INTRODUCTORY.

I.

THE MILITARY ART AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS; BEING AN EXAMINATION OF THE SERVICES, ARMATURE, ARRAY AND TACTICS OF THEIR ARMIES; AS COMPARED BETWEEN THEMSELVES, AND WITH THOSE OF MODERN NATIONS.

CONSIDERING the vast influence which the wars of the two great nations of antiquity have exercised over the present condition, it would scarcely be incorrect to say over the actual fate, of modern Europe, and through her of the world at large, it will be neither an unpleasant nor an unprofitable mode of passing an hour, even to those who care not to prosecute deep and dry historical researches, to inquire a little into the military means by which the two powers produced results so incalculably great and important. It cannot, I think, have escaped the observation of the most superficial reader, that, while some wars, although long, bloody, well contested and conducted with equal courage and ability, have in no wise affected the condition or permanent interests of humanity, because waged between identi

cal or kindred races and tending only to the extension of power and territory on the one side or the other-there have been other wars of conquest and extermination, by the decision of which the fate not only of empires, but of races, but of humanity itself, has been determined.

Of these, the first, and scarcely the least important, was the attempt on the part of the oriental nations, under the great Persian kings, to subjugate and enslave all Western Europe; a conclusion averted, under Providence, in the first instance by the repulse of the invaders at Marathon, Plataia, Salamis, and Thermopylæ, and finally rendered impossible by the retaliatory expedition of Alexander, and the domination of the Eastern peoples by Greek arms and Western dynasties.

The second is to be found in the famous struggle of the Punic wars, between Rome and Carthage; the termination of which set the question at rest whether the dominion of the civilized world should belong to the Caucasian or the Semitic Race; whether Greek arts and Latin arms should be the inheritance of Europe and America, or the corruption, idolatry and cruelty of Canaanitish Carthage.

The third and last and greatest contest of this nature, as regards Europe and European civilization-for China, India, and the Eastern isles, have undergone many such-is the long-protracted warfare between the Saracenic Mahommedans, and the nations of Christendom; which may be said to have commenced with the destruction of a Saracen host at Tours, in the heart of France, by the battle-axe of Charles Martel in 732; to have continued throughout the crusades of the middle ages; and to have been determined only by the artillery of Don John of Austria at Lepanto, and the lances of John Sobieski before the walls of Vienna, so lately as the years, respectively, of 1571, and 1683. Of these three great struggles, it is impossible not to see, that the decisions, had they been reversed, must necessarily have

THE THREE GREAT WARS.

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altered so completely the whole constitution of human polity, society, and morals, that no sagacity can conjecture what, in that event, would have been the present aspect of Europe or America. From the circumstances of other similarly situated regions we

may

however suppose, that had Greece succumbed before the countless myriads of Darius, Xerxes, and their successors, the civilization and society of Europe to-day would have nearly resembled those of Hindostan, before the erection of the AngloIndian empire; and that had Carthage prevailed over the Eagles of the Republic, a bloody superstition, a corrupt commercial tyranny, an illiterate, voluptuous, unenlightened society, such as we know to have existed in Tyre and Sidon, would have stood in stead of the pure religion, the liberal polity, and the elevated social condition which have gradually eliminated themselves from the institutions of Rome, and through her of the elder Hellas.

That the question, determined by the Saracenic and European strife, is simply whether the faith of the world should ultimately be that of Mahomet or Christ, it requires no sagacity or acumen to discover; and I, for one, certainly, shall not descend to argue whether event were for the greatest good of humanity at large.

Of these three great wars, by which, as I have, I think, shown, the fate of the human race has been thrice severally decided, the first two were won for posterity by the valor and virtue, the arms and the military arts, of the Greeks, and of the Romans, and it is thence especially that the histories of these two great nations are so full to us of interest, and that they can never be examined without entertainment and advantage.

That Greece-when her mission of checking the irruption and bridling the power of the eastern hordes, of giving a form and body to imaginative beauty, of creating the magic of letters, and making for the dreams of genius a real and immortal presence in the birth of art-should be accomplished, must succumb to the more vital and durable energies of Rome, was clearly in the

design of Providence; for she lacked in herself the practical and legislative wisdom, which born in the Latin republic has in its maturity filled the world, and formed in a greater or less degree the base of every modern constitution. The means by which she overcame the barbarian myriads, and by which she was herself overcome in turn, were purely natural and physical; and the results were such as must, to an almost mathematical certainty, have followed from the employment of those means.

What these were, and wherefore and how successful, it is my purpose now to investigate. Nor will it be unimportant or uninstructive to see how little the real principles of strategy and tactics have been altered from the earliest ages to the latest times; and how continually, in spite of all the changes and improvements in the methods and instruments of warfare, in spite of the invention of gunpowder and the consequent substitution of scientific combinations for individual prowess, the same military principles have been attended with the same success; the same exercises and manoeuvres have been crowned with the same victory; whether the arms of the combatants were the pike and shield of the Hellenic phalanx, the sword and buckler of the Roman legion, the bows and bills of the English foot, the lance and battle-axe of the Norman chivalry resistless in the thundering charge of their barbed horse, or the death-dealing musketry and ordnance, almost annihilating distance, of the men of the nineteenth century.

For the rest, we must believe that, in despite of all the efforts of peace societies and peace lecturers, wars will continue so long as the human race shall endure; and we know, that-inasmuch as war and its attendant circumstances, while they display humanity in many of its worst and most repulsive lights, at the same time call forth many of its noblest and grandest characteristics; give occasions for its most heroic efforts both of doing and suffering; and present its most touching sacrifices, its most

admirable exemplars-the history and the romance of warfare will never grow dull to the ear, or dead to the heart of auditors, who must from the very nature of their constitutions glow with admiration and thrill with sympathy for the glorious and the good; must exult at the virtues and triumph at the victories, as they must mourn over the weaknesses and weep at the downfall, of the virtuous and the valiant of humanity; for though triumph and defeat are but things of the hour, and the man but the sport of the moment, still the pains and the passions of the heart are immortal, and its sympathies with the noble, and its hatred of the base, the same, yesterday and to-day and to-morrow and forever.

And now, without further apology or preamble, coming at once to the armature and array of the Greeks, we shall find that from the earliest period of recorded historic warfare, the mode of arming and arraying the masses was identical, or nearly so, with all the Hellenic tribes or nations. These, although using different dialects, affecting different customs and forms of polity, often at war with each other, and claiming various descents from divers demigods, were still of common origin and language, and in truth, howsoever subdivided, still constituted one homogeneous population, actuated for the most part by a common spirit of independence and liberty, of dislike to personal and hereditary dominion; imbued with a common love of arms and admiration of heroism and individual prowess and adventure, and capable at times of great common efforts against a common enemy. That this love of arms and adventure, at a later period of Grecian history, led to condottierism, and the formation of mercenary bands of Greek adventurers, serving under almost every banner in the known world, must not be ascribed to any defect in the Greek character, or want of patriotism in individuals, but to the subdivision of the whole country into numerous small hostile communities; and to the multiplication of political offences, in their turbulent and fierce democracies or persecuting

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