body
of subjects, on the other hand, as a profitable possession of the
community, which it partly worked out for the public benefit, partly
handed over to be worked out by the burgesses. Not only was free
scope allowed with criminal indulgence to the unscrupulous greed of
the Roman merchant in the provincial administration, but even the
commercial rivals who were disagreeable to him were cleared away by
the armies of the state, and the most glorious cities of neighbouring
lands were sacrificed, not to the barbarism of the lust of power, but
to the far more horrible barbarism of speculation. By the ruin of
the earlier military organization, which certainly imposed heavy
burdens on the burgesses, the state, which was solely dependent in
the last resort on its military superiority, undermined its own
support. The fleet was allowed to go to ruin; the system of land
warfare fell into the most incredible decay. The duty of guarding
the Asiatic and African frontiers was devolved on the subjects; and
what could not be so devolved, such as the defence of the frontier
in Italy, Macedonia, and Spain, was managed after the most wretched
fashion. The better classes began to disappear so much from the
army, that it was already difficult to raise the necessary number of
officers for the Spanish armies. The daily increasing aversion to
the Spanish war-service in particular, combined with the partiality
shown by the magistrates in the levy, rendered it necessary in 602
to abandon the old practice of leaving the selection of the requisite
number of soldiers from the men liable to serve to the free discretion
of the officers, and to substitute for it the drawing lots on the
part of all the men liable to service--certainly not to the advantage
of the military esprit de corps, or of the warlike efficiency
of the individual divisions. The authorities, instead of acting
with vigour and sternness, extended their pitiful flattery of the
people even to this field; whenever a consul in the discharge of
his duty instituted rigorous levies for the Spanish service, the
tribunes made use of their constitutional right to arrest him (603,
616); and it has been already observed, that Scipio's request that
he should be allowed a levy for the Numantine war was directly
rejected by the senate. Accordingly the Roman armies before
Carthage or Numantia already remind one of those Syrian armies, in
which the number of bakers, cooks, actors, and other