Ab urbe condita

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.