Ab urbe condita

frequently, when they were commencing some important operation, their year of office expired; their colleagues frustrated or ruined their plans, some through recklessness, some through jealousy; they often had to succeed to the mistakes or failures of others and take over an army of raw recruits or one in a bad state of discipline.

Kings are free from all hindrances; they are lords of time and circumstance, and draw all things into the sweep of their own designs.

Thus, the invincible Alexander would have crossed swords with invincible captains, and would have given the same pledges to Fortune which they gave.

Nay, he would have run greater risks than they, for the Macedonians had only one Alexander, who was not only liable to all sorts of accidents but deliberately exposed himself to them, whilst there were

many Romans equal to Alexander in glory and in the grandeur of their deeds, and yet each of them might fulfil his destiny by his life or by his death without imperilling the existence of the State.

It remains for us to compare the one army with the other as regards either the numbers or the quality of the troops or the strength of the allied forces.

Now the census for that period gives 250,000 persons. In all the revolts of the Latin league ten legions were raised, consisting almost entirely of city troops.

Often during those years four or five armies were engaged simultaneously in Etruria, in Umbria (where they had to meet the Gauls as well), in Samnium, and in Lucania.