Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/73

 SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

''Could the Romans have resisted Alexander? The Englishman a better warrior than either Macedonian or Roman.''

[History of the World.]

That question handled by Livy,—" Whether the Great Alexander could have prevailed against the Romans; if, after his Eastern conquest, he had bent all his forces against them?"—hath been and is the subject of much dispute: which, as it seems to me, the arguments on both sides do not so well explain, as the experience that Purphus hath given of the Roman power in his days. For if he—a commander, in Hannibal's judgment, inferior to Alexander, though to none else—could, with a small strength of men, and little store of money or of other needful helps in war; vanquish them in two battles, and endanger their State when it was well settled, and held the best part of Italy under a confirmed obedience: what would Alexander have done—that was abundantly provided of all that is needful to a conqueror—wanting only matter of employment; coming upon them, before their dominion was half so well settled?

It is easy to say that Alexander had no more than 30,000 foot and 4,000 horse—as indeed, at his first passage into Asia; he carried over not many more; and that the rest of his followers were no better than base effeminate Asiatics. But he that considers the armies of Perdiccas, Antipater, Craterus, Eumenes, Ptolemy, Antigonus, and Lysi-Machus; with the actions by them performed: every one of which (to omit others) commanded only some fragment of this dead Emperor's power; shall easily find, that such a reckoning is far short of the truth.