Of all the civilisations of antiquity, the Egyptian seems to me to have been the most pleasant. The excellent protections which desert and sea provide for the Nile valley prevented the excessive development of the spirit of heroism which must often have made life in Greece hell on earth.

Otto Neugebauer – The Exact Sciences in Antiquity 2nd Edition, page 71.

In ancient Greece to be a citizen was to be a soldier. Marching alongside your fellow citizens was a privilege as was as a duty. But marching to where? The thing that soldiers exist to do is fight, so ideally to be the equal of the men who have gone before you you’re going to want to have fought in one battle. The money gained from booty is another welcome bonus. There’s also the matter of skills. If you’ve been practising something it’s natural to want to try it out for real. So what ancient Greece had was a lot of men who probably wanted a minor fight.

Making things worse, unlike Egypt, Greece never really unified from within. This meant that finding an enemy to fight was a lot less effort for the Greeks than the Egyptians. There were periods of More >