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I'm curious about why the different city-states in Ancient Greece fought war against each other and how did their leaders motivate their people to take up arms, leave their families and farms and go to war against their neighbours? And how did they morally justify the killing of other farmers and sacking their cities and countryside?
I'm not talking about defensive wars like when the Persian Empire invaded, but rather wars when Greece or the city-states themselves started it. I'm not sure "Greece" was "a thing" back then, each city-state was perhaps pretty much "its own country" so to speak, but I've heard that they tended to team up against outside invaders from time to time.
One reason I can see for a city to attack another city would be if one city is starving and the war is a way of gathering resources for their own survival. If that was the case then I can see how they could see that as "morally justified", fighting for their own survival, and that could be a motivation for the farmers to take up arms and follow their leader into battle. Are there any examples of wars or battles from Ancient Greece that were fought for this reason?
Another reason I can imagine is that the leader wants glory and riches, but how then would he go about convincing his people to go along with that, to sacrifice their own life for his glory? Propaganda? How then would such propaganda be distributed before the information age with news paper and stuff like that? Any examples of these kind of power struggles that were purely for the military glory?
Revenge is of course also a classical motif for war, but revenge for what, what started it all in the first place in such a case?
Are there any historical documented sources from city-states leaders leaving a record of their motivations for invading a neighbouring city?
Also, didn't a lot of ancient philosophers from Ancient Greece think a lot about morality and ethics? What were their takes on war against other city-states?