Ab urbe condita

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

his former wars had been waged against women, as Alexander of Epirus is reported to have said when after receiving his moral wound was comparing his own fortune with that of this very youth in his Asiatic campaigns.

When I remember that in the first Punic war we fought at sea for twenty-four years, I think that Alexander would hardly have lived long enough to see one war through.

It is quite possible, too, that as Rome and Carthage were at that time leagued together by an old-standing treaty, the same apprehensions might have led those two powerful states to take up arms against the common foe, and Alexander would have been crushed by their combined forces.

Rome has had experience of a Macedonian war, not indeed when Alexander was commanding nor when the resources of Macedon were still unimpaired, but the contests against Antiochus, Philip, and Perses were fought not only without loss but even without risk. I trust that I shall not give offence when I say that, leaving out of sight the civil wars, we have never found an enemy's cavalry or infantry too much

for us, when we have fought in the open field, on ground equally favourable for both sides, still less when the ground has given us an advantage.

The infantry soldier, with his heavy armour and weapons, may reasonable fear the arrows of Parthian cavalry, or passes invested by the enemy, or country where supplies cannot be brought up,

but he has repulsed a thousand armies more formidable than those of Alexander and his Macedonians, and will repulse them in the future if only the domestic peace and concord which we now enjoy remains undisturbed for all the years to come.

M. Foslius Flaccina and L. Plautius Venox were the next consuls. In this year several communities amongst the Samnites made overtures for a fresh treaty. These deputations, when admitted to an audience, prostrated themselves on the ground, and their humble attitude influenced the senate in their favour.