Who do you believe were the greatest warriors in history, now or in antiquity?

Answer 1

If you are speaking of "warriors" as a group or nation I think you have to define first what makes warriors great.

1. Live up to the Spartan militaristic ideal or some other code
2. Great staying power as a warrior society
3. Great adversary to overcome
4. Brought great prestige or power to the nation/people they protected

Given these criteria I think you are looking at:

1. Alexander and his merry Macedonians
2. The Roman Legions
3. Hannibal and his "Barbarian Hordes"
4. Ottoman/Turks until the gates of Vienna
5. Pre-industrial Japanese Samurai
6. Zulu Warriors
7. Vietcong - beat French and U.S.

I see the British and French powerful nations with powerful Armies/Navies, but not great warriors.

The U.S. has at times been a warrior society, but I don't think they meet my arbitrary criteria....yet.

Answer 2

If you mean Warriors and not great leaders then it would have to be the Spartans.The stand they made at Thermopylae was incredible and gave the Greeks time to regroup and improved their morale.The Spartans were all prepared to fight to the death and all knew they would eventually die, 700 of them facing an army of some 40,000 Persians.I believe ten Persians died to every one Spartan.Their whole life was devoted to being a warrior and even when they were married they still lived in their barracks.Their training started at about the age of seven and they were used to great hardship as well as learning tactics and fighting skills to a very high level.If they had not been betrayed which allowed the Persians to find a secret route to attack them from the rear as well then who knows what would have happened.

Other than that I think the Welsh Guards at Rourkes Drift deserve a mention.!00 of them beatimg off 5000 Zulu's.

Answer 3

The Mongols were pretty cool. They just came, saw and did what the heck they liked.

The Zulus were pretty damn good too. Look how they held against (and slaughtered) the British forces o several occasions.

I won't be popular for this but...

The Mujahadeen in Afghanistan held out against vastly superior Soviet numbers and equipment and sent the Bear home with a bloody nose (hence some of the troble we're having today!). These guys had also given British forces some trouble in the past two centuries.

Of course our modern guys like SAS etc are pretty hot too.

Answer 4

Hector, Caesar, Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, George Washington, Nelson, Bonaparte, Grant, Lee, Eisenhower, Patton, Rommel,

That's all I can think of.

Answer 5

Spartans, and Nazis. They both took down armies that considerably outnumbered them. History is written by the victor.

In the case of Sparta, thier stand at Themopylae caused Greece to unite and overthrow the Persian empire. In turn, Greece got to write history, and subsequently scribed the Spartans in a good light.

In the case of Nazi Germany, they were on the path to conquering the entirety of Eurasia if it weren't for the United States interference, which is not a small feat by any means.

Furthermore, they were about 1 or 2 months away from fashioning the world's first Atomic Bomb which would have ensured thier victory without question.

Despite this, history records them as villains, and discredits them for alot of things because of certain people's viewpoints. The media is owned by the jews, and the larger majority of industry in the united states and europe is owned by jews, so it's not a big suprise that they would be villified for thier actions.

By the way, Nazi Germany did not just start the Holocaust on it's own accord. It saw the Jewish population (in ownership of nearly thier entire country's economy) as a threat, and intended to deal with this by simply removing them from thier land. Before World War 2, they issued a promise to the world, that if the Jews plunged them into another World War because of thier dissapproval on this topic, than they would eradicate the jews from this Earth. World War 2 began, because of political urgings in countries where the Jewish population controlled enough to muscle to plunge thier countries into war, and the Germans followed through on thier promise.

I'm not advocating Nazi Germany, but this is fact. Which brings about this question......If a country decides that they don't want a certain ethnic group (or certain religious group, or certain age group etc) to own everything, and they want this group out of thier country (a unanimous decision) are they then allowed to see that they are removed from thier country? What is a country? (a group of people that share like views) What is a religion? (a group of people that share like views)

If a group with like views doesn't want to interact with a group of un-like views, are they allowed to? Because that's what World War 2 was all about, the rest of it was just the ugliness that ensued as a result of this debate.

Answer 6

In history, I would have to say Achilles. He is the epitome of a warrior to me. If you read through the Iliad, which is appropriately about the "wrath of Achilles", it discusses his journey as a warrior. In stories, I believe that either Legolas or Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings would qualify. They are selfless in helping Frodo get to Mt. Doom and destroy the Ring. In real life, the greatest warriors are the "average" men and women who go out on a daily basis to help protect their nation. They truly are the heroes of the time.

Answer 7

with no hesitation i say the Romans.
how the inhabitants of a small town on the Tiber could produce
the military machine it did. conquering the then known world
with ta tics so far ahead of the times. is a miracle in itself
They occupied territory then signed up the former enemies
to the legions. spreading their culture and ideas across the
world. no other warrior nation comes close

Answer 8

the greatest warrior in history was Alexander the Great. He has conquered most of Asia and Africa. There was no such warrior like him who could have conquered so much just by one man.

Answer 9

Alexander The Great or if you are from the Middle East Iskander The Terrible. He won a land war in Asia.

Answer 10

I don`t know much about this subject but I admire everyone that fought in WW 1 & 2.

But I like the Legend of William Wallace.