Military
A military or armed force is a professional organization formally authorized by a sovereign state to use lethal or deadly force and weapons to support the interests of the state and some or all of its citizens. It typically consists of branches such as an Army, Navy, Air Force, and in certain countries the Marines and Coast Guard. The task of the military is usually defined as defence of the state, and its citizens, and the prosecution of war against another state. The military may also have additional sanctioned and non-sanctioned functions within a society, including, the promotion of a political agenda, protecting corporate economic interests, internal population control, construction, emergency services, social ceremonies, and guarding important areas. The military may also function as a discrete subculture within a larger civil society, through the development of separate infrastructures, which may include housing, schools, utilities, logistics, health and medical, law, food production, finance and banking.
Military
In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II, Chapter XVII
Military
Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, "It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be."
Francis Bacon, "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates," The Essays or Counsels Civil & Moral of Francis Bacon, p. 129 (1905). Bacon quoted the words of Thyrsis in Virgil's Eclogue VII.