Ill explain myself; I heard how Hannibal or Scipio "waited" for the other side to assemble their troops. What's the point of this? Wouldn't it be better to attack the other guy while he's organising? Or is this a case of "getting more by licking rather than biting"?
Also, people seemed very eager to go to war back in the day. Wouldn't they have more or less a clear idea of who was going to win before hand, or this is a hindsight trap?
Getting armies of any size positioned for a 'set' battle was a long and complicated affair. Communications were limited to verbal commands, some horn signals and messengers. All were slow, tended to be missundertood. Generals often waited to see how their opponents were setting up their lines of battles to see where the enemies strengths lay and how to counter them. Moving quickly to seize an opportunity was generally limited to cavalry units.
The generals would meet up between their armies pre-battle, and it was essentially the "smack-talk" of ancient times