Greece rarely appears in arms except in defensive warfare (as against the Persians), in civil wars between citizens and citizens, and in semi-civil wars, as between the Athenians and the Spartans, the Dorians, Ionians, and Æolians. A glance at any of their campaigns-the 'Anabasis,' for instance-gives us their measure as soldiers; and what else can we expect from a race whose typical men were Themistocles and Alcibiades? They were too clever by half; too vain, too restless, too impulsive (ever 'shedding tears'), too self-assertive to become disciplined men-machines. They were always ready for a revolt, for a change of officers; and it must have been a serious thing to command them. In this point, perhaps, they are rivalled by the Frenchman, one of the best soldiers in Europe, and also one of the most difficult to manage. Great captains-Turenne and Napoleon Buonaparte, for instance-shot their recalcitrants by the dozen till the survivors learned to 'tremble and obey.' Like the French, too, and the Irish, the Greeks had more dash than firmness. They gained victories by the vigour and gallantry of their attack, but they did not distinguish themselves in a losing game. Here England excels, and hence Marshal Bugeaud said, 'She has the best infantry in the world; happily they are not many.' We must make them so.

Hellas owed her successes in foreign wars mainly to the barbarous condition of her neighbours. The Romans and all the peoples of Asia Minor, save her own colonies, were far behind her when, after the fashion of the equestrian races of Northern Asia, she had exchanged the chariot for the charger; and when she borrowed from Egypt the arts of warfare by land and sea, the paraphernalia of the siege, the best of arms and armour, and even the redoubtable phalanx. But she lost pre-eminence, physical and moral, when the rival races rose to be her equals, and even her superiors, in weapons, organisation, and discipline. She began with beating, and she ended with being thoroughly beaten by, the Romans.

Greek literature does not abound, like Roman and Hebrew, in perpetual allusions to the Sword: it refers more frequently to the spear and bow. Yet Athenæus ennobles the end of his curious olla podrida (the 'Deipnosophists') with some charming lines alluding to the Queen of Weapons. The first passage begins with:

But who is to do this under a Republic? And here we foresee troubles for our neighbours in the next Prusso-Gallic War.

2 For instance, the Holy City' of Miletus, with its 300 dependent towns. When we speak of ancient Greece we must remember that it extended from Asia Minor to Sicily, Italy, and even Southern France; and from Egypt to Albania. Modern Greece is a mere mutilated trunk.

3 Demmin (p. 106, &c.) tells us that the Greeks had not even a term to denote the action of riding on horseback'; and that even in French a proper verb does not exist, as the expression chevaucher

means rather to stroll (flåner) on horseback.' As his English translator remarks, the assertion is hardly admissible in the face of such words as inneveLy (equitare), cavalcare, to ride the horse; innela (riding), iπeds and inñóτŋs (a rider, a knight), and ¿πißeßnкús, mounted (scil. on horseback). His interpretation of chevaucher is equally erroneous. Chevaucher, a fine old word, now only too rare, exactly expresses our 'to ride': Il chevaucha aux parties d'occident, is quoted from a French MS. (early fourteenth century) by Colonel Yule in his preface to Marco Polo; and the word occurs twice in the same sentence with the same sense.

I'll wreathe my sword in myrtle bough,
The sword that laid the tyrant low,
When Patriots burning to be free
To Athens gave equality.1

The second is the song of Hybrias the Cretan :

:

My wealth is here, the sword, the spear, the breast-defending shield,
With this I plough, with this I sow, with this I reap the field;
With this I rape the luscious grape and drink the blood-red wine,
And slaves at hand in order stand, and all are counted mine! 2

And here arises a curious question. Do races, as is generally assumed, decline and fall like nations and empires? Does the body politic obey the law of the body corporal? Do peoples grow old and feeble and barren after their most brilliant periods of gestation? Or rather do they not cease to be great, and to bear great men, because their neighbours have grown to be greater, and because genius is repressed by unfavourable media? I cannot see that Time has greatly changed the peasant of the Romagna, the mountaineer of the Peloponnesus, the Persian become a Parsi in Bombay, or the modern soldier of the Nile Valley, who, under Ibrahim Pasha, defeated the Turks in every pitched battle. But the conditions of Italy, Greece, Persia, and Egypt, are now fundamentally altered: they are no longer superior to their surroundings; they are environed by races stronger than themselves. Hence, perhaps, what is popularly called their degeneracy.

Lord Denman's translation.

2 D. K. Sandford.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SWORD IN ANCIENT ROME; THE LEGION AND THE GLADIATOR.

THE role played by pagan Rome on the stage of history was twofold-that of conqueror and that of regulator. In obeying man's acquisitive instinct she was compelled to perfect her executive instrument, the fighter. To her we owe the words 'arms' and 'army,' 'armour' and 'armoury.'' As pugna derives from pugnus, the fist, so arma and its congeners derive from armus, the arm: 'antiqui humeros cum brachiis armos vocabant,' says Festus. Well knowing that the 'God of Battles' favours superiority of weapons as much as, and in select cases more than, 'big battalions,' she ever chose the implements and instruments she found the best; and, following her own proverb, she never disdained to take a lesson in arms even from the conquered.

But Rome soon learnt that to make good soldiers she must begin by making good citizens. She insisted upon the civilising maxim 'Cedant arma toga,' without, however, the invidious precedence which Sallust calls those most offensive words of Cicero'

Concedat laurea linguæ.

She subordinated the Captain to the Magistrate, and she proclaimed to both the absolute Reign of Law. The idea presented itself to the Greek mind in the shape of Fate, Anagké, Nemesis: Rome brought it down from the vague to the realistic, from the abstract to the concrete, from heaven to earth. Thus, while Greece taught mankind the novel lessons of ordered liberty, free thought, intellectual culture, and patriotic citizenship, Rome, by her reverence for Law, in whose sight all men were equal, preached the brotherhood of mankind. Hence Christendom ever has been, and is still, governed by a heathen code, by that Roman jurisprudence which flowed from the Twelve Tables, like the laws of Jewry from the Ten Commandments. Indeed the 'Fecial College,' which pronounced upon the obliga

1 Armour' is from the Lat. armatura, through O. French armeure and armure; armoire is armarium, originally a place for keeping Arms, and It is not a little armamentarium is our arsenal.

curious that finds' of Roman weapons are so rare, bearing no proportion to the wide extension of the

rule. We must also beware of the monuments which are apt to idealise and archaicise: this is notable in the shape of the helmet, the pilum, and the Sword. Jähns specifies as the best place for study the RomanoGerman Central Museum at 'Mainz,' under Professor Dr. Lindenschmit (p. 192).

tions of international war and peace, is an institution which might profitably be revived in the modern world.1

Rome was single-minded in her objective, conquest; and unlike the Greeks, from whom she borrowed, she was not diverted by art or literature. All her poets for a thousand years fit into one volume. Her art, indeed, can hardly be said to exist; history is silent concerning any save a few exceptional Roman architects. Varro laughs at the puppets and effigies of the gods. The triumph of Metellus (B.C. 146) introduced Art, but the Helleno-Roman artist contented himself with copies and with portrait-statues of the great. In the days of their highest luxury and refinement, the toga'd people were connoisseurs and purchasers who diffused instead of adding to knowledge. Others, as Virgil said, might give movement to marble and breath to bronze: the Art of the Roman was to rule the nations, to spare the subjected, and to debase the proud. Fortia agere Romanum est.'

2

For the constitution of the Roman army we must consult the estimable Polybius, its early historian, Livy, and the latest of the great authorities, Vegetius, in the days of Valentinian II. (A.D. 375-92); not forgetting Varro,3 who treats of weapon changings.

Whilst the militia consisted of three bodies, the citizens, the allies, who were sworn, and the auxiliaries or mercenaries; the characteristic of Roman organisation was the Legion—that is, legere (they chose). Emerging by slow degrees from the Phalanx or close column, it learnt to prefer for battle the acies instructa, haye or line, and the acies sinuata, with wings; and it reserved for especial purposes the agmen pilatum or close array, and the agmen quadratum or hollow square.

The reason of the change is manifest. The Phalanx or oblong herse was irresistible during the compact advance. The wise Egyptian inventors made it perfect for the Nile Valley. But it lost virtue in woodlands and highlands; it was liable to be broken when changing front, and the long unwieldy spears which it required caused confusion on broken ground.

The Legion consisted, strictly speaking, of heavy-armed infantry-of Milites, from Mil-es, because reckoned by their thousands. They were preceded by the Velites, Ferentarii, or Rorarii, 'light infantry,' éclaireurs, who cleared the way for action; in the first century they were reinforced by the Accensi Velati. Whilst the Auxiliaries fought with bows and arrows, and some, like the Etruscans, with the 'funda' or sling, the Veles carried two to seven light throw-spears (hastæ In our day the only Fecialists' are the Moslem 3 De Lingua Lat. iv. 6. States.

2 Polybii Historiarum quæ supersunt. The voluminous and luminous writer, a contemporary of Scipio Africanus, and a captain who witnessed the destruction of Carthage, was born A.U.C. 552 (B.C. 204), nearly three centuries after the Latin conquest of Etruria. He was called Auctor bonus in primis,' and Scipio said of him, Nemo fuit in requirendis temporibus diligentior' (Cicero, De Off. iii. 12, and De Rep. ii. 14).

4 Livy, viii. 8.

Also called Adscriptii, Supernumerarii, and Velati, because wearing only the sagum or soldier's cloak, opposed to the officer's paludamentum. Properly speaking, they were rear-troops, ranged in battle order behind the Triarii. During certain epochs the Rorarii stood next to the Triarii, and the Accensi, less trustworthy than either, formed the

extreme rear.

velitaria) about three feet long in the shaft, with a nine-inch lozenge-shaped head of iron. For close quarters he wore on his right side a Parazonium-dagger, and on the right a broad cut-and-thrust blade of moderate size. His defences were an apron of leather strips, studded with metal; and a Parma,2 the small round shield, like the Cetra, some three feet in diameter.3

The Legion proper was a line or rather a triple line of Hastarii or legionary spearmen. Livy briefly describes the Acies, when it emerged from the Phalanx, as drawn up into distinct companies, divided into centuries. Each company contained sixty soldiers, two centurions, and one ensign or standardbearer. First in line stood the Hastati in fifteen companies with twenty Velites.