So PTSD is a major problem for veterans of conflicts not modern times, but I have never heard the same being true for soldiers in the past. My question is, why were they seemingly immune to this? Was it due to ancient culture glorifying war? Has modern ways of waging war had effect? Maybe they did but it was not recorded? Also, when is the earliest definitive record of PTSD we have?
This is one of the most frequently asked questions on this sub. Please see my earlier post on the Greeks here which also provides links to earlier answers on the Romans, Assyrians and Vikings.
The earliest definitive record of PTSD is in the early 1980s, when "posttraumatic stress disorder" was first formally defined as a distinct disorder in the DSM-III. This is a separate issue from the earliest known cases of stress disorders and combat trauma, but it is impossible to diagnose patients retroactively without expert diagnosis, so proper practice is to use different terminology to refer to those cases.