intense 'pipeclay' epoch. In numbers alone its superiority was
considerable to the last, and down to the very eve of Platæa its
commander openly displayed his contempt for his enemy. Yet no
defeat could be more complete than that suffered by the Persians
at the hands of their despised antagonists.

As if to establish beyond dispute the identity of governing
conditions in both land and maritime wars, the next very conspicuous
disappointment of an elaborately organised force was that of the
Athenian fleet at Syracuse. At the time Athens, without question,
stood at the head of the naval world: her empire was in the truest
sense the product of sea-power. Her navy, whilst unequalled in size,
might claim, without excessive exaggeration, to be invincible. The
great armament which the Athenians despatched to Sicily seemed, in
numbers alone, capable of triumphing over all resistance. If the
Athenian navy had already met with some explicable mishaps, it
looked back with complacent confidence on the glorious achievements
of more than half a century previously. It had enjoyed many years
of what was so nearly a maritime peace that its principal exploits
had been the subjection of states weak to insignificance on the
sea as compared with imperial Athens. Profuse expenditure on its
maintenance; the 'continued practice' of which Pericles boasted,
the peace manoeuvres of a remote past; skilfully designed equipment;
and the memory of past glories;--all these did not avail to save
it from defeat at the hands of an enemy who only began to organise
a fleet when the Athenians had invaded his coast waters.

Ideal perfection as a regular army has never been so nearly reached
as by that of Sparta. The Spartan spent his life in the barrack
and the mess-room; his amusements were the exercises of the parade