In that allied army which we saw the Persians {117} defeating in Asia Minor--the army led by Crœsus, king of Lydia--the Persians were victorious. They were so decisively victorious that Crœsus himself was taken prisoner by them, and the whole strength seems to have been knocked out of the alliance by that single blow. And in the defeated army we saw that there were soldiers from Sparta, which is, as you see on the map, in that most southern and almost detached part of Greece which is called the Peloponnese. The Spartans, therefore, were Greeks, and the Greeks were among those that had the worst of it in this great battle. But, for all that, it was a Grecian mode of fighting that made the best of all defences against the Persian way of attacking. This mode of defence is what was called the "phalanx." [Sidenote: City states] You have to understand that the word Greece in those days did not mean a single nation so much as a collection of small states settled close beside one another. The peoples of the different states were for the most part of the same race, no doubt, just like the Semitic peoples in Syria and Palestine. But they differed from each other in their customs and their ways of government far more than the Semites did. They were very often fighting among themselves and, again like the Semites, found it very difficult to let their jealousy of each other die down and to unite together for defence against a foreign foe. The Spartans were the most warlike of all the Grecian states. Their government was conducted in such a way as to make all the males in the country fighters. Their idea of fighting was as different as possible from that of the Persians. They had few horse-soldiers. They were drawn up for battle in a close deep formation, I suppose like what we should call "a solid {118} square," and it was this solid square that was called the phalanx. The troops were heavily armed, with shield, sword, and, most important of all for receiving the charge of cavalry, with long spears. You can imagine what a solid defence this would make against the lightly armed cavalry of the Persians. The arrows would not cause very serious loss to the armoured and shielded Greeks, and when the Persians did finally push their charge home the spears would so receive them that it would be like charging a gigantic porcupine. [Illustration: GREEK WARRIOR.] Of course all that would depend on the phalanx keeping its solid formation. If its ranks got at all broken up in pursuit, under the mistaken idea that the Persians, after the first onslaught, were done with, and were fleeing away, then it would be a very much less formidable porcupine on which the horsemen would come when they returned to the attack. Probably the Greeks quickly learnt the Persians' methods and grew careful to keep their formation without any big breaks in it. [Sidenote: The phalanx]