In other times, wars were initiated and declared by monarchs, champions, dictators, emperors... the responsibility fell on one person or, at most, on a small group and their motives were power, wealth, submission and other reasons for this. caliber.
In Athens, where democracy was born, the decision to declare war was among the functions of the Assembly. In it, unlike our Parliament, any Athenian citizen could participate, to deliberate and vote. So,what motivations did the people have to declare war?
Euripides , one of the three great Greek tragic poets of antiquity, explains it to us in the tragedy “Las supplicantes”:
When a people votes for war, no one makes calculations about their own death and tends to attribute that misfortune to others. For if death were in sight at the moment of casting the ballot, Greece would never perish maddened by weapons. And that all men know between two decisions – a good one and a bad one – which is the best. We know that for mortals peace is much better than war. The first is much loved by the Muses and an enemy of the Furies, she is pleased to have healthy children, she enjoys abundance. But we are unworthy and, despising all those gifts, we start wars and make the losers slaves, men enslaving men and cities enslaving cities.
As Plautus said «Homo homini lupus » (man is a wolf to man).
Clarification:Plautus said:Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit, wolf is the man for the man, and not man, when he does not know who the other is.
Thomas Hobbes, in the 17th century, summed this up in homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man.