way upward with the pike, were now not merely regularly
conferred according to favour, but were not unfrequently sold
to the highest bidder. In consequence of the bad financial management
of the government and the venality and fraud of the great majority
of the magistrates, the payment of the soldiers was extremely
defective and irregular.

The necessary consequence of this was, that in the ordinary
course of things the Roman armies pillaged the provincials,
mutinied against their officers, and ran off in presence of the enemy;
instances occurred where considerable armies, such as the Macedonian army
of Piso in 697,(33) were without any proper defeat utterly ruined,
simply by this misconduct. Capable leaders on the other hand,
such as Pompeius, Caesar, Gabinius, formed doubtless out of the existing
materials able and effective, and to some extent exemplary,
armies; but these armies belonged far more to their general
than to the commonwealth. The still more complete decay
of the Roman marine--which, moreover, had remained an object
of antipathy to the Romans and had never been fully nationalized--
scarcely requires to be mentioned. Here too, on all sides,
everything that could be ruined at all had been reduced to ruin
under the oligarchic government.

Its Reorganization by Caesar

The reorganization of the Roman military system by Caesar
was substantially limited to the tightening and strengthening
of the reins of discipline, which had been relaxed under the negligent
and incapable supervision previously subsisting. The Roman military
system seemed to him neither to need, nor to be capable of,
radical reform; he accepted the elements of the army, just as Hannibal
had accepted them. The enactment of his municipal ordinance that,
in order to the holding of a municipal magistracy or sitting
in the municipal council before the thirtieth year, three years' service
on horseback--that is, as officer--or six years' service on foot
should be required, proves indeed that he wished to attract
the better classes to the army; but it proves with equal clearness
that amidst the ever-increasing prevalence of an unwarlike spirit
in the nation he himself held it no longer possible to associate
the holding of an honorary office with the fulfilment of the time
of service unconditionally as hitherto. This very circumstance
serves to explain why Caesar made no attempt to re-establish
the Roman burgess-cavalry. The levy was bette