There's a weird account in Xenophon's Anabasis.

Xenophon intends to board ships to take him men back to Greece (west), but someone starts spreading the rumor that he intends to sail to Persia (east) and give them to the Persians.

So Xenophon has to call a meeting, and he basically says, "You can all clearly see which direction I'm sailing because of the sun, and if I sail east you all can just kill me, so how could that plan even work?"

We don't know a huge amount about how this worked, but it was probably based on their region and their particular customs. These religions are "polytheistic" precisely because there was no single book or doctrine that people agreed on. They did not have the equivalent of a "Bible" to explain these things.

In Greece, each community would have one or more temples with a cult dedicated to a particular god. But they didn't necessarily have temples or cults for every single god, and the teachings of one cult probably didn't exactly match the teachings of another cult in a different city, even if they both worshipped the same god.

I suspect it was a judgment call based on factors like whose temple was nearby, who was considered the patron of a certain city, and which god's offerings had seemed to be successful in the past.

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Person A: "My father told me the story of how he sacrificed a goat to Athena, and he lost that battle. So maybe we should try Ares."

Person B: "I don't think so. The other guy's General claims he is descended from a son of Ares."

Person A: "Okay, so we stick with Athena but we try a cow instead of a goat?"

Person B: "Yeah, that sounds good."

And how many statues did NOT have their hands in the same position? How many parts of the statues were NOT at all similar?

Don't latch onto a trivial detail and give it more meaning than it deserves. Just because you have two examples of things that look similar does not mean those similarities are representative or relevant.

You could pick any feature of the artwork and eventually find SOMETHING on Earth that it resembles, without indicating any relevant connection.

>Or did their mere presence stop any thought of routing?

Let me tell you a secret about warfare: The average soldier has no idea what the hell is going on.

Even with all of our drones and radios, the average infantryman is really clueless about anything he can't personally see or hear. And in battle, 99% of your attention is focused on the enemy.

Now imagine you in the Napoleonic Wars. To your left, right, and rear are just close-packed soldiers wearing tall hats. You're already half deaf from gunfire and all of your attention is focused on the complicated process of loading your musket. If more guys are coming up from behind to help, you probably wouldn't notice.

It is not uncommon to see accounts of soldiers fleeing the battlefield, claiming all is lost, even when their side was actually winning. For example, at Waterloo British soldiers fled from battle and encountered Prussian reinforcements. Rather than being inspired to return to the fight, they told the Prussians the battle was already lost.