This is not the place to discuss Greek tactics, nor is there anything new to say about them: authors are contented with borrowing from the treatises of Ælian and Arrian, who lived in the days of Hadrian. I will only remind the reader that even during the ‘Iliad’-ages the Greek army had its scheme of battle. Nestor advises his warriors to keep their ranks in action after the wont of their forbears; and in two places[846] we have allusions to a rude phalanx or oblong rectangle of civilised Egypt and Khita-land. Xenophon[847] tells us that the army of Agesilaus appeared all bronze (χαλκὸν) and red (φοίνικα); the latter survives in our most inappropriate British scarlet. For the heavy-armed Hoplite-swordsmen and the light Peltasts, who had apparently no Swords, the student will consult any ‘Dictionary of Antiquities.’ Another unpleasant feature in Greek warfare was its indifference to human life, so much regarded by the Romans. The former preserved their old barbarous practice of putting to death their war-prisoners; whilst even during the first Punic War the latter had a system of exchange combined with a money-payment for any number in excess on either side. Greece rarely appears in arms except in defensive warfare (as against the Persians), in civil wars between citizens and citizens, and in semi-civil wars, as between the Athenians and the Spartans, the Dorians, Ionians, and Æolians. A glance at any of their campaigns—the ‘Anabasis,’ for instance—gives us their measure as soldiers; and what else can we expect from a race whose typical men were Themistocles and Alcibiades? They were too clever by half; too vain, too restless, too impulsive (ever ‘shedding tears’), too self-assertive to become disciplined men-machines. They were always ready for a revolt, for a change of officers; and it must have been a serious thing to command them. In this point, perhaps, they are rivalled by the Frenchman, one of the best soldiers in Europe, and also one of the most difficult to manage. Great captains—Turenne and Napoleon Buonaparte, for instance—shot their recalcitrants by the dozen till the survivors learned to ‘tremble and obey.’[848] Like the French, too, and the Irish, the Greeks had more dash than firmness. They gained victories by the vigour and gallantry of their attack, but they did not distinguish themselves in a losing game. Here England excels, and hence Marshal Bugeaud said, ‘She has the best infantry in the world; happily they are not many.’ We must make them so.