f view
it sank under the ordinary miserable leaders into a disorganized
useless rabble, but under a right general it attained a military
perfection which the burgess-army could never reach. The class
of officers especially had deeply degenerated. The higher ranks,
senators and equites, grew more and more unused to arms.
While formerly there had been a zealous competition for the posts
of staff officers, now every man of equestrian rank, who chose to serve,
was sure of a military tribuneship, and several of these posts
had even to be filled with men of humbler rank; and any man
of quality at all who still served sought at least to finish
his term of service in Sicily or some other province where
he was sure not to face the enemy. Officers of ordinary bravery
and efficiency were stared at as prodigies; as to Pompeius especially,
his contemporaries practised a military idolatry which in every
respect compromised them. The staff, as a rule, gave the signal
for desertion and for mutiny; in spite of the culpable indulgence
of the commanders proposals for the cashiering of officers of rank
were daily occurrences. We still possess the picture--
drawn not without irony by Caesar's own hand--of the state of matters
at his own headquarters when orders were given to march
against Ariovistus, of the cursing and weeping, and preparing
of testaments, and presenting even of requests for furlough.
In the soldiery not a trace of the better classes could any longer
be discovered. Legally the general obligation to bear arms
still subsisted; but the levy, if resorted to alongside of enlisting,
took place in the most irregular manner; numerous persons
liable to serve were wholly passed over, while those once levied
were retained thirty years and longer beneath the eagles.
The Roman burgess-cavalry now merely vegetated as a sort of mounted
noble guard, whose perfumed cavaliers and exquisite high-bred horses
only played a part in the festivals of the capital; the so-called
burgess-infantry was a troop of mercenaries swept together
from the lowest ranks of the burgess-population; the subjects furnished
the cavalry and the light troops exclusively, and came to be
more and more extensively employed also in the infantry. The posts
of centurions in the legions, on which in the mode of warfare
of that time the efficiency of the divisions essentially depended,
and to which according to the national military constitution the soldier
served his