servant to carry it on the march, and take care of it when not in action; who, when the army was engaged, served either with the baggage-guard, or as a skirmisher. The technical name of this shield was Aspis; and by the number of these the effective force of the heavy Greek foot present under arms, was estimated, the men being reckoned by shields, as in modern warfare by bayonets and sabres. In addition to this, which was, however, his principal defence, the Greek soldier wore a breast-plate, or cuirass, likewise of bronze, reaching to the hips, sometimes above a buff coat, stolas; and greaves of the same metal, protecting the forepart of his legs, from the instep to a short distance above the knee. His offensive weapons were the formidable pike, or Macedonian Sarissa, which was twenty feet in length, and when levelled to the charge, projected fourteen feet in front of the line; so that, when the phalanx was engaged, the spear points of the five foremost ranks, at least, were directly serviceable, and were actually opposed to every front-rank man of the enemy. Besides the pike, he also carried a short stabbing sword, scarcely superior in length to a large knife or dagger, a most ineffective weapon; and perhaps left as such, not unintentionally; since upon reliance on the pike, and on the tactic consequent on its use, the whole efficiency of the phalanx depended; if it should once disclose its serried order, it was necessarily at the mercy of any assailant, and the hand to hand single-combat fighting of the Romans was as abhorrent to its system, as it was congenial to that of the legion. The order of the phalanx was invariably a close column varying in depth from twelve to fifty men, according to the nature of the ground and pleasure of the leader. Its smallest subdivision of men was the Enomoty, or as the name implies, sworn-band, which seems to have consisted originally and properly of twenty-four men beside the enomotarck, or leader of the band; yet Thucydides states distinctly that, in the first battle of Mantineia, fought between the Lacedæmonians and Argives, the

enomoty* of the former was drawn up four front and eight deep, making it contain thirty-two men beside the leader, instead of twenty-four; while we have the authority of Xenophon† that at the battle of Leuctra the Spartan enomoty of Cleombrotus fought in three files which he says gave them a depth of twelve, while the Theban files opposed to them contained not less than fifty shields. From this it is obvious that the number of men in the enomoty, as indeed the number of enomoties in the next larger * division, was variable; though from the name of this division, which was pentecostys, signifying a company of fifty men, led by a pentecoster or captain of fifty, we arrive at the regularly estimated number of men in the original enomoty; two of which formed a pentecostys, two of these again forming a lochus, and four of the latter a mora, or division. So that the mora with its polemarch or general, and all its subordinate officers must, as originally constituted, have consisted of 429 men of all ranks. The number of men, however, in the divisions is unimportant, unless where it is desirable to calculate the numerical force of antagonistic armies; for the modes of manoeuvring and fighting are all clearly laid down and comprehensible enough, apart from the consideration of numbers, although I should be inclined to set down sixteen ranks as the ordinary depth of the latter, or Macedonian, phalanx.

It must not be, however, by any means supposed that, because the main dependence of the Greek armies was placed in the phalanx of their heavy infantry, they lacked the other arms of service. Light infantry, or skirmishers, and horse in a smaller proportion, but of excellent quality, they seem to have possessed from an early period; and after the peace of Antalcidas, Iphicrates introduced a new species of force, intermediate between

* Thucydides, 416, IV. c. 68.

† Xenophon Hellenics, Lib. VI. c. 4. Xen. Rep. Lac. XI. 4 ‡ Olymp. 98. II. BC. 387. Polybius 16. Diodorus XV. 51.

the heavy foot and mere skirmishers, which afterward became of very great importance under the name of Peltaste, which is well rendered as Targeteers. The arms of this new force, which appears never to have been composed of citizens of any of the elder Greek republics, but of Thessalians, Etolians, Acarnanians, Epirots, and perhaps at first of barbarian prisoners and manumitted slaves,* wore a brazen casque, and a target, Pelta, usually of a crescent or semilunar shape, much smaller and lighter than the great shield of the Hoplites, together with a quilted linen jacket instead of the bronze cuirass. The offensive weapons of the targeteer, as improved by Iphicrates, were a sword double the length of that of the heavy foot and adapted for cutting as well as stabbing, together with a spear lengthened nearly in the same proportion. On this latter point all the authorities agree, but it is evident to me, as the targeteers are generally described as javelineers and not pikemen, that the spear alluded to must have been the akontion or light dart of the skirmishers, and not the sarissa of the phalanx, which being already twenty feet long and stout in proportion could not have been used in its existing state as a missile, and if increased to forty feet must have been utterly unmanageable. We shall hear much of these targeteers in Xenophon's masterly retreat, and in the fine battles of Pyrrhus and Epaminondas.

The light-armed troops were variously equipped as archers, slingers, and javelineers, wearing merely a helmet and light shield; but as the continental Greeks never excelled either in archery or the use of the sling, and as the javelin which was their usual weapon was at best a very inferior missile, as deficient both in range and certainty, they were soon found to be so much inferior to the oriental skirmishers, that they appear to have been discarded so soon as warfare became a science, and armies were

* Xen. Anab. IV. 8. † Diodorus XV. 44. Some say twenty-four.

composed of regulars, and no longer of mere armed levies of citizens. After this period, we find Rhodian slingers, Cretan and even Scythian bowmen, and horse-archery from Thrace, employed in the Greek armies, as were the natives of the Balearic Isles, and the Numidians in those of Carthage.

The face of the country throughout Greece proper, especially the Peloponnesus and Attica, being of an exceedingly rough and craggy if not mountainous character, was of course very ill adapted for equestrian exercise or for the use of cavalry; and we find, of consequence, that, although horsemanship was much encouraged, and a valuable breed of animals maintained at a great expense, particularly for the Olympic contests, the cavalry of the original Greek cities was weak in numbers; and that of Sparta in particular singularly inefficient. The Thebans were the first power which attained to any great proficiency in this arm of the service, in consequence of their finding the want of it in their wars with their neighbors, the people of Orchomenos and Thespis; but afterward as the more northern nations of Greece gradually rose in the scale of ascendency, and the plains of Thessaly, Thrace, and Macedonia began to furnish their contingents, the cavalry became a favorite arm, the rather that it was much called for in the contests with the kings of Persia, which were now transferred from the broken country, hills and defiles, of Greece to the vast open plains and champaigns, swarming with admirable native horse, on the banks of the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Indus. On the proper armament and service of the horse we have a very fine and elaborate treatise from the pen of Xenophon the Athenian, by which we learn that the Greek cavalry were the most completely equipped with defensive armor of any branch of the service. The men wore, above a coat of buff, a heavy cuirass of bronze, fitted above with a sort of rim or frill of the same metal, which was at once, according to the author,* an ornament, and a * Xenophon de re equestri XIII-Anabasis III. 3.

perfect protection to the neck and face of the rider so far as to the nose. It must have resembled, in a considerable degree, that singular piece of defensive armor known in the reign of Edward IV. of England as the volant piece, which may be seen to this day in the suit attributed to that prince in the Horse-armory of the Tower of London. The head of the rider was protected by a Bœotian casque, covering the whole face down to the tips of the ears and the nostrils, but leaving apertures by which to see and breathe without difficulty. On the left arm was worn no shield, but a complicated piece of armor, known by a word answering to our gauntlet, but in reality corresponding to the whole defence of the arm as worn by a knight of the fourteenth century; for it is said to have protected the shoulder, the elbow, the forearm, and the hand while grasping the reins, as well as the armpit, which was justly regarded as one of the most vital parts, and the most exposed in a horseman. As the right arm must frequently be raised whether in the act of striking, or of casting the spear, it was necessary that the corslet should be cut away above and below in order to give full sway to the muscles, and the defence was therefore made good by side-plates hinged on to the breastplate so as to give and return again with every motion of the wearer, the fore arm being guarded by plates of metal strapped upon the limb, but not attached to the panoply. The loins, flanks and abdomen were in like manner protected by jointed plates accommodating themselves to the movement of the body, the thighs by cuishes, and the feet and shins by boots of heavy leather. The horses moreover were fully caparisoned with frontlets on the head, poitrels on the chest, and bardings protecting the loins, croupe, and thighs; so that in fact the Greek cavalry were completely harnessed cuirassiers, as fully accoutred as the steel-clad chivalry of the middle ages, and as impenetrable. to the weapons of ordinary assailants.

The offensive instruments of these ponderous cavaliers were