I saw this quote when i was researching something, and having not seen it before thought it was quite insightful of mass-battles (in antiquity anyhow).

"Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." ~Heraclitus

That is a very interesting quote.  Thanks!

Great quote! I love that sort of thing.



If I were to add in some humor based on rpg's, the 'One' is a player character.

I think that is fairly accurate for standard quality troop types, which is why elite units composed of all 9's and 1's such as Spartans or navy seals are so damned valuable in lesser numbers.

Very nice.

And it's not by Heraclitus at all. Here are some that probably are. The nice thing about ancient literature is this: We have so little of it left, if it's there, you can easily find it. If you want to fake it, at least add some cryptic number like "Heraclitus fr. 23", you know we have so little of that stuff, we can number it.

Quote from: 1of3;736074Very nice.

And it's not by Heraclitus at all. Here are some that probably are. The nice thing about ancient literature is this: We have so little of it left, if it's there, you can easily find it. If you want to fake it, at least add some cryptic number like "Heraclitus fr. 23", you know we have so little of that stuff, we can number it.

La di fucking da.

That is a great quote, but it sounds more like the finding of modern combat psychology than anything that came out of the ancient world. The ancients prized the  average, citizen soldier and the most successful military powers built tactics around them.

One of the problems we face in evaluating what ancient combat was like is that man may have changed genetically and epigenitically since the classical era.

Just because the average modern conscript is not much more than a target doesnt mean the average Visigoth was, say. The ancients may have been tougher than us, more used to suffering, more used to routine death.

It is a fact that top athletes today can barely match the average speed recorded for of ancient galley rowers. Re-enactors collapse in minutes from fighting that was said to last hours. World class archers have trouble hitting standards of accuracy in training manuals.

Some argue that all of the reports are therefore bunk of course, that man is the same and the ancients were liars. But why lie about averages - who were they fooling with fake training manuals?

I tend to think that moderners are zoo humans, fat, long lived, scientifically healthy, and unfit to live in the wild... Or battlefield.

Quote from: amacris;736191That is a great quote, but it sounds more like the finding of modern combat psychology than anything that came out of the ancient world. The ancients prized the  average, citizen soldier and the most successful military powers built tactics around them.

One of the problems we face in evaluating what ancient combat was like is that man may have changed genetically and epigenitically since the classical era.

Just because the average modern conscript is not much more than a target doesnt mean the average Visigoth was, say. The ancients may have been tougher than us, more used to suffering, more used to routine death.

It is a fact that top athletes today can barely match the average speed recorded for of ancient galley rowers. Re-enactors collapse in minutes from fighting that was said to last hours. World class archers have trouble hitting standards of accuracy in training manuals.

Some argue that all of the reports are therefore bunk of course, that man is the same and the ancients were liars. But why lie about averages - who were they fooling with fake training manuals?

I tend to think that moderners are zoo humans, fat, long lived, scientifically healthy, and unfit to live in the wild... Or battlefield.

Actually we're performing better, except for a few very unique areas, and of course - given the training and steroid regime of our athletes against theirs. Reenactors are also a poor example, because most, if not all really, aren't actually people devoted to military service. And that's the thing - while our top people may be better, the averages...well, not so much.

Which is really also the core of why that line is probably false attributed - because it's built around modern military thinking, where due to the fact that you can wipe out an entire company with a press of a button from a ship that's 300 kilometers away from them. So as conventional forces take on more peacekeeping and garrison/occupational roles, it's easy to fill the rank & file with draftees, in which case, the above indeed applies. See WW1 and Western Front for the shocker that the old adages about elan, esprit d'corps and breaking the morale needed to be changed in face of weaponry capable of tearing down that charge of humans more effectively than anything before in history.

Which is a lot different from the days when you had 2 hordes of people facing each other, which had to charge against walls of spears, where esprit d'corps was the very foundation of success. Not to mention that calling them hordes to begin with is a gross oversimplification, as the lack of basically any communicational devices meant that the decisional abilities of commanders, as well as their own and their men's morale were even more important - battles lost due to the main commander being too busy pursuing enemies to realise his lines have broken are too many to count. Not to mention that for many of the participants of those battles, war wasn't just a job, it was a way of life, something they trained entire lives for. While certainly wars were never much on the dulce et decorum est pro patria mori for an average Testiculous who was given a sharp stick and a shield and pointed at the disciplined line of people who spent most of their waking hours training their bodies for combat, those men who were about to charge him were often the sort of people who saw war more as a chance to finally get money to buy that new set of gem encrusted pottery they wanted for a while.

While PTSD was certainly a thing even back then (Francis of Asisi, Ignatio Loyola or even Cervantes to name a few famous noblemen of the past who most likely suffered from it), it's not really fair to judge the warriors of old by same parameters we judge modern Vietnam or Afghanistan veterans, with all due respect to the latter, because of difference in their upbringing, way of life, and nature of warfare.

And while morale nowadays is still an important factor - especially given the raise of partisans in modern warfare, the technological advancements changed the battlefield to the point where an individual company's high morale isn't as important as it once were.

"I've got elite swinging between my legs."
-My Father (veteran soldier from wars around the world: 1940's-1970's).

The real nature of battles was two shit-encrusted hordes cutting each other down until sunset.  Then the Romans came along with formations and discipline, and conquered the world.

RPGPundit

I feel like that quote is probably fairly accurate. It seems to me like most ancient powers became so because they found a way to at least partially overcome the fact that most people suck at fighting. Rome I would say is a spectacular example of that, intensive drill, deep understanding of strategy and tactics combined with troops that were trained to operate as a cohesive whole versus individuals. All those things seem like a good way to overcome natural shortcomings in most peoples ability to fight.

It usually depends rather heavily on how good your agriculture is; the fewer people required to keep everybody fed, the more people can become dedicated soldiers with all the benefits that entails.

Quote from: RPGPundit;736527The real nature of battles was two shit-encrusted hordes cutting each other down until sunset.  Then the Romans came along with formations and discipline, and conquered the world.

RPGPundit

They didn't invent formation or discipline, and Alexander conquered "the world" before them.

Three points I'd make about ancient mass battles:

1. Many, perhaps most or even all, off those ancient texts were wildly exaggerated in terms of numbers. All those Old Testament accounts of this or that tribe fielding 50,000 troops and 10,000 chariots were wrong. The entire population of the Levant may have been 50,000 so heck with one tribe putting out that many fighting men.

2. In some times and places the conqueror would scoop up all of a city's populous and force them into the front lines in the next battle. I believe the Mongols did this as they marched across Asia. So the first 20 or 40K of people you had to fight were the peasants of the last city or land the Mongols took over.

3. It's a quote I can well believe. As someone else noted communications on the battlefield were terrible and few knew what was happening beyond 10 yards away.

I played World of Warcraft for about 7 years and spent a lot of time raiding, with my guild and with strangers. Even with detailed knowledge of your character's abilities, even with detailed knowledge of how the boss fight is supposed to go and all the tactics planned out and the raid leaders talking on Ventrillo we would still wipe again and again and again on each boss. The player isn't even in physical danger himself and yet his brain goes numb and he'll do something stupid and get killed.
The guild raids were always better since we learned to trust our leaders and each other and we could weed out the weaker players. PUG raids however... at least half the players didn't deserve to be there, they were just targets and meat. Battlegrounds such as AV were the same.

Gods, just trying to get 10 or 20 or 40 people to fight together as a team in a computer game is tough enough. I can just imagine the problems and headaches and frustration actual military leaders must have getting even more troops to move and fight correctly in the heat of battle. I can see why they are portrayed as always angry and barking orders.

Quote from: Rincewind1;736196Reenactors are also a poor example, because most, if not all really, aren't actually people devoted to military service.

No kidding.  Your average SCA fighter isn't someone who drills as a way of life.  He's a guy who puts in an hour and a half or so of fighting practice a week, tops, and maybe does 15-20 minutes a day of pell work if he's really freaking dedicated.  Heck, a lot of SCA fighters put in the minimum amount of work they need to do to stay qualified, and pretty much put on the armor otherwise for Pennsic and their regional war.

Quote from: Rincewind1;736196... as the lack of basically any communicational devices meant that the decisional abilities of commanders, as well as their own and their men's morale were even more important - battles lost due to the main commander being too busy pursuing enemies to realise his lines have broken are too many to count.

The anecdote that sticks out in my head was in commanding the left wing during a massive line battle.  We were doing great, my troops were sticking together, we were blowing through the enemy like so much chaff ... and that's when I picked my head up, looking to see what to do next, and realized that the whole rest of our army was getting thoroughly pasted, and that the enemy's center elements were starting to reform to come after us ... Let's just say it didn't end well.  Would I have done differently if I wasn't neck deep in the fog of war?  Probably, but there you go.