Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/265

 QRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE PERSIAN INVASION. 24l Alexander of Macedon becoming invaders of Persia. "We shall find that in Persia no improvement has taken place during this Ion "■ interval, — that the scheme of defence under Darius Codo- mannus labors under the same defects as that of attack under Xerxes, — that there is the same blind and exclusive confidence in pitched battles with superior numbers,' — that the advice of Mentor the Rhodian, and of Charidemus, is despised like that of Demaratus and Artemisia, — that Darius Codomannus, essen- tially of the same stamp as Xerxes, is hurried into the battle of Issus by the same ruinous temerity as that which threw away the Persian fleet at Salamis, — and that the Persian native mfantry (not the cavalry) even appear to have lost that indi- vidual gallantry w hich they displayed so conspicuously at Platasa. But on the Grecian side, the improvement in every way is very great : the orderly courage of the soldier has been sustained and even augmented, while the generalship and power of military combination has reached a point unexampled in the previous history of mankind. Military science may be esteemed a sort of creation during this interval, and will be found to go through various stages : Demosthenes and Brasidas, the Cyreian army and Xenophon, Agesilaus, Iphikrates, Epaminondas, Philip of Macedon, Alexander : 2 for the Macedonian princes are borrowers of Greek tactics, though extending and applying them with a personal energy peculiar to themselves, and with advantages of position such as no Athenian or Spartan ever enjoyed. In this comparison between the invasion of Xerxes and that of Alexan- der we contrast the progressive spirit of Greece, serving as herald and stimulus to the like spii'it in Europe, with the stationary mind of Asia, occasionally roused by some splendid individual, but never appropriating to itself new social ideas or powers, either for war or for peace. It is out of the invasion of Xerxes that those new powers of combination, political as well as military, which lighten up Gre- cian history during the next two centuries, take their rise. They are brought into agency through the altered position and charac- • Thucvd. i, 142. rr/.r/'^si ttjv u/jd&iav ij)aTvvovrF.r, etc. p. 123. VOL. V. 11 I60C
 * See a remarkable passage hi the third Philippic of Demosthenes, c. 10.