# 38. What ought to be done by a General so that his Army may have Confidence in him

Valerius corvinus, as we have said above, had gone with the army to fight the Samnites, enemies new to the Roman people; so, to give his troops assurance and some acquaintance with the foe, he caused them to make a few skirmishes, and, since this was not enough, he decided to address them before the battle, and to point out as forcefully as he could how little esteem they should have for such a foe, appealing in his speech alike to the valour of his soldiers and to his own. From the speech which Livy makes him deliver, one may learn how a general should act if his army is to have confidence in him. What he says is this: ‘Look at the man under whose leadership and auspices you are going to fight! Ask yourselves whether the person to whom you are about to listen is but a brilliant orator, valiant in words, but inexperienced in military matters, or whether he knows how to handle weapons, to advance before the colours, and to plunge right into the thick of the fight! I want you, my good men, to go by my actions, not my words, and to look to me not merely for orders, but for an example, for with this my right hand I have as a consul thrice won the highest praise.’ Anyone may learn from a speech such as this, if he ponder it well, how to act if he wants to occupy the rank of a general; and he who acts otherwise will find that his rank, whether it be by luck or by ambition that he has attained it, in due course will destroy, instead of making, his reputation; for it is not titles that make men illustrious, but men who make titles illustrious.

One ought again in what was said at the outset of this discourse to observe that if great generals have used extraordinary means to strengthen the courage of a veteran army when confronted with an enemy with which it is unfamiliar, much greater industry will have to be used when in command of a new army which has never been in sight of the enemy. For if an enemy with which an old army is unfamiliar fills it with terror, so much the more must this be the case when a new army faces any enemy at all. Actually, however, one finds that all these difficulties are usually overcome by good generals with consummate prudence, as they were overcome by Gracchus the Roman, and by Epaminondas the Theban, of whom we have spoken on other occasions, for with new armies they defeated veteran armies with plenty of experience.

The methods they adopted were to exercise the troops for several months and to accustom them to obey orders by means of sham fights, after which they had so much confidence in them that they took them to a real fight. No military man, therefore, should be diffident as to his ability to form a good army, when there is no lack of men; so that the prince who has an abundance of men, but lacks soldiers, should bewail not the cowardice of his men, but merely his own laziness and folly.