Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/467

 GRECIAN MILITARY FEELING. 443 The superiority of disciplined and regimented force over dis- orderly numbers, even with equal undivided courage, is now a truth so familiar, that we require an effort of imagination to put ourselves back into the fifth century before the Christian era, when this truth was recognized only among the Hellenic commu- nities ; when the practice of all their neighbors Illyrians, Thracians, Asiatics, Epirots, and even Macedonians implied ignorance or contradiction of it. In respect to the Epirots, the difference between their military habits and those of the Greeks has been already noticed, having been pointedly manifested in the memorable joint attack on the Akarnanian town of Stratus, in the second year of the war. 1 Both Epirots and Macedonians, nowever, are a step nearer to the Greeks than either Thracians, or these Illyrian barbarians against whom Brasidas was now about to contend, and in whose case the contrast comes out yet more forcibly. Nor is it merely the contrast between two modes of fighting which the Lacedaemonian commander impresses upon his soldiers : he gives what may be called a moral theory of the principles on which that contrast is founded, a theory of large range and going to the basis of Grecian social life, in peace as well as in war. The sentiment in each individual man's bosom, "Zaiptif re TTUV TO Kpovirupxou Seivbv UTT' CLVTUV opuTe, epyo6ov AeZapevoif uiro&ev UTrechaic Tb avdpsiov /ze/lA^ae Ko/j.irovaiv, oi d' uv eit-uaiv avroif, KOTU TroJaf Tb evtyvxpv iv ro) The word /^eA/l^crtf, which occurs twice in this chapter in regard to the Illyrians, is very expressive and at the same time difficult to translate into any other language, " what they seem on the point of doing, but never realize." See also i, 69. The speech of the Roman consul Manlius, in describing the Gauls, de serves to be compared : " Procera corpora, promissaj et rutilatoe comae, vasta scuta, prjelongi gladii : ad hoc cantus ineuntium praelium, et ululatus et tripudia, et quatientium scuta in patrium quondam morem horrendus armoruni cr:>pitus : omnia de industrid composita ad terrorem." (Livy, xxxviii 17.) 1 Thucyd. ii, 81. See above, chap xlviii, of this History.