THE OLD GREEK VOLUNTEER 477 



THE SERVICES AND REWARDS OF THE OLD GREEK 



VOLUNTEER 



By FREDERIC EARLE WHITAKER, Ph.D. 



RECENTLY ACTING PROFESSOR OF GREEK AT LEHIGH UNIVERSITY AND 

 SOMETIME G. A. R. FELLOW AT BROWN UNIVERSITY 



FROM Athens to America; from Marathon, Salamis and Chaeronea 

 to Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Manila Bay, greatness and 

 gratitude have been inseparable terms in national glory. From the 

 earliest history of soldiery down to our day, martial renown and even 

 long lease of national life have been won by those nations only which 

 asked the greatest sacrifice and bestowed the greatest honors and re- 

 wards upon their citizen-soldiers. 



The prestige of Roman arms has gone up and down the world, but 

 the people of Greece showed a devotion to their warrior braves almost 

 unequalled in the annals of civilization. We are apt to feel that the 

 victories of Greece were those of the brain and not those of the sword, 

 and, in her signal influence on posterity, little Greece doubtless won 

 her greatest triumph in the realm of the intellect; for the chisel of 

 Phidias, the brush of Apelles, the logic of Socrates, the speeches of 

 Demosthenes, the tragedies of ^Eschylus and the inspired verses of 

 Homer have become the legacy and inspiration of the nations. But the 

 preservation, growth and dissemination of these treasures necessitated 

 a perpetual war. 



Greece, fighting for Europe and European civilization, met Asia in 

 the longest defensive warfare known in history, and though all the 

 nations constituting the Greek people were no larger than the state of 

 West Virginia, they fought a winning fight with the countless hordes 

 and uncounted treasure of the Persian Empire. From Agamemnon to 

 Alexander, the conflict was felt to be on at every moment of their na- 

 tional Jife. The " Iliad " of Homer — call it fable or tradition, as you 

 please — reveals the Greeks, a thousand years before our era, waging the 

 Ten Years' War at Troy. Five centuries later the early historical 

 record finds Miltiades victor at Marathon, where Europe worsted Asia 

 and saved the world for progress. Though too early for reliable his- 

 tory, we may safely say that the five centuries between Troy and 

 Marathon could not have been free from Asiatic transgression. Ten 

 years of preparation but repeat the victory of Marathon in the naval 

 fight at Salamis and Europe drives back Asia, Athens wins the leader- 

 ship of Greece and, uniting the different states in a league against 



