/lit/ - Literature

>The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage.
Xenophon

>During the First World War I was still a complete atheist. I remember that one day I found myself in front of a trench that was sustaining brisk fire. I had to get across it, and I mused that a prayer would be appropriate. But I told myself: "No, if I didn't care about the Good Lord when everything was going well, it would be awful to ask for his help now!"
Junger

Junger's strength in the war was entirely due to the laws passed down through myth, he would not have survived without such knowledge, he would have been crushed without being able to perceive the 'greater plot'. Odyne, the great goddess of pain. With his brother in Langemarck he experienced something quite the opposite of Diomedes parting of the great ocean, the absolute terror of war if Aphrodite and Ares had been killed - a type of war which can no longer call the Hesiodic heroes, the retired old soldiers, away from their farms.
Either that or he was simply fated to be born into Xenophon's conclusion:

>If anyone is surprised at my frequent repetition of the exhortation to work with God, I can assure him that his surprise will diminish, if he is often in peril, and if he considers that in time of war foemen plot and counterplot, but seldom know what will come of their plots. Therefore there is none other that can give counsel in such a case but the gods. They know all things, and warn whomsoever they will in sacrifices, in omens, in voices, and in dreams. And we may suppose that they are more ready to counsel those who not only ask what they ought to do in the hour of need, but also serve the gods in the days of their prosperity with all their might.