[412] _De Bello Africano_, cap. xxi. The exigencies of war
sometimes converted the stronger soldiers into the only
available transport corps for the sick and wounded. Xenophon
speaks in the _Anabasis_ (lib. iii. cap. iv.), of the number of
Greeks capable of fighting being diminished, because some
soldiers were employed in carrying the wounded, and others in
carrying the arms of the latter. One anecdote subsequently told
by Xenophon seems to show that, occasionally at least, if not
as the common rule, one soldier was deemed capable of carrying
a sick or wounded companion. For he informs us, that towards
the end of the expedition, when publicly accused of being
sometimes too severe to the soldiers during the long retreat of
the Greeks, the only person who came forward to substantiate
the charge, was a soldier whom he had compelled to carry a sick
comrade, and who, it turned out, had subsequently dug a pit to
bury the invalid before he was completely dead. The army held
that Xenophon had not beaten the complainant so much as he
actually deserved for this conduct.—_Anabasis_, lib. v. cap.
8.
[413] _Inscriptiones Regni Neapolitani Latinæ_, No. 2701.
[414] _Atti e Monumenti de fratelli Arvali_, vol. ii. p. 826.
[415] In the fragmentary list of the two old Roman fleets
stationed at Misenum and Ravenna, collected from various
inscriptions by Mommsen (p. 477), it is not uninteresting to
find the ships—sixteen or eighteen centuries ago—bearing
names exactly the same as those borne by our modern royal and
commercial navies; as The Cupid, The Diana, Mars, Neptune,
Ceres, The Fortune (_Fortuna_), The Victory (_Victoria_), The
Hope (_Spes_), The Faith (_Fides_), The Triumph (_Triumphus_),
Providence (_Providentia_), The Peace (_Pax_), The Tiber
(_Tiberis_), The Nile (_Nilus_), etc.
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