Philip had learnt strategy at the feet of the Theban Epaminondas. The army he created included a _corps d’élite_ of noble horse-guards, the Companions of the King. These were the earliest first-rate mounted troops in history, and it was by their means that the dashing exploits of Alexander were subsequently achieved. For the infantry his great invention was the phalanx. This was clearly a modification of the deep formation invented by Epaminondas. It consisted of sixteen ranks armed with a spear 21 feet long. They stood in close order so that the points of the first five ranks projected from the front to present a bristling hedge of spears. The remaining eleven ranks, we are gravely informed, held their spears obliquely in the air to ward off missiles! Let the military reader find a military justification for this extraordinary arrangement. To me it seems a further confirmation of my civilian view that Greek tactics were primarily designed to prevent armies from running away. We observe that when Alexander took Persian troops into his phalanx he put twelve ranks of Persians into the lines, with a row of Macedonians _at their rear_. In any case troops standing in close formation armed with weapons 7 yards long must have been useless for any but defensive purposes; and, as a matter of fact, the victories of Alexander were generally gained by the lightning charge of the king at the head of his knights. We need not touch upon the shabby “Sacred Wars” which caused Philip to enter Greece on the invitation of Thebes. It was at Chæroneia in 338 that Philip defeated a mixed Greek army in whose ranks Demosthenes was fighting as a hoplite. Philip was generous to the Greeks, and especially to Athens. Next year the darling wish of his heart was obtained, for he was elected president of a Panhellenic union destined to fulfil his great scheme of avenging the Persian invasions of Greece by a march to Babylon. In the next year he was murdered, and his brilliant son Alexander cannot be acquitted of complicity in the crime. The grand idea was Philip’s, begotten perhaps from the study of Isocrates, and certainly inspired by the examples of Xenophon and Agesilaus. Unfortunately it was far from arousing any enthusiasm in Greece. Persia was a long way off, and money could be had from the Great King without fighting for it. There was a sordid scramble for bribes among the Greek statesmen. As soon as they heard of Philip’s death they broke into unseemly jubilation, and voted compliments to his murderers; they hoped that things would return to their old routine, and that there would be no more talk of antediluvian crusades. They had reckoned without Alexander, for it is seldom that a Philip is succeeded by an Alexander.