Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

GREECE DEGENERATES. 677them across the ravine with part of his force, leaving astrong body at the prepared crossing to meet Machanidas onhis return. The latter, seeking to rejoin his own army, andsurprised that his success had not won better effects, hadployed his cavalry into a dense column, and prepared to cuthis way through ;but at the last moment, perceiving their isolation,his mercenaries forsook him, and dispersed in all directions,each man seeking his own safety. Machanidas, leftalone, endeavored to escape down the ravine, but was killedby Philopoemen. This general had won a complete victory bycool-headed tactics, and manoeuvres conceived and executedin the heat of action.This battle is both a fair sample of the methods of thatera and a fine exemplification of how an able commandermay make use of the accidents of the ground to gain success,as well as by clear-headed method and personal bearing arrestthe demoralization apt to follow upon an initial failure.But, despite that she still produced able men, Greece wasno longer herself. She had degenerated from the proudheight she occupied at the time of the Persian wars. Herpreeminence had departed with her spirit of patriotism, hereye single to the public good, and her simple virtues, neverto return. The same hardy love of country which had givenher greatness birth, was now to be sought in the city on theTiber, whose legions were destined to march over the lengthand breadth of the earth, as had the phalanx of Alexander.With Greece fell Macedon. It was but a hundred and fortyyears from the time Philip, backed by an army of forty thousandmen, had made himself Hegemon of Hellas, that anotherPhilip, defeated at Cynocephalae, was degraded to the paymentof a thousand talents of tribute, to an array and navyof five thousand men and five ships, and forbidden to make waroutside the narrow original boundaries prescribed as his king-