And these men are more worthy of admiration than Alexander or any other king.

Some retained the Dictatorship for only ten or twenty days; none held a con- sulship for more than a year; the levying of troops was often obstructed by the tribunes of the plebs; they were late, in consequence, in taking the field, and were often recalled before the time to conduct the elections;

frequently, when they were commencing some important operation, their year of office expired; their colleagues frustrated or ruined their plans, some through recklessness, some through jealousy; they often had to succeed to the mistakes or failures of others and take over an army of raw recruits or one in a bad state of discipline.

Kings are free from all hindrances; they are lords of time and circumstance, and draw all things into the sweep of their own designs.

Thus, the invincible Alexander would have crossed swords with invincible captains, and would have given the same pledges to Fortune which they gave.

Nay, he would have run greater risks than they, for the Macedonians had only one Alexander, who was not only liable to all sorts of accidents but deliberately exposed himself to them, whilst there were

many Romans equal to Alexander in glory and in the grandeur of their deeds, and yet each of them might fulfil his destiny by his life or by his death without imperilling the existence of the State.

It remains for us to compare the one army with the other as regards either the numbers or the quality of the troops or the strength of the allied forces.

Now the census for that period gives 250,000 persons. In all the revolts of the Latin league ten legions were raised, consisting almost entirely of city troops.

Often during those years four or five armies were engaged simultaneously in Etruria, in Umbria (where they had to meet the Gauls as well), in Samnium, and in Lucania.

Then as regards the attitude of the various Italian tribes —the whole of Latium with the Sabines, Volscians, and Aequi, the whole of Campania, parts of Umbria and Etruria, the Picentines, the Marsi, and Paeligni, the Vestinians and Apulians, to which we should add the entire coast of the western sea, with its Greek population, stretching from Thurii to Neapolis and Cumae, and from there as far as Antium and Ostia —all these nationalities he would have found to be either strong allies of Rome or reduced to impotence by Roman arms.

He would have crossed the sea with his Macedonian veterans, amounting to not more than 30,000 men and 4000 cavalry, mostly Thracian. This formed all his real strength. If he had brought over in addition Persian and Indians and other Orientals, he would have found them a hindrance rather than a help.

We must remember also that the Romans had a reserve to draw upon at home, but Alexander, warring on a foreign soil, would have found his army diminished by the wastage of war, as happened afterwards to Hannibal.

His men were armed with round shields and long spears, the Romans had the large shield called the scutum, a better protection for the body, and the javelin, a much more effective weapon than the spear whether for hurling or thrusting.

In both armies the soldiers fought in line rank by rank, but the Macedonian phalanx lacked mobility and formed a single unit; the Roman army was more elastic, made up of numerous divisions, which could easily act separately or in combination as required.

Then with regard to fatigue duty, what soldier is better able to stand hard work than the Roman? If Alexander had been worsted in one battle the war would have been over; what army could have broken the strength of Rome, when Caudium and Cannae failed to do so?

Even if things had gone well with him at first, he would often have been tempted to wish that Persians and Indians and effeminate Asiatics were his foes, and would have confessed that