non-Hellenes on an exceedingly strong Macedonian nucleus. Alexander’s own guard was composed of picked horse and foot. The infantry of the line comprised Macedonian and Greek hoplites, the Macedonians being subdivided into heavy and medium troops. These fought in a grand phalanx, which was subdivided into units corresponding to the modern divisions, brigades and regiments, the fighting formation being normally a line of battalion masses. The arm of the infantry was the 18-foot pike (sarissa). The peltasts, Macedonian and Greek, were numerous and well trained, and there was the usual mass of irregular light troops, bowmen, slingers, &c. The cavalry included the Guard (ἄγημα), a body of heavy cavalry composed of chosen Macedonians, the line cavalry of Macedonia (ἑταῖροι) and Thessaly, the numerous small contingents of the Greek states, mercenary corps and light lancers for outpost work. The final blow and the gathering of the fruits of victory were now for the first time the work of the mounted arm. The solid phalanx was almost unbreakable in the earlier stages of the battle, but after a long infantry fight the horsemen had their chance. In former wars they were too few and too poorly mounted to avail themselves of it, and decisive victories were in consequence rarely achieved in battles of Greek versus Greek. Under Epaminondas, and still more under Philip and Alexander, the cavalry was strong enough for its new work. Battles are now ended by the shock action of mounted men, and in Alexander’s time it is noted as a novelty that the cavalry carried out the pursuit of a beaten army. There were further, in Alexander’s army, artillerymen with a battering train, engineers and departmental troops, and also a medical service, an improvement attributed to Jason of Pherae. The victories of this army, in close order and in open, over every kind of enemy and on every sort of terrain, produced the Hellenistic world, and in that achievement the history of Greek armies closes, for after the return of the greater part of the Europeans to their homes the armies of Alexander and his successors, while preserving much of the old form, become more and more orientalized.
The decisive step was taken in 323, when a picked contingent of Persians, armed mainly with missile weapons, was drafted into the phalanx, in which henceforward they formed the middle ranks of each file of sixteen men. But, like the third rank of Prussian infantry up to 1888, they normally fought as skirmishers in advance, falling into their place behind the pikes of the Macedonian file-leaders only if required for the decisive assault. The new method, of course, depended for success on the steadiness of the thin three-deep line of Macedonians thus left as the line of battle. Alexander’s veterans were indeed to be trusted, but as time went on, and little by little the war-trained Greeks left the service, it became less and less safe to array the Hellenistic army in this shallow and articulated order of battle. The purely formal organization of the phalanx sixteen deep became thus the actual tactical formation, and around this solid mass of 16,384 men gathered the heterogeneous levies of a typical oriental army. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, retained far more of the tradition of Alexander’s system than his contemporaries farther east, yet his phalanx, comparatively light and mobile as it was, achieved victories over the Roman legion only at the cost of self-destruction. Even elephants quickly became a necessary adjunct to Hellenistic armies.
8. Carthage.—The military systems of the Jews present few features of unusual interest. The expedient of calling out successive contingents from the different tribes, in order to ensure continuity in military operations, should, however, be noticed. David and Solomon possessed numerous permanent troops which served as guards and garrisons; in principle this organization was identical with that of the Persians, and that of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Particular interest attaches to the Carthaginian military forces of the 3rd century B.C. Rarely has any army achieved such renown in the short space of sixty years (264–202 B.C.). Carthage produced a series of great generals, culminating in Hannibal, who is marked out, even by the little that is known of him, as the equal of Napoleon. But Napoleon was supported by a national army, Hannibal and his predecessors were condemned to work with armies of mercenaries. For the first time in the world’s history war is a matter with which the civil population has no concern. The merchants of Carthage fought only in the last extremity; the wars in which their markets were extended were conducted by non-national forces and directed by the few Carthaginian citizens who possessed military aptitudes. The civil authorities displayed towards their instruments a spirit of hatred for which it is difficult to find a parallel. Unsuccessful leaders were crucified, the mercenary soldiers were cheated of their pay, and broke out into a mutiny which shook the empire of Carthage to its foundations. But the magnetism of a leader’s personality infused a corporate military spirit into these heterogeneous Punic armies, and history has never witnessed so complete an illustration of the power of pure and unaided esprit de corps as in the case of Hannibal’s army in Italy, which, composed as it was of Spaniards, Africans, Gauls, Numidians, Italians and soldiers of fortune of every country, was yet welded by him into thorough efficiency. The army of Italy was as great in its last fight at Zama as the army of Spain at Rocroi; its victories of the Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae were so appalling that, two hundred years later, the leader to whom these soldiers devoted their lives was still, to a Roman, the “dire” Hannibal.
In their formal organization the Carthaginian armies resembled the new Greek model, and indeed they were created in the first instance by Xanthippus, a Spartan soldier in the service of Carthage, who was called upon to raise and train an army when the Romans were actually at the gates of Carthage, and justified his methods in the brilliant victory of Tunis (255 B.C.). For the solid Macedonian phalanx of 16,000 spears Xanthippus substituted a line of heavy battalions equal in its aggregate power of resistance to the older form, and far more flexible. The triumphs of the cavalry arm in Hannibal’s battles far excelled those of Alexander’s horsemen. Hannibal chose his fighting ground whenever possible with a view to using their full power, first to defeat the hostile cavalry, then to ride down the shaken infantry masses, and finally to pursue au fond. At Cannae, the greatest disaster ever suffered by the Romans, the decisive blow and the slaughter were the work of Hannibal’s line cavalry, the relentless pursuit that of his light horse. But a professional long-service army has always the greatest difficulty in making good its losses, and in the present case it was wholly unable to do so. Even Hannibal failed at last before the sustained efforts of the citizen army of Rome.
9. Roman Army under the Republic.—The earliest organization of the Roman army is attributed to Romulus, who formed it on the tribal principle, each of the three tribes contributing its contingent of horse and foot. But it was to Servius Tullius that Rome owed, traditionally, the complete classification of her citizen-soldiers. For the details of the Roman military system, see Roman Army. During the earlier period of Roman history the army was drawn entirely from the first classes of the population, who served without pay and provided their own arms and armour. The wealthiest men (equites) furnished the cavalry, the remainder the infantry, while the poorer classes either fought as light troops or escaped altogether the privilege and burden of military service. Each “legion” of 3000 heavy foot was at first formed in a solid phalanx. The introduction of the elastic and handy three-line formation with intervals (similar in many respects to Alexander’s) was brought about by the Gallic wars, and is attributed to M. Furius Camillus, who also, during the siege of Veii, introduced the practice of paying the soldiers, and thus removed the chief obstacle to the employment of the poorer classes. The new order of battle was fully developed in the Pyrrhic Wars, and the typical army of the Republic may be taken as dating from the latter part of the 3rd century B.C. The legionary was still possessed of a property qualification, but it had become relatively small. An annual levy was made at Rome to provide for the campaign of the year. Discipline was severe, and the rewards appealed as much to the soldier’s honour as to his desire of gain. A legion now consisted of three lines (Hastati, Principes, Triarii), each line composed of men of
