Next, they impute to Polybius a contradiction in saying that the Roman soldier occupied a space of three feet, equal to that occupied by a Macedonian soldier—and yet that in the fight, he had two Macedonian soldiers and ten pikes opposed to him (xviii. 13). But there is here no contradiction at all: for Polybius expressly says that the Roman, though occupying three feet when the legion was drawn up in order, required, when fighting, an expansion of the ranks and an increased interval to the extent of three feet behind him and on each side of him (χάλασμα καὶ διάστασιν ἀλλήλων ἔχειν δεήσει τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐλάχιστον τρεῖς πόδας κατ᾽ ἐπιστάτην καὶ παραστάτην) in order to allow full play for his sword and shield. It is therefore perfectly true that each Roman soldier, when actually marching up to attack the phalanx, occupied as much ground as two phalangites, and had ten pikes to deal with. Farther, it is impossible to suppose that Polybius, in speaking of _cubits_, really meant _feet_; because (cap. 12) he speaks of _three feet_ as the interval between each rank in the file, and these _three feet_ are clearly made equal to _two cubits_. His computation will not come right, if in place of _cubits_ you substitute _feet_. We must therefore take the assertion of Polybius as we find it: that the pike of the phalangite was fourteen cubits or twenty-one feet in length. Now Polybius had every means of being well informed on such a point. He was above thirty years of age at the time of the last war of the Romans against the Macedonian king Perseus, in which war he himself served. He was intimately acquainted with Scipio, the son of Paulus Emilius, who gained the battle of Pydna. Lastly, he had paid great attention to tactics, and had even written an express work on the subject. It might indeed be imagined, that the statement of Polybius, though true as to his own time, was not true as to the time of Philip and Alexander. But there is nothing to countenance such a suspicion—which moreover is expressly disclaimed by Rüstow and Köchly. Doubtless twenty-one feet is a prodigious length, unmanageable, except by men properly trained, and inconvenient for all evolutions. But these are just the terms under which the pike of the phalangite is always spoken of. So Livy, xxxi. 39, “Erant pleraque silvestria circa, incommoda phalangi maximè Macedonum: quæ, nisi ubi _prælongis hastis_ velut vallum ante clypeos objecit (quod ut fiat, libero campo opus est) nullius admodum usus est.” Compare also Livy, xliv. 40, 41, where, among other intimations of the immense length of the pike, we find, “Si carptim aggrediendo, circumagere _immobilem longitudine et gravitate hastam_ cogas, confusâ strue implicatur:” also xxxiii. 8, 9.