Excerpt from The Soul and Body of an Army
The Romans knew what they wanted when they set about making an Army. The very name they gave to the weapon to be handed to a Consul or pro-Consul embodied a clear-cut idea. "So sensible were the Romans of the imperfections of valour without skill and practice that, in their language, the name of an Army was borrowed from the word which signified exercise." Exercitus was the Roman notion of an Army - a body trainod to do in peace what they would have to do in war. Not with them a nation determined to win as a result of sheer, straightforward work, but a confederacy trusting to art, to generalship, to inspiration, expecting victory to crown the more brilliantly led. The quick-witted Greeks relied upon that reflection cast by Divinity upon the sensitive soul, that flash of light we call Genius; the matter-of-fact Romans upon putting their backs into the business. Or, to put it more technically, the Greek spirit led its leaders to study strategy, the art of manoeuvring into some position from which the greatest possible results would follow upon victory; whereas, the Romans aimed at the victory itself and concentrated rather upon tactics.
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