A lot of our vets today get mentally screwed because they’re plagued by PTSD but you never hear about it from the warriors of old. You always hear how ruthless and powerful but never really touched upon about them not handling it well, I also wonder if there harsh up bringing is what makes the difference. We as a society now teach love and compassion but Spartans we’re a fighter and warrior society.
It's a complicated matter, made even more so by the inherent difficulty of psychoanalysing a long-dead person from a wholly different cultural background at a distance of years or centuries. u/Iphikrates examines the matter in this post (it deals mainly with the Greeks, but many of the same concerns hold true for the Middle Ages), while u/hillsonghoods has a Monday Methods post on just why it's so complicated.