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Sergius heard the feeble shout of battle that rose behind him, heard the scattered clanging of sword and shield, and when he struck the long pikes of the first square, it was with the force of half a dozen broken maniples welded into a solid mass. Still the sarissas held firm.
Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches: nor will beware until he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy brigade.
Gorgo could not share these hopes; a client of her father's had brought in a rumor that the Biamites, after advancing as far as Naucratis, had been dispersed by a few of the Imperial maniples. Fate was stalking on its way, and no one could give it pause.
Another account makes the Romans take the field against the Gauls with twenty-four thousand men, that is, with four field legions and four civic legions: the field legions were formed only of plebeians, and served, according to the order of the classes, probably in maniples; the civic legions contained all those who belonged neither to the patricians nor to the plebeians, that is, all the aerarii, proletarii, freedmen, and artisans who had never before faced an enemy.
It is not impossible that the subdivision of the army and the intervals between the maniples in front were arranged with a view to resist, as they did resist, its first and only dangerous charge; and it accords with this hypothesis that Marcus Furius Camillus, the most celebrated Roman general of the Gallic epoch, is presented in various detached notices as the reformer of the Roman military system.
But it may be regarded as certain that the hoplite shield or, in other words, the tactics of the Doric phalanx were imitated not from the Etruscans, but directly from the Hellenes, As to the -scutum-, that large, cylindrical, convex leather shield must certainly have taken the place of the flat copper -clupeus-, when the phalanx was broken up into maniples; but the undoubted derivation of the word from the Greek casts suspicion on the derivation of the thing itself from the Samnites.
Several maniples of the praetorians and of the Macedonian phalanx were already drawn up in compact ranks, to relieve guard at the gate of the imperial residence, and stand at Caesar's orders. But more attractive to the girl than all this display were a number of altars which had been erected at the extreme edge of the great square, and on each of which a fire was burning.
A few maniples pursued the fugitives into the main entrance hall, helped them to force the gates open, and then drove them down the slope and steps, over the stones that had been heaped up for protection, and into the very arms of the division placed in front of the temple.
Upon this the consul, imitating the crafty character of his enemy, ordered five cohorts, with the addition of five maniples, to pass the summit by night and sit down in the valleys on the opposite side; a measure to which he was prompted the more strongly in proportion as he felt that there could exist no suspicion of an ambuscade in hills so uncovered.
They were certainly not armed with the pilum, nor drawn up in maniples; but used pikes and were employed in phalanxes. Now as for the field legions, each consisted half of Latins and half of Romans, there being in each maniple one century of Roman and one of Latins.
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