While we often hear of the atrocities committed on the battlefield for our time's more recent wars, not many people refer to the tactics and means used in the earlier days with the likes of the Egyptian, Roman, Greek or Chinese dynasties. Here samurais, knights, legion soldiers, and gladiators took the field to battle chest to chest with blunt and primitive instruments of combat that didn't greatly surpass commonplace tools any of us may find in our kitchen or garage today. Movies like Gladiator and Braveheart attempt to parlay these lost visions but no one has yet to truly tap the visceral happenings that were sure to have happened to millions of men, women and children in these differences of opinions and ways.

Even with the volumes of documented history, warriors of battles past continue to be glorified in our culture's film, literature and music. The above image soundly represents both the exaggerated and romanticized perceptions of power and dominance that so many thrive on. I don't know that I've ever seen a better personification of this concept in structural art and this photo serves as one of my favorite pieces where I was behind the shutter.

I'm sure that everyone has heard the theory that states war repeats itself only because people forget what war is truly about. If one spends any time contemplating the result, I don't know that another explanation can compete.