Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/468

 446 HISTORY OF GREECE of a curtain place which he has to fill and duties which he has to perform, combined with fear of the displeasure of his neighbors as well as of his own self-reproach if he shrinks back, but at the same time essentially bound up and reciprocating with the feel- ing that his neighbors are under corresponding obligations towards him, this sentiment, which Brasidas invokes as the settled military creed of his soldiers in their ranks, was not less the regulating principle of their intercourse in peace as citizens of the same community. Simple as this principle may seem, it would have found no response in the army of Xerxes, or of the Thracian Sitalkes, or of the Gaul Brennus. The Persian soldier rushes to death by order of the Great King, perhaps under terror of a whip which the Great King commands to be administered to him : the Hlyrian or the Gaul scorns such a stimulus, and obeys only the instigation of his own pugnacity, or vengeance, or love of blood, or love of booty, but recedes as soon as that individual sentiment is either satisfied or overcome by fear. It is the Greek soldier alone who feels himself bound to his comrades by ties reciprocal and indissoluble, 1 who obeys neither the will of a king, nor his own individual impulse, but a common and imper- ative sentiment of obligation, whose honor or shame is attached to his own place in the ranks, never to be abandoned nor over- stepped. Such conceptions of military, duty, established in the minds of these soldiers whom Brasidas addressed, will come to be farther illustrated when we describe the memorable Retreat of the Ten Thousand : at present, I merely indicate them as form- ing a part of that general scheme of morality, social and political as well as military, wherein the Greeks stood exalted above the nations who surrounded them. But there is another point in the speech of Brasidas which deserves notice. He tells his soldiers : " Courage is your home- bred property ; for ye belong to communities wherein the small 1 See the memorable remarks of Hippokrates and Aristotle on the differ- ence in respect of courage between Europeans and Asiatics, as well as between Hellens and non-Hellens (Hippokrates, De Acre, Loci. 1 !, et Aquis, c.24, ed. Littre, sect. 116, seq., ed. Petersen; Aristotel. Politic, vii, 6, 1-5), and the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus (Herodot. yii. 103. 104).