[15]
He believed also that tactics did not consist1 solely in being able easily to extend one's line or increase its depth, or to change it from a long column into a phalanx, or without error to change the front by a counter march according as the enemy came up on the right or the left or behind;2 but he considered it also a part of good tactics to break up one's army into several divisions whenever occasion demanded, and to place each division, too, where it would do the most good, and to make speed when it was necessary to reach a place before the enemy—all these and other such qualifications were essential, he believed, to a skilful tactician, and he devoted himself to them all alike.
1 Cyrus as a tactician
2 “We learn from Aelian (Tact. 27) that this was either a countermarch by files (κατὰ ξυλά), in which the wings only changed places, or a countermarch by companies (κατὰ λόχους or στίχους) when the whole line turned and the rearguard marched in front, so that there was a change of front as well as of wings. The object of the last-named movement was to put τοὺς κρατίστους [the best men] forward.” (Holden.)
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 5 and 6. Walter Miller. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1914.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.