Europeans have largely forgotten the glamour which can invest the male born for battle and shadowed in the daylight world by the sacred burden of wounds and death, despite the increasing incidence of such curiously archaic warriors in the mountains, and in the cities, of the late-twentieth-century world. Mexica society was committed to war, not as an occasional heroic obligation, but chronically, and its members had to be brought to bear the social and psychological costs of that commitment. The allure of the warrior style penetrated deep into the few other desired and reputable masculine careers. Neither priests nor merchants, despite their separate professions and institutions, and despite superficially distinctive demeanours, were immune to it. Priests led the warrior march to battle, while merchants boasted of their trade expeditions in warrior idiom, and dispersed much of their hoarded wealth for the privilege of playing a warrior's ceremonial part for a day. The main ceremonial calendar was built out of the swing of the seasons, marking the transitions out of the time of agricultural growth into the season of war.