oligarchies, which rendered the expatriation of the best statesmen and bravest leaders rather the rule than the exception, and annually cast out hundreds of valiant and adventurous soldiers on the world with no other resource than the employment of their swords in foreign service. Indeed it is greatly to the credit of the Greek mercenaries, or political exiles, for the terms are nearly synonymous, that they rarely if ever were induced to bear arms against their native states, or to serve the barbarian, who was their usual employer, against the Grecian name.

A similar state of things in the later Italian Republics of the middle ages led to a similar growth and diffusion of mercenary Italian forces serving under every standard, and with far less of honorable scruples than their Hellenic prototypes; since they rarely hesitated to lead or follow either against Italy in general or their own states in particular, and that even in behalf of the Turk or the Algerine.

That examples of common efforts of combined Hellenic states against homogeneous foreign enemies are less frequent, must be ascribed to the sectional and individual jealousies, ambitions, and divided interests which will arise between petty independent states, united by no common league or constitution, and existing under every different shade of government, from the wildest pantisocracy, through the intermediate forms of representative federacy, to the closest oligarchical corporation, as of Lacedæmon; and to autocratic monarchy, as of Sicily and Macedon. What would be the consequence of such a state of things, one may conjecture, by imagining the United States, as connected by no constitutional bonds, and linked together by no prevailing tie of general republicanism; but each several state self-governed as it might be, one with the limited monarchy and powerful aristocracy of England, another with the autocracy and serfdom of Russia; a third with the imbecile legitimacy of Spain or Naples; a fourth with the insane and visionary socialism of France; a fifth under

the existing system of New York or Massachusetts-then throw in, apart from sectional interests and monetary jealousies, jarring national religions, conflicting social prejudices and distinctions, and the absence of one general national language; and it would soon appear how difficult of creation, and how short of duration, would be any alliance for common purposes, of states or nations having in truth no common cause. It is probable that nothing short of the invasion of foreign hosts bent on the general extermination or subjugation of the race could unite such nations even for a time, and that the defeat of those hosts would be the disruption of the union.

To the Athenian Attica was Greece, as to the Laconian Sparta, or to the Boeotian Thebes; and it was only when in reference to the Barbarian, meaning almost invariably the Persian king, that Hellas was considered as a whole, even by the purest of the Hellenes. In latter days even the imminence of Roman conquest could not subsist national combination; and the Achaian league was dissolved through intestine divisions, before the stranger had become the master of their fortunes and their land; for it must be remembered that the Roman came not as an exterminator to abolish, but rather as a colonist to adopt, the arts, the literature, nay but the very Gods, of Greece. Themselves half of a kindred race they differed less from many of the Greeks, than did the Greeks from one another, and therefore terror of their arms could lead to no strenuous or durable federation.

Still, although in a national sense there never was any such actual or acknowledged existence as Greece, there was a most distinct and real existence in the shape of Greek strategy, which word I now use in its broadest sense as embracing the whole theory and practice of the art military, from the smallest detail of individual armature and discipline, to the largest combination of men and measures. For throughout all the states of Greece, though this or that might excel in one or another arm of the

service, the system was identical, and the force of the GreeksTò ¿λλŋvıxòv—an unity.

The force and system we first find described, in its rude and unimproved form, before the invention of the trumpet or any other martial music, and previous to the use of mounted cavalry in warfare, in the Iliad, as operating against Ilion, or Troy, a city of Asia Minor, apparently of Grecian origin. Without entering at all into the question of the truth or fallacy of the myth of Troy divine, or arguing on the probability or improbability of such a confederation of kings as Homer describes, it is desirable to point out that the personal equipment of the Greek warrior of the Iliad differs but slightly from that of the Hoplites, or heavy-armed foot-soldiers of the authentic historical period; and that—although the maintenance of the battle, and the ultimate successes are invariably attributed to the individual prowess of the hero kings who fought, before the battles, hurling their spears, javelin-like, from two-horse chariots, or leaping down to engage in single combat with antagonists of equal rank and daring-the peculiar serried order of the Greek phalanx even then prevailed; and that the determination of the fight, when came the tug of war, was owing to the sturdy charge of the ponderous infantry, and to the push of the formidable pike.

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The following lines, which are a very literal rendering of one of Homer's most spirited battles, would, with the substitution of true historic names, furnish as accurate a picture of the Macedonian army at that dishonest fight of Chaironeia fatal to liberty," or of the deep Baotian column that broke sheer through the Spartan centre at Mantineia, as of any fabulous encounter before the fated walls of Ilion the divine.

"Thus speaking the earth-shaker lent the Achaians better cheer, And made the bands to rally, that were scattered far and near. About the two Ajaces right steady with the spear;

That neither mighty Mars could blame their order, as they stood,
Nor Pallas queen of hosts. For all, that gallant were and good,
Stood steadfastly the Trojan shock and Hector's might divine.
Spear clashed with spear, and shield with shield, in stiff and stubborn
line;

Targe beat on targe, rang helm with helm, met hero hero then,
And nodding crests right rankly pressed above the press of men.
So closely were the hosts arrayed with lances brandished high,
By gallant hands, by noble hearts, that each would each outvie
Right forward charging manfully. But first with onset dread
The Trojans charged the serried mass, great Hector at their head.
E'en as a block of massy stone leaps down, with reeling crash,
When wintry floods have mined its base, and rains with ceaseless plash
Its earthfast hold have loosened on the mountain's summit hoar.
Down thunders it; the tortured woods resound its mighty roar;
But unsubdued, with speed renewed, from each succeeding steep
Into the plain it rolls amain, and there forgets to leap.
Thus Hector, who so lately swore, with high and haughty boast,
Into the sea victoriously to drive the Achaian host,

Thus far drave furiously; but now was stopped in mid career,
Where that great band, so firmly manned, stood fast with shield and

spear.

For sturdily with sword and pike the Achaians smote and slew,
And bore him back in his bloody track for all that he could do."

Thus it would appear that, from the first, the main trust of the Greek armies was in the heavy infantry clad in complete panoply, armed as the principal instrument of offence with the long pike, the sarissa of the Macedonians, by whose warlike kings the phalanx was undoubtedly carried to its perfection; and depending on the single steady and sustained charge of the deep solid column, which, in most cases, especially on smooth and level ground, carried all before it. At first this phalanx was probably little more than a dense body of soldiers, with a tolerably regular front, and a depth varying according to circumstances, the best and bravest men voluntarily pressing to the van, leaving the weaker and lower spirited to form the mass behind,

lending the impetus of their forward pressure to the advance, and opposing the vis inertia of their dead weight to the retrogression of the front. In after ages it had its regular divisions and subdivisions, with duly constituted numbers of rank and file, and officers with their appointed places on the march and in action, and orderly appropriate manoeuvres, by the tact and timing of which the action was very often decided. In all ages, however, from the times of the Homeric myth to the defeat of Perseus at Cynocephaloe, the individual dress and equipment of the men was nearly identical.

This dress, or uniform, consisted, at the period of which Xenophon writes, when the Greek army was in its most perfect and elaborate efficiency, both as regards armature and tactics, of a chiton, or shirt of woollen stuff without sleeves, and reaching barely to the knee. This was invariably of a bright crimson color, and the writer, whom I have last named, frequently alludes to the splendor of its contrast with the helmets, breastplates, and greaves of polished bronze in strong and vivid language; for he states, in one place, of the army of Agesilaus that "it appeared all bronze and scarlet;" and in another passage, speaking of the ten thousand, whose retreat he himself conducted with such admirable skill, he says that, "when they all wore casques of bronze and blood-red chitons, with brightly burnished greaves and shields, the whole plain bloomed with crimson, and lightened with bronze." The shield, which was the peculiar and characteristic arm of the Greek hoplites, as was the oblong buckler that of the Roman legionary, was, like the casque, of bronze, ponderous and unwieldy, of a perfectly circular form, with a boss in the centre, covering the whole body of the soldier, from above the shoulder to below the knee, and was certainly not less than three and a half or four feet in diameter. Indeed, so great was the incumbrance of this great piece of defensive armor, that every heavy-armed soldier was allowed a