The national historian of Rome has left us an episode of his great work,
a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed if
Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded
that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his
impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations of the
Roman writer were directed to the consideration of a very remote
possibility. To whatever age Alexander's life might have been prolonged,
the East would have furnished full occupation for his martial ambition,
as well as for those schemes of commercial grandeur and imperial
amalgamation of nations in which the truly great qualities of his mind
loved to display themselves. With his death the dismemberment of his
empire among his generals was certain, even as the dismemberment of
Napoleon's empire among his marshals would certainly have ensued if he
had been cut off in the zenith of his power. Rome, also, was far weaker
when the Athenians were in Sicily than she was a century afterward in
Alexander's time. There can be little doubt but that Rome would have
been blotted out from the independent powers of the West, had she been
attacked at the end of the fifth century B.C. by an Athenian army,
largely aided by Spanish mercenaries, and flushed with triumphs over
Sicily and Africa, instead of the collision between her and Greece
having been deferred until the latter had sunk into decrepitude, and the
Roman Mars had grown into full vigor.

The armament which the Athenians equipped against Syracuse was in every
way worthy of the state which formed such projects of universal empire,
and it has been truly termed "the noblest that ever yet had been sent
forth by a free and civilized commonwealth." The fleet consisted of one
hundred and thirty-four war-galleys, with a multitude of storeships. A
powerful force of the best heavy-armed infantry that Athens and her