The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
shepherds, and the protector of bees, and the patron of sportsmen, but
to him were attributed those terrors which have decided the event of
many battles. He is generally identified with the Faunus of the Latins,
and a new interest in the _Fauni_ has been created by the genius of
Hawthorne. If it be true that the popular idea of Satan is derived from
Pan, we have another evidence therein of the breadth as well as the
length of his dominion over human affairs; for Satan, judging from men's
conduct, was never more active, more successful, and more grimly joyous
than he is in this year of grace (and disgrace) one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-one. "The harmless Faun," says Bulwer Lytton, "has
been the figuration of the most implacable of fiends." Satan and Pan
ought to be one, if we regard the kind of work in which the latter has
lately been engaged. The former's sympathies are undoubtedly with the
Secessionists, and to his active aid we must attribute their successes,
both as thieves and as soldiers.
The number of instances of panic terror in armies is enormous. Panics
have taken place in all armies, from that brief campaign in which Abram
smote the hosts of the plundering kings, hard by Damascus, to that
briefer campaign in which General McDowell did _not_ smite the
Secessionists, hard by Washington. The Athenians religiously believed
that Pan aided them at Marathon; and it would go far to account for
the defeat of the vast Oriental host, in that action, by a handful of
Greeks, if we could believe that that host became panic-stricken. At
Plataea, the allies of the Persians fell into a panic as soon as the
Persians were beaten, and fled without striking a blow. At the Battle
of Amphipolis, in the Peloponnesian War, and which was so fatal to the
Athenians, the Athenian left wing and centre fled in a panic, without
making any resistance. The Battle of Pydna, which placed the Macedonian
monarchy in the hands of the Romans, was decided by a panic befalling
the Macedonian cavalry after the phalanx had been broken. At Leuctra and
at Mantinea, battles so fatal to the Spartan supremacy in Greece, the
defeated armies suffered from panics. The decision at Pharsalia was in
some measure owing to a panic occurring among the Pompeian cavalry; and
at Thapsus, the panic terror that came upon the Pompeians gave to Caesar
so easy a victory that it cost him only fifty men, while the other
side were not only broken, but butchered. At Munda, the last and most
desperate of Caesar's battles, and in which he came very nearly losing
all that he had previously gained, a panic occurred in his army, from
the effects of which it recovered through admiration of its leader's
splendid personal example. The defeat of the Romans at Carrhae by the
Parthians was followed by a panic, against the effects of which not even
the discipline of the legions was a preventive. At the first Battle of
Philippi, the young Octavius came near being killed or captured, in
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