But Byron may well be excused his raving about the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict at Marathon, where a few thousand ill-disciplined men repulsed a larger number of still worse disciplined Orientals, without any recondite tactics—perhaps even without any very extraordinary heroism—how is it that this conflict has maintained a celebrity which has not been equalled by any of the great battles of the world from that day down to our own? The courage of the Greeks, as I have elsewhere shown,(77) was not of the first order. Herodotus praises the Athenians in this very battle for being the first Greeks that dared to look the Persians in the face. Their generals all through history seem never to feel sure of victory, and always endeavor to harangue their soldiers into a fury. Instead of advising coolness, they especially incite to rage—_ὀργῇ προσμίξωμεν_, says one of them in Thucydides—as if any man not in this state would be sure to estimate the danger fully, and run away. It is, indeed, true that the ancient battles were hand to hand, and therefore parallel to our charges of bayonets, which are said to be very seldom carried out by two opposing lines, as one of them almost always gives way before the actual collision takes place. This must often have occurred in Greek battles, for in one fought at Amphipolis Brasidas lost seven men; at a battle at Corinth, mentioned by Xenophon—an important battle, too—the slain amounted to eight;(78) and these battles were fought before the days when whole armies were composed of mercenaries, who spared one another, as Ordericus Vitalis says, “for the love of God, and out of good feeling for the fraternity of arms.” So, then, the loss of 192 Athenians, including some distinguished men, was rather a severe one. As to the loss of the Persians, I so totally disbelieve the Greek accounts of such things that it is better to pass it by in silence.