot. All this gave rise to a feeling of pity, evens towards these men who deserved the most exemplary punishment since it was felt they were being killed, not for the public good but to gratify the cruelty of an individual.
(Annals, xv, 44) (source)
There's another translation here.

I think it's quite clear from this passage that the Christians, "a class hated for their abominations," were treated with absolute contempt by many Romans. However, the public torture and executions ("cruelty") still "gave rise to a feeling of pity". Probably not the best example, but it seems people were rather turned off by this violence.
God bless.
Jeff Chu
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#27
Another thing to consider is whether soldiers who don't fight are doing so solely because they object to harming other people or whether they simply don't want to be injured themselves. If staying alive means hiding in a foxhole and never firing back then many soldiers are likely to end up choosing that option.
Henry O.
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#28
Whilst an interesting topic, its really like trying to compare how we live to how an extra-terrestial may live. We have practically no idea what it must have been like to live in a society without modern communication methods, without TV, radio, DvD's, video, camera's, the internet, newspapers, freely available literature, air travel, motor cars, fast sea travel, machine guns, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, freely available paid work, social care, medical care, lifespans of over 70 years etc etc etc.

All these things influence how we live and how our societies operate, and how we fight wars.

The Romans may well have treated their opponents as non-humans, as by de-humanising them its easier to kill them as there is nothing personal in the killing process.

I have no idea what it must have been like to stand shoulder to shoulder with thousands of men facing thousands of men all determined to do unto them before its done to them in return.

And I hope I never will.
Adrian Coombs-Hoar
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#29
Josephus is one ancient writer who may be able to bring one closer to the attitudes of ancient soldiers/warriors to killing. Some of the descriptions at the siege of Jerusalem come to mind. One example is when it was thought that the Jews escaping from the city or captured in fighting were concealing coins by swallowing them. The irregular and allied troops would cut them open after killing them to search their entrails for the (alleged) swallowed coins. How much of this was also done by legionary troops - who knows? Mind you, sieges can bring about their own stresses - whether for the besieger or the besieged - which can then ratchet up the level of brutality. The assault on Jerusalem was part of a punitive expedition to punish rebellious subjects of the empire, not a foreign war of conquest. The intent was to PUNISH the rebels, not just convince them to surrender.
We, in our modern industrialized societies, are very far removed from all the routine blood-letting of earlier cultures (or even today's "Third World"). This point has been well stated in earlier posts. Eating a lamb that one had raised was made to seem normal, and humorous, in a 1980's TV sitcom set in the American midwest on a farm. I grew up around farming and helped clean the chickens after they were killed so we could have a nice roast chicken for Sunday dinner (Granddad did the killing-while we watched). Interestingly enough my SCA group did an event around daily life chores of a Medieval household this past spring - and it included a class on slaughter, skinning and prep of animals for meat and to use their skins, etc. There was NOT a separate track for children and we had children in that class. One young girl spent the rest of the day with the fresh rabbit skin wrapped around her arm.
Quinton Johansen
Marcus Quintius Clavus, Optio Secundae Pili Prioris Legionis III Cyrenaicae
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