The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander, had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans and Samnites, would have failed and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion can not be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army, the same can not be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the Macedonian companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have been a match for Alexander in military genius and combination; nor, even if personally equal, would he have possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose; nor, the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort. Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous courage--sometimes, indeed, both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him--we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force--as an individual warrior and as organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in Athene. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies, in which category, indeed, were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns amid tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defense, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains are alike pursued and slaughtered.