Just as the sun began to strike the plowlands,
rising out of the deep calm flow of the Ocean River
to climb the vaulting sky, the opposing armies met.
And hard as it was to recognize each man, each body,
with clear water they washed the clotted blood away
and lifted them onto wagons, weeping warm tears.
Priam forbade his people to wail aloud. In silence
they piled the corpses on the pyre, their hearts breaking,
burned them down to ash and returned to sacred Troy.
And just so on the other side Achaean men-at-arms
piled the corpses on the pyre, their hearts breaking,
burned them down to ash and returned to the hollow ships.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 7, lines 488-499. The opposing Achaean and Trojan armies may have had important differences that brought them into bloody conflict with one another. But they had one thing in common. They both shared the time-honored tradition of stopping to grieve for and attend to their dead. While Priam forbade his people to wail aloud, after battle they burned the bodies of their fallen, then went home with "their hearts breaking." Regardless of who or what they were fighting for, the soldiers on both sides were men with real feelings and human emotions who honored and mourned their dead.