of the conqueror, and war has been both the amusement and the
business of kings. From the earliest ages, the most valued laurels have
been bestowed for success in war, and military fame has eclipsed all
other glories. The cry of the mourner has been unheeded in the blaze of
conquest; even the aspirations of the poet and the labors of the artist
have been as nought, except to celebrate the achievements of heroes.

It is interesting then to inquire how far the ancients advanced in the
arts of war, which include military weapons, movements, the structure of
camps, the discipline of armies, the construction of ships and of
military engines, and the concentration and management of forces under a
single man. What was that mighty machinery by which nations were
subdued, or rose to greatness on the ruin of States and Empires? The
conquests of Rameses, of David, of Nebuchadnezzar, of Cyrus, of
Alexander, of Hannibal, of Caesar, and other heroes are still the
subjects of contemplation among statesmen and schoolboys. The exploits
of heroes are the pith of history.

The art of war must have made great progress in the infancy of
civilization, when bodily energies were most highly valued, when men
were fierce, hardy, strong, and uncorrupted by luxury; when mere
physical forces gave law alike to the rich and the poor, to the learned
and the ignorant; and when the avenue to power led across the field
of battle.

We must go to Egypt for the earliest development of art and science in
all departments; and so far as the art of war consists in the
organization of physical forces for conquest or defence, under the
direction of a single man, it was in Egypt that this was first
accomplished, about seventeen hundred years before Christ, as
chronologists think, by Rameses the Great.

This monarch, according to Wilkinson, the greatest and most ambitious of
the Egyptian kings, to whom the Greeks gave the name of Sesostris,
showed great ability in collecting together large bodies of his
subjects, and controlling them by a rigid military discipline. He
accustomed them to heat and cold, hunger and thirst, fatigue, and
exposure to danger. With bodies thus rendered vigorous by labor and
discipline, they were fitted for distant expeditions. Rameses first
subdued the Arabians and Libyans, and annexed them to the Egyptian
monarchy. While he inured his subjects to fatigue and danger, he was
careful to win their affections by acts of munificence and cle