est
parchment rolled round a staff of ivory with gilded ends. Its "cover"
is a wrapper of parchment richly dyed and bearing coloured bands of
leather to serve as fasteners. From the smoothed and dyed end stands
out a scarlet label, marked "Virgil Aeneid Book I." (or as the case
may be). When opened, the first page will reveal a painted portrait of
the poet, and the writing will be found to be in a beautifully clear
and even calligraphy. Beside the shelf on which the work is placed
there likely stands a lifelike bust of Virgil in marble in bronze.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ARMY: MILITARY SERVICE: PUBLIC CAREER

In the older days of Roman history the fighting forces had been a
"citizen army," called out for so long as it was needed, and levied
from full and true Roman citizens. In the imperial times with which we
are here dealing it had become a standing army. Soldiering was a
profession, for which the men volunteered, and, so far as Roman
citizens were concerned, it was now seldom, if ever, the case that
military service required to be made compulsory on their part. It is
true that a young man of the higher classes who proposed to follow a
public career, leading to higher and higher offices of state, must
have gone through some amount of military training, but no other Roman
was actually obliged to serve. The empire was so vast and the total of
the standing forces comparatively so small that it was always possible
to fill up the legions with those who had some motive or inclination
that way. Theoretically the state possessed a claim upon every
able-bodied man, but the population of the empire was probably a
hundred millions, and to collect a total of some 320,000 soldiers,
made up of Roman or romanized "citizens" and of provincial subjects in
about equal shares, was a sufficiently easy task, and the recruiters
could therefore afford to pick and choose. Above all we must clear our
minds of the notion that the Roman soldiers necessarily came from
Rome, or even from Italy. They were drawn from the empire at large,
and a legion posted in Spain, for example, might be recruited from a
special class of Spaniards.

Roughly speaking, the regular army, extending along the frontiers from
Chester to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to Algeria, was composed of
two main divisions, called respectively the "legions" and the
"auxiliaries." Other special or detached forces--such as the twelve
regiments of Imperial Guards and the six of t