The concluding worst ancient military jobs were so brutal, such a shit deal, that I have had a hard time envisioning how to describe them in nonfiction prose. As fiction, they all frame as horror stories. See Calone Dmos for an example of #5 rendered as a fiction perspective.
#5 Roman Calone
According to Rome-loving lore the Roman legionnaire was one of the best foot soldiers in history because he carried all of his own supplies [he often shared a mule or donkey with his messmates] and did his part digging and staking a new fortified camp every night. Now, he did do his part. However, by Imperial times there was a specialized ditch digging slave that accompanied the legions. These were collectively called calones, which would make them something of a proto-combat engineer—without the pension and V.A. medical care.
Realistically the legionnaire had to be free to fight in siege situations and when breaking ground for a new camp in hostile territory. As a calone you would be a very important asset to a legion and would be well fed. Your life would be the digging of one long ditch and the hauling of freight to the digging of the next ditch. If your unit was defeated you could be expected to be enslaved by the conquerors if it happened out in the field.
However, in siege situations the Roman calone would become something like the gears in a war engine not unlike the oarsman. You would be swinging that ram, dragging that siege tower, hauling that dirt to the mole or ramp—and be a prime target for enemy arrows, stones, sling bullets, and boiling oil!
Enjoy your shift, Mars is eager.
#4 Hellenistic Camp Boy
Imagine following an ancient army around barefoot, hauling the personal goods of the murderer who bought you, bringing him wine while he stands in the ranks awaiting the command to advance, tending to his injuries after battle, blowing him in his tent, and getting bent over his gear and sodomized when he is not too drunk to get it up. Then imagine your twelve. With any luck he gets killed during a losing battle and you can slip away in the chaos.
#3 War Horse
Really, what can be worse than being a big four-legged vegetarian enslaved and tied up by a bunch of carnivorous apes obsessed with using you to kill other carnivorous apes?
I suppose it is better than being a hunted antelope, at least when they are feeding you. But despite all of the man and horse bromance over the ages I just can’t imagine much that would be more stressful than having a domineering bloodthirsty monkey literally riding on your back, yanking on the straps he has ingeniously attached to that useless set of braces stuck in your mouth and demanding that you take him toward the screaming apes that you would otherwise run from.
Oh yes, they are all carrying sharp pointy objects.
I suppose the upside is that you occasionally get to stomp in the heads of these chattering biped savages, and on occasion, if the creep is not paying attention, you can throw his ass into the dirt—or perhaps into a river where Frederick Barbarossa’s horse tossed him to drown in his armor—and pretend it was an accident, like you needed to scratch your ass on a tree and he was in the way.
#2 War Elephant
If the war horse has it bad, well he only has one monkey on his back, and is a dumbass besides and is not fully able to appreciate his plight. An elephant is far more intelligent, and as H.P. Lovecraft observed, being smart enough to appreciate your plight is a torture all its own. And boy did the war elephant’s plight suck.
The worst thing that can befall any creature on Planet Earth is to have humans afraid of you. It only gets worse when the humans that own you make you truly worthy of terror by training and arming you to squash other humans, thereby encouraging their enemies—and humans always have human enemies—to come up with ever more diabolical methods of doing away with you.
To begin with you’re a sensitive creature. On top of that, your enemies might very well turn out to be Romans who are the nastiest humans: they will chop off your sensitive trunk and throw down iron thorns to pierce your feet. Perhaps the worst aspect is the fact that your human owners do not trust you. The greasy little monkey that directs you, and sits on your neck, is armed with a hammer and spike which has no other purpose other than to be driven into the base of your skull in case you go berserk, and you have plenty of reasons for going berserk when considering what the Romans have in store for you.
Now, for the worst ancient military job imaginable…
#1 War Pig
If you were a time traveling transmigrant human heavy metal fan you could at least take solace in that fact that your were immortalized by a stoned-out-of-his-mind British rocker.
But what is that smell?
Oh, excuse me, that is you!
You know, when foot soldiers don’t have any antitank weapons they will resort to filling a bottle with a flammable liquid, lighting a makeshift wick and then shattering the flaming greeting card on the enemy war machine.
A really nasty version of this was when some creepy human named Pavlov trained his dogs to eat under tractors then sent them to war with anti tank mines strapped to their back. When the enemy tanks fired up they sounded like tractors and the dogs—being dumbasses—ran to get lunch and kaboom!
As bad as that sucks, it was quick, and since dogs are dumbasses, unlike your erudite mud wallowing self, they never saw it coming. But you my ancient combative baconator, are more intelligent than the war horse and get this:
Your Roman handlers tar your back with pitch, point you at those giant smartass elephants with mean monkeys loaded on their back who are going to be launching arrows at your soon to be flaming ass, and then set you on fire!
Why?
Because it scares the wits out of the elephants, that’s why. You are living incendiary ordnance. Oh yes, the faster you run the hotter you burn.
I know WTF.
Question: For how long has psychology played an active role in warfare? Besides the obvious flaming K9s and Stukas with sirens, how far back do we see belligerents utilizing legitimate psycho-science to oppress the enemy? What are some (particularly dated) examples of this?
Thanks!
Just off of the top of my head Mister Metzger:
1. In a biblical quote [which I cannot recall but which opened the movie Secretariat] that echoes the IndoEuropean invasions of the Near East and Egypt [where they were called the Hyksos] 3,700 years ago, charioteers relied on the thunderous hooves of their steeds 'raking the earth' to strike terror into the enemy. Recall that this was in a world that was virtually without sound compared to our own.
2. Torture—and the reputation to be devoted to its practice—is perhaps the oldest form of psychological warfare that is present in pre agricultural societies and therefore was probably with us since the full emergence of language at about 40,000 years ago.
3. Trash talking is present in the oldest folklore and epic poetry and probably antedates agriculture, and requires a shared language. The first solid evidence of trash talking comes from what is now Iraq 4,7000 years ago. Insulting the enemy was the prevue of kings in the Near East and in Europe the profession from which poets, and later writers, eventually emerged.
4. Hideously painted shields in the Hellenic world go back 3,200 years.
5. Frightening masks such as worn by the samurai, and especially horse hair crests on helmets, are devices used to intimidate, and intimidation works against non professional soldiers. The Kelts spiked their hair like punk rockers for the same reason as far back as 2,300 years ago and probably farther.
6. Filing teeth to points was common in Africa and probably goes back to the very dawn of tribal man which is about 70,000 years ago.
7. Drums and horns are as old as civilization and served to intimidate as well as communicate.
8. Culling on the Mongol model [800 years ago] which sends the message that populations who do not submit will be exterminated, goes back at least 2,300 years to Alexander wiping out Thebes and at least a dozen other entire polities, and was probably a standard Assyrian terror tactic 400 years earlier. This, the realization that fighting jeopardizes your entire community, and even ancestral graves, is the purest form of mass psychological warfare in the ancient world and my guess is exactly as old as civilization, or 5,000 years.
9. The Spartans and in our time the French Foreign Legion and Ghurkas are elite units traditionally feared by the enemy for their cold professionalism and silence in the ranks. This turns the basic noise making psychological warfare that is used against amateurs on its head, and aims to terrorize more subtly.
10. Lastly, I would have to say that the basis for effective psychological warfare is a warrior class that is known to be fearless. As the Japanese found out this is useless if you are totally overmatched. But, when there is technological parity, a tribal tradition of offering oneself as a trophy, gets this point across pretty clearly. When an Eastern Woodlands [400+ years ago] warrior plucked most of the hair on his head and left a decorated scalp lock on the top, he was telling his neighbors that he played for keeps and he was in it to the bitter end.
So my answer is a guess , that at about 70,000 years ago when bands began bonding into tribes to annihilate other bands in what was then a post apocalyptic world in the wake of the Toba Super Eruption, that terror became a weapon. By 40,000 years ago it was almost certain that fully modern language gave terror more currency. And, by the time that men were trying to communicate their intentions magically to the powers that ruled the animal kingdom in European cave paintings 30,000 years ago, I am certain that methods for subtly terrorizing enemies were sophisticated and in regular use. Don't forget, that for hundreds of thousands of years primitive man had been using fire to terrorize animals. As primitive warfare is an extension of hunting to include one's own species, it seems that psychological warfare is as old as man's command of fire.