believe, that the constitution
of the legionary troops, to which they partly owed their valor and
discipline, was dissolved by Constantine; and that the bands of Roman
infantry, which still assumed the same names and the same honors,
consisted only of one thousand or fifteen hundred men. [132] The
conspiracy of so many separate detachments, each of which was awed
by the sense of its own weakness, could easily be checked; and the
successors of Constantine might indulge their love of ostentation, by
issuing their orders to one hundred and thirty-two legions, inscribed on
the muster-roll of their numerous armies. The remainder of their troops
was distributed into several hundred cohorts of infantry, and squadrons
of cavalry. Their arms, and titles, and ensigns, were calculated to
inspire terror, and to display the variety of nations who marched
under the Imperial standard. And not a vestige was left of that severe
simplicity, which, in the ages of freedom and victory, had distinguished
the line of battle of a Roman army from the confused host of an Asiatic
monarch. [133] A more particular enumeration, drawn from the Notitia,
might exercise the diligence of an antiquary; but the historian will
content himself with observing, that the number of permanent stations or
garrisons established on the frontiers of the empire, amounted to five
hundred and eighty-three; and that, under the successors of Constantine,
the complete force of the military establishment was computed at six
hundred and forty-five thousand soldiers. [134] An effort so prodigious
surpassed the wants of a more ancient, and the faculties of a later,
period.

[Footnote 131: Ammian. l. xix. c. 2. He observes, (c. 5,) that the
desperate sallies of two Gallic legions were like a handful of water
thrown on a great conflagration.]

[Footnote 132: Pancirolus ad Notitiam, p. 96. Memoires de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. xxv. p. 491.]

[Footnote 133: Romana acies unius prope formae erat et hominum et
armorum genere.--Regia acies varia magis multis gentibus dissimilitudine
armorum auxiliorumque erat. T. Liv. l. xxxvii. c. 39, 40. Flaminius,
even before the event, had compared the army of Antiochus to a supper in
which the flesh of one vile animal was diversified by the skill of the
cooks. See the Life of Flaminius in Plutarch.]

[Footnote 134: Agathias, l. v. p. 157, edit. Louvre.]

In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very
different moti