except in desperate
intestine struggles like the Social war or the Servile. Rome could not
lose for her recruiting service any ploughmen but those whom she had
really possessed; nor out of those whom really she possessed any that
were slaves; nor out of those whom (not being slaves) she _might_ have
used for soldiers could it be said that she was liable to any absolute
loss except as to those whom ordinarily she _did_ use as soldiers, and
preferred to use in circumstances of free choice.

These points premised, we go on to say that no craze current amongst
learned men has more deeply disturbed the truth of history than the
notion that 'Marsi' and 'Peligni,' or other big-boned Italian rustics,
ever by choice constituted the general or even the favourite recruiting
fund of the Roman republic. In thousands of books we have seen it
asserted or assumed that the Romans triumphed so extensively chiefly
because their armies were composed of Roman or kindred blood. This is
false. Not the material, but the military system, of the Romans was the
true key to their astonishing successes. In the time of Hannibal a Roman
consul relied chiefly, it is true, upon Italian recruits, because he
could seldom look for men of other blood. And it is possible enough that
the same man, Fabius or Marcellus, if he had been sent abroad as a
proconsul, might find his choice even then in what formerly had been his
necessity. In some respects it is probable that the Italian rustic of
true Italian blood was at that period the best raw material[22] easily
procured for the legionary soldier. But circumstances altered; as the
range of war expanded to the East it became far too costly to recruit in
Italy; nor, if it had been less costly, could Italy have supplied the
waste. Above all, with the advantages of the Roman military system, no
particular physical material was required for making good soldiers. For
these reasons it was that, after the Levant was permanently occupied by
the Romans, where any legion had been originally stationed _there_ it
continued to be stationed, and _there_ it was recruited, and, unless in
some rare emergency of a critical war arising at a distance, _there_ it
was so continually recruited, that in the lapse of a generation it
contained hardly any Roman or Italian blood in its composition, like the
Attic ship which had been repaired with cedar until it retained no
fragment of its original oak. Thus, the legion stationed at Antioch