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War, battlefields and military service are three very different things. Up until the Korean war, soldiers were much more likely to die from disease than combat
by sandworm101 4y ago
War, battlefields and military service are three very different things. Up until the Korean war, soldiers were much more likely to die from disease than combat. Living in unsanitary war camps was more likely to kill you than the enemy. Even peacetime military service would have, in Roman times, involved marching all over the place working on fortifications and roads. Roman soldiers got sick in camp and were injured in what we would today call industrial accidents.
Even simple travel, especially if by ship, was often lethal.
So when we read of a parent not wanting to send their son to the army, do not think that it is a fear of the battlefield. That was a secondary concern to all manner of non-combat dangers.
- nescioquid 4y agoGreat point. The picture you paint seems generally like the ancient world. In Rome, malaria, unsanitary apartment buildings burning down, highway men if you travel by road, pirates if by sea, everyone was sick (I vaguely recall Cicero mentioning another senator suffering from diarrhea soiling himself in public) and the bread you ate wore down your teeth. Do you happen to know if the Romans thought that these things were especially worse on campaign (wouldn't doubt it at all)?
- sandworm101 4y agoA soldier on the move would probably have been healthier than a slave in the heart of a Roman city. But deaths associated with day-to-day life are very different than deaths far away on campaign. Remember that it would be many months, possibly years, before a family knew whether their son had survived his military service. And a good number of sons that did survive never actually came home, instead settling in some far away place or were stuck without money enough to make the return trip.