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Training of Soldiers

Their first measure was to divide them according to their country and age, and to assign to each division its appropriate arms, taking no account of what they had borne before.
Reorganisation of the army.
Next they broke up their battalions and muster-rolls, which had been formed on the basis of their old system of pay, and formed them into companies adapted to the immediate purpose. Having effected this they began to drill the men; habituating them severally not only to obey the words of command, but also to the proper management of their weapons.1 They also frequently summoned general meetings at headquarters, and delivered speeches to the men. The most useful in this respect were Andromachus of Aspendus and Polycrates of Argos; because they had recently crossed from Greece, and were still thoroughly imbued with the Greek spirit, and the military ideas prevalent in the several states. Moreover, they were illustrious on the score of their private wealth, as well as on that of their respective countries; to which advantages Polycrates added those of an ancient family, and of the reputation obtained by his father Mnasiades as an athlete. By private and public exhortations these officers inspired their men with a zeal and enthusiasm for the struggle which awaited them.

1 See Professor Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought. p. 405, who points out that this refers to the Egyptian troops especially, whose old military castes (see Herod. 2, 164-6) though not extinct had forgotten their old skill. In a sense, however, it applies to both kinds of troops; for they had to be trained to act together, as is shown in the next chapter.

Histories. Polybius. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. translator. London, New York. Macmillan. 1889. Reprint Bloomington 1962.

Robert B. Strassler provided support for entering this text.

This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry, Running heads in Walbank's reprint have been converted to chapter titles, and titles have been added, usually from the marginal notes, for chapters without them. Some pages have notes of the form "line X: A should read B," which I believe are Walbank's; they have "resp=fww". Summaries of missing sections are encoded as inline notes with "resp=ess." A very few unidentified quotations are marked in notes with "resp=aem" (the markup editor) Citations are marked using Perseus abbreviations. and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.

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