I will add that I can find him guilty of no act—almost alone of his countrymen—of political dishonesty, or of social turpitude. To his country he was a zealous, ardent, and profitable servant; to his friends and associates faithful and true; to his enemies just and clement; and to the provincials, subjected to his dominion, a governor so affable, beneficent and equitable, that when he left their shores they mourned as for a countryman, almost a father of the country. As a general, he committed no military error; and although his command was limited to little more than two campaigns, they were campaigns of the most important—important not merely to his own country, but to the science of war, in general—since they established, beyond a peradventure, the superiority of the tactic and armature of the legion to those of the phalanx; in other words, of the line to the column tactic. I give to him this credit, unhesitatingly; for, although Pyrrhus was at last beaten by the phalanx in Italy, it was rather by dint of numbers and aid of circumstances than by military skill; and further, it is evident that the great bulk of his armies consisted of targeteers, little different from the legionaries, and of Samnites, Tarentines, and other Italian soldiery precisely similar to them, in arms and array. Again, although Sulpicius had demonstrated the superiority of the individual Roman, to the individual Greek, heavy footman; he had not—nor any one else hitherto—defeated a phalanx, unless with a phalanx. When Greeks met Greeks then was the tug of war. For the rest, the battles of Paullus Æmilius against Perseus, were but the battles of Flamininus against the father of Perseus, less ably fought, though on the same principles at last successful. The fact remains, that from the battle of Cynoscephalæ, of which anon, to the end of ancient history, it was an admitted fact that, unless on a very narrow and perfectly level field, where both its flanks were securely covered, the phalanx could not receive battle from the legions with a chance of success; and that as to delivering battle on wide, open plains, where rapid manœuvring and counter-marching could be resorted to, such an idea was preposterous. Flamininus was educated to arms from his very boyhood, and that in the terrible Italian campaigns of Hannibal; through which he served with such distinction that he had already attained the post of tribune of the soldiers, equal to the modern rank of lieutenant-colonel, under that daring and distinguished leader Marcus Marcellus, and was on the field when he was slain, rashly periling himself in an affair of outposts near Venusia, in the year of Rome 546, B. C. 208, and in the sixtieth year of his own age.