Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/478

 462 HISTORY OF GRKECE. to the Spartans as confessed presidents of the whole Hellenic body. 1 And the tendencies then at work, towards a certain de- gree of increased intercourse and cooperation among the dis- persed members of the Hellenic name, were doubtless assisted by the existence of a state recognized by all as the first, a state whose superiority was the more readily acquiesced in, be- cause it was earned by a painful and laborious discipline, which sill admired, but none chose to copy. 3 Whether it be true, as O. Miiller and other learned men con- ceive, that the Homeric mode of fighting was the general prac- tice in Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece anterior to the invasion of the Dorians, and that the latter first introduced the habit of fighting with close ranks and protended spears, is a point which cannot be determined. Throughout all our histori- cal knowledge of Greece, a close rank among the hoplites, charg ing with spears always in hand, is the prevailing practice ; though there are cases of exception, in which the spear is hurled, when troops seem afraid of coming to close quarters. 3 Nor is it by any means certain, that the Homeric manner of fighting ever really prevailed in Peloponnesus, which is a country eminently incon- venient for the use of war-chariots. The descriptions of the bard may perhaps have been founded chiefly upon what he and his auditors witnessed on the coast of Asia Minor, where chariots yup ~vvduvofj.ai TrpoeaTavai ri/f 'E^-Aadof (Herodot. i. 69) : com- pare i. 152 ; v. 49 ; vi. 84, about Spartan hegemony, 2 Xenoph. Hcpub. Lac. 10, 8. eiraivovai fiev KUVTEC -a rotaCra i~iTt]dtv firtra, fj.ifj.ela&ai 6e avru ovdepia Koki^ kdekeL. The magnificent funeral discourse, pronounced by Perikles in the early part of the Peloponnesian war over the deceased Athenian warriors, includes a remarkable contrast of the unconstrained patriotism and bravery of the Athenians, with the austere, repuLivc, and ostentatious drilling to which the Spartans were subject from their earliest youth ; at the same time, it attests the powerful effect which that drilling produced upon the mind of Greece (Thucyd. ii. 37-39). iriarEvovri; ov ratf KupaaitEva.lq rb irAeov KOI inrdraif, ?} T<J up iin&v avruv if TU epja tir^v^ nal tv raif naidelaif oi [lev ( tho Spartans) txtirovu uaKTjaei ei&iif vioi OITPC rb uvdpelov fiETep^ovraL, etc. The impression of the light troops, when they first began to attack tha Lacedaemonian hoplites in the island of Sphakteria, is strongly expressed bj Thucydides (iv. 34), :jj yvw/iJj tiedo vhupevo. .'; l~l Aa/cf(5amovi ovf, etc. 3 "Xcnoph. Ilcllen. v. 4, 52: compare iii. 5, 20