Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/320

 298 HISTORY OF GREECE. the tribes spoke a language scarcely intelligible to Greeks, and even eat their meat raw, while the country has even down to the present time remained not only unconquered, but untraversed, by an enemy in arms. Demosthenes accordingly retired from Leukas, in spite of the remonstrance of the Akarnanian?, who not only could not be induced to accompany him, but went home in visible disgust. He then sailed with his other forces Messenians, Kephalle nians, and Zakynthians to CEneon, in the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians, a maritime township on the Corinthian gulf, not far eastward of Naupaktus, where his army was disem- barked, together with three hundred epibatae (or marines) front the triremes, including on this occasion, what was not com- monly the case on shipboard, 1 some of the choice hoplites, selected all from young men of the same age, on the Athenian muster roll. Having passed the night in the sacred precinct of Zeus Nemeus at CEneon, memorable as the spot where the poet Hesiod was said to have been slain, he marched early in the morning, under the guidance of the Messenian Chromon, into 1 Thncyd. lii, 98. The epibatae, or soldiers serving on shipboard (marines), were more usually taken from the thetes, or the poorest class of citizens, furnished by the state with a panoply for the occasion, not from the regular hoplites on the muster-roll. Maritime soldiery is, there- fore, usually spoken of as something inferior: the present triremes of De- mosthenes are noticed in the light of an exception (VUV-LKT^ Kal (jmvl.ov jTpanuf, Thucyd. vi. 21 ). So among the Romans, service in the legions was accounted higher and more honorable than that of the classiarii milites (Tacit. Histor. i, 87). The Athenian epibatse, though not forming a corps permanently dis- tinct, correspond in function to the English marines, who seem to have been first distinguished permanently from other foot-soldiers about the year 1684. "It having been found necessary on many occasions to embark a number of soldiers on board our ships of war, and mere landsmen being at first extremely unhealthy, and at first, until they had been accustomed to the sea, in a great measure unserviceable, it was at length judged expe- dient to appoint certain regiments for that service, who were trained to the different modes of sea-fighting, and also made useful in some of those manoeuvres of a ship where a great many hands were required. These, from the nature of their duty, were distinguished by the appellation of maritime soldiers, or marines." Grose's Military Antiquities of the Englist Army, vol. i, p. 186. (London, 1786.)