THE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS. 



163 



and the weaknesses of character supposed to be 

 inherent in the Irish gradually disappear under 

 the more benign influences of the New World. 

 Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Ro- 

 mans to the special qualities of their race, we 

 should not be solving the problem, but only stat- 

 ing it again in other terms. 



But, besides this, the wolf theory halts in a 

 still more evident manner. The foster-children 

 of the she-wolf, let them have never so much of 

 their foster-mother's milk in them, do not do what 

 the Romans did, and they do precisely what the 

 Romans did not. They kill, ravage, plunder — 

 perhaps they conquer and even for a time retain 

 their conquests — but they do not found highly- 

 organized empires, they do not civilize, much less 

 do they give birth to law. The brutal and deso- 

 lating domination of the Turk, which, after being 

 long artificially upheld by diplomacy, is at last 

 falling into final ruin, is the type of an empire 

 founded by the foster-children of the she-wolf. 

 Plunder, in the animal lust of which alone it 

 originated, remains its law, and its only notion of 

 imperial administration is a coarse division, im- 

 posed by the extent of its territory, into satrapies, 

 which, as the central dynasty, enervated by sen- 

 suality, loses its force, revolt, and break up the 

 empire. Even the Macedonian, pupil of Aristotle 

 though he was, did not create an empire at all 

 comparable to that created by the Romans. He 

 overran an immense extent of territory, and scat- 

 tered over a portion of it the seed of an inferior 

 species of Hellenic civilization ; but he did not 

 organize it into an empire, much less did he give 

 it, and through it the world, a code of law. It at 

 once fell apart into a number of separate king- 

 doms, the despotic rulers of which were sultans 

 with a tinge of Hellenism, and which went for 

 nothing in the political development of mankind. 



What if the very opposite theory to that of 

 the 3he-wolf and her foster-children should be 

 true ? What if the Romans should have owed 

 their peculiar and unparalleled success to their 

 having been at first not more warlike, but less 

 warlike, than their neighbors ? It may seem a 

 paradox, but we suspect that in their imperial 

 ascendency is seen one of the earliest and not 

 ■least important steps in that gradual triumph of 

 intellect over force, even in war, which has been 

 an essential part of the progress of civilization. 

 The happy day may come when Science in the form 

 of a benign old gentleman with a bald head and 

 spectacles on nose, holding some beneficent com- 

 pound in his hand, will confront a standing army, 

 and the standing army will cease to exist. That 



will be the final victory of intellect. But, in the 

 mean time, our acknowledgments are due to the 

 primitive inventors of military organization and 

 military discipline. They shivered Goliath's spear. 

 A mass of comparatively unwarlike burghers, un- 

 organized and undisciplined, though they may be 

 the hope of civilization from their mental and 

 industrial qualities, have as little of collective as 

 they have of individual strength in war ; they only 

 get in each other's way, and fall singly victims to 

 the prowess of a gigantic barbarian. Be who 

 first thought of combining their force by organi- 

 zation, so as to make their numbers tell, and who 

 taught them to obey officers, to form regularly 

 for action, and to execute united movements at 

 the word of command, was, perhaps, as great a 

 benefactor of the species as he who grew the first 

 corn, or built the first canoe. 



What ,is the special character of the Roman 

 legends, so far as they relate to war ? Their 

 special character is, that they are legends not of 

 personal prowess but of discipline. Rome has no 

 Achilles. The great national heroes, Camillus, 

 Cincinnatus, Fapirius Cursor, Fabius Maximus, 

 Manlius, are not prodigies of personal strength 

 and valor, but commanders and disciplinarians. 

 The most striking incidents are incidents of dis- 

 cipline. The most striking incident of all is the 

 execution by a commander of his own son for hav- 

 ing gained a victory against orders. " Disciplinam 

 militarem," Manlius is made to say, " qua stetit 

 ad hanc diem Romana res." Discipline was the 

 great secret of Roman ascendency in war. It is 

 the great secret of all ascendency in war. Vic- 

 tories of the undisciplined over the disciplined, 

 such as Killiecrankie and Preston Pans, are rare 

 exceptions which only prove the rule. The rule 

 is that in everything like a parity of personal 

 prowess and of generalship discipline is victory. 

 Thrice Rome encountered discipline equal or su- 

 perior to her own. Pyrrhus at first beat her, but 

 there was no nation behind him ; Hannibal beat 

 her, but his nation did not support him ; she beat 

 the army of Alexander, but the army of Alexan- 

 der when it encountered her, like that of Freder- 

 ick at Jena, was an old machine, and it was com- 

 manded by a man who was more like Tippoo 

 Sahib than the conqueror of Darius. 



But how came military discipline to be so 

 specially cultivated by the Romans? We can 

 see how it came to be specially cultivated by the 

 Greeks: it was the necessity of civic armies, 

 fighting perhaps against warlike aristocracies ; it 

 was the necessity of Greeks in general fighting 

 against the invading hordes of the Persian. We 



