History of Rome

​It remains for forces to be compared with forces, either in number or in the kind of soldiers, or in the multitude of auxiliaries. In the lustra of that age, two hundred and fifty thousand heads were rated.

​Therefore, in every defection of the allies of the Latin name, ten legions were written down, almost by an urban levy;

​four or five armies often waged war during those years in Etruria, in Umbria with the Gallic enemies added, in Samnium, and among the Lucanians.

​Then all Latium, with the Sabines, Volscians, Aequians, all Campania, part of Umbria and Etruria, the Picentes, Marsians, Paelignians, Vestinians, and Apulians, with the addition of the entire coast of the Greeks on the lower sea from the Bruttians to Naples and Cumae, and thence as far as Antium and Ostia, would have found either powerful allies for the Romans or enemies broken by war.

​He himself would have crossed the sea with veteran Macedonians, not more than thirty thousand men and four thousand cavalry, chiefly Thessalians; for this was his strength. If he had added the Persians, Indians, and other nations, he would have dragged a hindrance greater than an aid. ​Add to this, that while the Romans had reinforcement at hand at home, for Alexander, as happened afterwards to Hannibal, his army would have grown old waging war in a foreign land.

​Their weapons were the round shield and the sarisae; for the Roman, the scutum, a greater protection for the body, and the pilum, a weapon of much more violent force in strike and throw than the spear.

​Both were stationary soldiers, keeping their ranks; but that phalanx was immobile and of a single kind, while the Roman line was more distinct, consisting of several parts, easy for one dividing, wherever there was need, and easy for one joining.

​Now in work, what soldier is equal to the Roman, who is better at enduring labor? Alexander, defeated in a single battle, would have been defeated in the war; what battle line would have broken the Roman, whom Caudium, whom Cannae did not break?

​Indeed, even if the first events had turned out prosperously, he would often have missed the Persians, the Indians, and unwarlike Asia, and would have said that his war had been with women, ​which they say Alexander, king of Epirus, when struck by a fatal wound, said, comparing the lot of the wars waged in Asia by this very young man with his own.

​Indeed, when I recall that for twenty-four years in the First Punic War it was fought with fleets against the Carthaginians, I think that the lifetime of Alexander would have been scarcely sufficient for this one war;

​and perhaps, since the Carthaginian state was joined to the Roman by ancient treaties, and an equal fear against a common enemy would have armed two cities most powerful in arms and men, he would have been overwhelmed by the Punic and Roman war at the same time.

​Not indeed under the leadership of Alexander, nor while the affairs of the Macedonians were unimpaired, but yet the Romans experienced the Macedonian enemy against Antiochus, Philip, and Perses, not only without any disaster, but not even with danger to themselves.

​May ill-will be absent from my words, and let civil wars be silent: never have we been hard pressed by enemy cavalry, never by infantry, never in an open battle line, never in equal, and certainly never in our own places; the cavalry, the arrows, ​and the blocked passes, and places out of the way for supplies, a soldier heavy with arms may fear:

​but a thousand battle lines more formidable than those of the Macedonians and of Alexander has Rome turned away and will turn away, provided only that there be a perpetual love of this peace in which we live, and a civic care for concord.