more numerous and the more efficient prototypes of "Shaw the Life-guardsman."
Even when the old quasi-feudal military system of Greece had given place to some sort of organisation of forces, when cavalry, heavy infantry, and skirmishers were separately drilled, and employed on a definite principle, individual prowess would still tell enormously on the fortunes of the day. Two long lines of infantry, pushing against each other with pikes,—such was the main aspect of a Greek battle at its most critical moment. The cavalry rarely formed an important element in an army, the archers and slingers were considered an inferior branch of the service; it was in the line of "hoplites" that the mass of citizen-soldiers were to be found. Thus soundness of wind, suppleness of limb, strength, nerve, and weight, were to a great extent the measure of a citizen's power to aid his city in her time of need. And while the legislators of Sparta secured the prevalence of these qualities by a compulsory and universal athletic training, other states encouraged by every available means, by local contests and by rewards to native champions, the growth of athletic tastes in their citizens.
Again and again in Pindar we find athletic triumphs associated with success in war. "Oft," he says, as he praises his favourite Ægina,[1]—
"Oft have the heroes she has borne
The crown of sportive contests worn,
Oft in rapid fight won fame."
- ↑ Pyth. viii. 26.
