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 of leaders to their troops may be considered as forming a class apart from the rest. These military harangues, of which there are twelve in all, are usually short. The object is always the same—to bring out vividly the essential points of a strategical situation; and the historian has been less uniformly attentive here to the details of dramatic probability. A modern writer would have attained the object by comments prefixed or added to his narrative of the operations. Thus Archidamus, addressing the Peloponnesian officers before the first invasion of Attica, dwells on the certainty of the Athenians being stung into giving battle when they see their lands ravaged This serves to heighten the reader's