In ancient times, how did humans overcome their self-preservation instincts to engage in hand-to-hand combat during wars?
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If you want an interesting view into Roman warfare around 30BC (during the rise of Caesar), search YouTube for the opening battle scene of HBO’s Rome show.
It is by no means representative of all ancient combat, but it does show you one reason why Roman legions were the infantry powerhouse of their region during this time: organization.
In the scene, you see the infantrymen stacked into close columns, where only the man in front is actually facing/fighting the enemy. The man behind him holds onto the back of his armor to keep him from straying away. Periodically, the officer blows a loud whistle to signal that the front man should disengage and cycle to the back of the column. Theoretically, while the formation holds, this cycling makes sure that no single soldier spends huge amounts of time fighting or gets too exhausted.
Similarly, the incredible success of Macedonian phalanxes under Phillip II and Alexander the Great were partly due to a unique weapon: the sarissa. The sarissa was a pike that was several feet longer than the standard length used by most other Greek phalanxes. The idea behind the sarissa was simple: stab your opponent from a longer distance, before he gets close enough to stab you.
You are right, hand to hand combat is terrifying and something that most soldiers would prefer to avoid. In both the Roman legion tactics and the Greek sarissa, we can see that one element of some successful military strategies is to actually minimize the amount of hand to hand combat that a solider is exposed to- either by cycling the solider out, or keeping enemies away with a longer stick.
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