Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray.

Today we're going to ask a question which is current and ancient at the same time and hopefully

not controversial. And of course you can ask a question, controversial or not. You can send

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Nonetheless, you can ask us a question.

I've got a question from Carlos today.

And his question is, so, in the current war in Ukraine, we've seen Ukrainian soldiers

write insulting messages

and trolling ones on artillery shells before firing them at Russian forces.

My question is did similar practices exist in the ancient Mediterranean world

with soldiers writing insults and all the use of verbal insults?

Now getting away from the very, very current and ongoing war, this is a question that's actually been asked about several previous contemporary wars, which is fascinating in itself, because it was something that we saw in Afghanistan. It was something we saw in the wars in Iraq. It's something we've seen in vietnam it's something we've seen

in world war two and even world war one and ever onwards going back and i don't know about it

in the polionic wars that would be interesting uh in in the age of black powder but it is something

we know soldiers do that they write insulting messages on their weapons and send them over the lines,

which from an artillery perspective is peculiar because obviously there's not going to be any surviving evidence of their insult when it hits.

And so it seems to be something that the soldiers do for their own purposes, their own mental health, get it out.

Also for propaganda purposes, for photography.

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