History's most brutal killers, the Majingilane Male Lions

[Tshokwane]

I know, my real trade is history, especially ancient history. 

Let just take one example, the one with the greeks at Thermopylae. 

If you know anything about the greeks, the first you learn is the way they fought. They fought together, in a phalanx formation. 

Together. All individualism was completely discouraged, especially among the spartans, and that made a difference with what happened for example in the time of the Iliiad, where individual achievements, personal glory, was more important.

It was not so among the Spartans. They had a "collective" mind, and an example of it is seen in the treatment of one of the spartan hoplites that survived Thermopylae.

He had been sick, and was unable to keep fighting, so he was sent back to Sparta. So, of course, being one of the only that survived where his brothers had died gained him a lot of animosity. People didn't talk to him, people ignored him completely. To them, he didn't exist.

A year passed, and the greeks, under the command of the Spartan general Pausanias, fought in Platea vs the persian army commanded by Mardonius. In the fight, this man, called Aristodemus, was said to fight "with such fury that the Spartans regarded him as having redeemed himself."

But they didn't reward him with any special honours, as they would do in a normal case. They considered Aristodemus had fought in a reckless way, in a suicidal way, charging like a berserker, mindlessly leaving the phalanx and killing some persians before they killed him. 

To the Spartans, there was more glory, there was more valour involved, when you fought still wishing to win and live.

So we have these two separate warriors. 

The mindless brute who charges into battle regardless of strategy, with only one thing in mind, to kill and destroy.

And the disciplined warrior, the Spartan that fights in a ordered way with his brothers in the phalanx, not seeking just his personal glory although he cares about that, but the glory of his city, of his brothers and fighting to win.

It is wrong to draw parallels with humans and civilizations because they're lions. But, as @peter has said before, we are drawn to lions because there's something about them that calls us in a basic way, in the most basic of ways I would say, considering that once, we humans depended on the strenght of the men of the tribe(the coalition). Reply