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He believed also that tactics did not consist 1 solely in being able easily to extend one’s line or increase its depth, or to change it from a long column into a phalanx, or without error to change the front by a counter march according as the enemy came up on the right or the left or behind; 2 but he considered it also a part of good tactics to break up one’s army into several divisions whenever occasion demanded, and to place each division, too, where it would do the most good, and to make speed when it was necessary to reach a place before the enemy—all these and other such qualifications were essential, he believed, to a skilful tactician, and he devoted himself to them all alike.
He believed also that tactics did not consist 1 solely in being able easily to extend one’s line or increase its depth, or to change it from a long column into a phalanx, or without error to change the front by a counter march according as the enemy came up on the right or the left or behind; 2 but he considered it also a part of good tactics to break up one’s army into several divisions whenever occasion demanded, and to place each division, too, where it would do the most good, and to make speed when it was necessary to reach a place before the enemy—all these and other such qualifications were essential, he believed, to a skilful tactician, and he devoted himself to them all alike.
Cyropaedia. Xenophon. Walter Miller (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1914.
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