[925] In this matter we must be careful how we trust to engravings, especially from vases, &c. The careless artist often reverses the figure.
[926] Military Antiq., vol. ii.; Pl. xli.
[927] Quoting Lyson’s Woodchester Antiquities (Pl. xxxv.).
[928] Pl. i. fig. 10. Quoted in The British Army, &c., by Sir Sibbald David Scott, a well-studied work containing a considerable amount of information.
[929] Soc. of Antiq., June 29, 1876.
[930] During the critical action at Thapsus, Cæsar, according to Plutarch, was hors de combat with a fit of epilepsy, the comitialis morbus (Afric. War, chap. 14). I have noticed in my Commentaries on Camoens (i. 40) the strange fact that some of the greatest men of antiquity were subject to this ‘falling sickness.’ The Egyptians held it to be a manifestation of the power of Typhon; hence the ‘divine disease’ of Apuleius (Defence), and the strange fancies of dæmoniac possession which prevailed in the earliest ages, and which have not yet died out. The learned Canon Farrar (Life, &c. of Saint Paul, Appendix, vol. i.) holds that this perhaps was the ‘thorn in the flesh’ (2 Cor. xii. 7) alluded to by the great Apostle. He quotes from Hausrath the ‘trances’ of Sokrates, the fits of Mohammed, and the faintings and ecstasies of Saints Bernard, Francis, and Catherine of Sienna; and to these he adds George Fox, Jacob Böhme, and Swedenborg.
[931] This is an illustration of genius taking pains and a lesson to the leader of troops; but how many of the moderns have practised it, or have been capable of practising it? Suvóroff (Suwarroff), it is true, taught his men bayonet-exercise, with his coat off and his sleeves tucked up: Mediocrity shudders at the idea. The Russian had, by the way, curious ideas concerning the use of the weapon. ‘Brothers! never gaze into the enemy’s eyes; fix your sight on his breast, and prod your bayonet there.’ The first rule for the General is to be ever looking after his men, to live, as it were, in the saddle, and to lead the attack when requisite. What were the habits of poor Lord Raglan and of his successor General (Jimmy) Simpson? No wonder that we had the mortification of the Redan affair.
[932] Strategemata, viii. 28. The ‘Macedonian’ flourished about the middle of the second century (Christian era).
[933] ix. 40.
[934] This word has a universal history of its own, and contains a lecture on anthropology.