The Romans believed in the power of mass, but from the moral point of view only. They did not multiply the files in order to add to the mass, but to give to the combatants the confidence of being aided and relieved. The number of ranks was calculated according to the moral pressure that the last ranks could sustain. There is a point beyond which man cannot bear the anxiety of combat in the front lines without being engaged. The Romans did not so increase the number of ranks as to bring about this condition. The Greeks did not observe and calculate so well. They sometimes brought the number of files up to thirty-two and their last files, which in their minds, were doubtless their reserves, found themselves forcibly dragged into the material disorder of the first ones. In the order by maniples in the Roman legion, the best soldiers, those whose courage had been proved by experience in battle, waited stoically, kept in the second and third lines. They were far enough away not to suffer wounds and not to be drawn in by the front line retiring into their intervals. Yet they were near enough to give support when necessary or to finish the job by advancing. When the three separate and successive maniples of the first cohort were united in order to form the united battle cohort of Marius and of Caesar, the same brain placed the most reliable men in the last lines, i.e., the oldest. The youngest, the most impetuous, were in the first lines. The legion was not increased simply to make numbers or mass. Each had his turn in action, each man in his maniple, each maniple in its cohort, and, when the unit became a cohort, each cohort in the order of battle.