Book 10
32
Thus fell Marcus Marcellus from an act of incautiousness unworthy of a general. I am continually compelled in the course of my history to draw the attention of my readers to occurrences of this sort; for I perceive that it is this, more than anything else connected with the science of tactics, that ruins commanders. And yet the blunder is a very obvious one. For what is the use of a commander or general, who has not learnt that the leader ought to keep as far as possible aloof from those minor operations, in which the whole fortune of the campaign is not involved? Or of one who does not know that, even if circumstances should at times force them to engage in such subordinate movements, the commanders-in-chief should not expose themselves to danger until a large number of their company have fallen? For, as the proverb has it, the experiment should be made on the worthless CarianThis proverb perhaps arose from the frequent employment of the non-Hellenic Carians as mercenaries. Cp. Plato, Laches, 187 B; Euthydemus, 285 B; Euripides, Cyclops, 654. not on the general. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili For to say I shouldn’t have thought it,—Who would have expected it? seems to me the clearest proof of strategical incompetence and dulness.
