training. Meanwhile the Athenian, the Corinthian, the Argive,
the Theban, gave his chief attention to his oliveyard or his
vineyard, his warehouse or his workshop, and took up his shield
and spear only for short terms and at long intervals. The
difference therefore between a Lacedaemonian phalanx and any
other phalanx was long as great as the difference between a
regiment of the French household troops and a regiment of the
London trainbands. Lacedaemon consequently continued to be
dominant in Greece till other states began to employ regular
troops. Then her supremacy was at an end. She was great while she
was a standing army among militias. She fell when she had to
contend with other standing armies. The lesson which is really to
be learned from her ascendency and from her decline is this, that
the occasional soldier is no match for the professional soldier.2

The same lesson Somers drew from the history of Rome; and every
scholar who really understands that history will admit that he
was in the right. The finest militia that ever existed was
probably that of Italy in the third century before Christ. It
might have been thought that seven or eight hundred thousand
fighting men, who assuredly wanted neither natural courage nor
public spirit, would have been able to protect their own hearths
and altars against an invader. An invader came, bringing with him
an army small and exhausted by a march over the snows of the
Alps, but familiar with battles and sieges. At the head of this
army he traversed the peninsula to and fro, gained a succession
of victories against immense numerical odds, slaughtered the
hardy youth of Latium like sheep, by tens of thousands, encamped
under the walls of Rome, continued during sixteen years to
maintain himself in a hostile country, and was never dislodged