The war kills life. It is the father of disaster and death. Moreover, and here it lies its dramatic character, the war is a community disaster surpassing in pains the personal troubles.
It is the situation of the physical diseases which the doctor describes as follows: of two diseases meet in a single body only the most severe disease is made felt while the least severe disease is hidden, covered by the manifestation of the first one.
In the same way the evils of the war, overwhelming by their pains make the people taken apart insensitive to their personal troubles. The war comes with weapons and horses with sharpened iron and thunderous horns, with rough phalanges of lances, with shields one near the other, with helmets moving frighteningly with their panaches, with attacks, pressures, tussles, fights, massacres, flight, chase, moans, cries, land watered by blood, dead people trampled with the feet, wounded, abandoned and all the rest. In such circumstances the man has time to move his spirit to memories of pleasant things? The pleasant memories aren`t they an additional trouble in moments of danger?
Saint Gregory of Nyssa
