CHAPTER VI. THE ROMAN ARMY.
While Rome was trembling for the issue of the war with the Cimbri, she was forced to send an army elsewhere. [Slave revolts.] There was at this time another general stir among the slave population. There were risings at Nuceria, at Capua, in the silver mines of Attica, and at Thurii, and the last was headed by a Roman eques, named Minucius or Vettius. He wanted to buy a female slave; and, failing to raise the money which was her price, armed his own slaves, was joined by others, assumed the state and title of king, and fortified a camp, being at the head of 3,500 men. Lucullus, the praetor, marched against him with 4,400 men; but though superior in numbers, he preferred Jugurthine tactics, and bribed a Greek to betray Vettius, who anticipated a worse fate by suicide. [Second slave rebellion in Sicily.] But, as before, the fiercest outbreak was in Sicily. Marius had applied for men for his levies to Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, who replied that he had none to send, because the Roman publicani had carried off most of his subjects and sold them as slaves. Thereupon the Senate issued orders that no free member of an allied state should be kept as a slave in a Roman province. [Weakness of Licinius Nerva.] P. Licinius Nerva, governor of Sicily, in accordance with these orders, set free a number of Sicilian slaves; but, worked on by the indignation of the proprietors, he backed out of what he had begun to do, and, having raised the hopes of the slaves, caused an insurrection by disappointing them. He suppressed the first rebels by treachery. But he was a weak man, and delayed so long in attacking another body near Heraclea, that when he sent a lieutenant to attack them with 600 men they were strong enough to beat him. [Salvius elected king.] By this success they supplied themselves with arms, and then elected Salvius as their king, who found himself at the head of 20,000 infantry and 2,000 horse. With these troops he attacked Morgantia, and, on the governor coming to relieve it, turned on him and routed him; and by proclaiming that anyone who threw down his arms should be spared, he got a fresh supply for his men. [Athenion heads the slaves in the west.] Then the slaves of the west rose near Lilybaeum, headed by Athenion, a Cilician robber-captain before he was a slave, and a man of great courage and capacity, who pretended to be a magician and was elected king. [Salvius takes the name of Tryphon.] Salvius took the name of Tryphon, a usurper of the Syrian throne in 149. Athenion, deferring to his authority, became his general, and Triocala, supposed to be near the modern Calata Bellotta, was their head-quarters. In some respects this second slave revolt was a repetition of the first. As the Cilician Cleon submitted to the impostor Eunous, who called himself Antiochus, so now the Cilician Athenion submitted to the impostor Salvius, who called himself Tryphon. [Lucullus sent to Sicily, 103 B.C.] The outbreak had probably begun in 105, but it was not till 103 that Lucullus, who had put down Vettius, was sent to Sicily with 1,600 or 1,700 men. [Battle of Scirthaea.] Tryphon, distrusting Athenion, had put him in prison. But he released him now, and at Scirthaea a great battle was fought, in which 20,000 slaves were slain, and Athenion was left for dead. Lucullus, however, delayed to attack Triocala, and did nothing more, unless he destroyed his own military stores in order to injure his successor C. Servilius. To say that if he did so, such mean treason could only happen in a government where place depends on a popular vote, is a random criticism, for, though nominally open to all, the consulship was virtually closed, except to a few families, which retained now, as they had always done, the high offices in their own hands, and, when Marius forced this close circle, Metellus is said to have acted much as Lucullus did.
Servilius was incapable. Athenion, who at Tryphon's death became king, surprised his camp, and nearly captured Messana. [M'. Aquilius ends the war.] But, in 101, M'. Aquilius was sent out, and defeated Athenion and slew him with his own hand. A batch of 1,000 still remained under arms, but surrendered to Aquilius. He sent them to Rome to fight with wild beasts in the arena. They preferred to die by each other's swords there. Satyrus and one other were left last, and Satyrus after killing his comrade slew himself. The misery caused in Sicily by this long war, which ended in 100 B.C., may be estimated by the fact that, whereas Sicily usually supplied Rome with corn, it was now desolated by famine, and its towns had to be supplied with grain from Rome.
After this narration of the military events of the period to the beginning of the second century B.C., it is natural to consider the changes which Marius had effected in the army - the instrument of his late conquests. [Changes in the Roman army.] We cannot tell how many of the innovations now introduced were initiated by him, but they were introduced about this date. Before his time the Hastati, Principes, and Triarii, ranked according to length of service, had superseded the Servian classes. From his time this second classification also ceased. [Arms of the legionary.] Every legionary was armed alike with the heavy pilum - an iron-headed javelin 6 feet 9 inches long, the light pilum, a sword, and a coat of armour. Besides these he had to carry food and other burdens, which would vary according to the length and object of the march, such as stakes for encampment, tools, &c. [The 'Marian mules.'] Marius invented what were called 'Mariani muli' to ease the soldier - forked sticks, with a board at the end to bear the bundle, carried over the shoulders. Before his time the army had ceased to be recruited solely from Roman citizens. Not only had Italians been drafted into it, but foreign mercenaries were employed, such as Thracians, Africans, Ligurians, and Balearians. [The light troops auxiliaries.] After his time the Velites are not mentioned, and all the light-armed troop were auxiliaries. [The cohort the tactical unit.] Before his time the maniple had been the tactical unit. Now it was the cohort. [Composition of the legion.] A legion consisted of ten cohorts, each cohort containing three maniples, and each maniple two centuries. The legion's standard was the eagle, borne by the oldest centurion of the first cohort. Each cohort had its 'signum,' or ensign. [Standards.] Each maniple had its 'vexillum,' or standard. [Officers.] There were two centurions for each maniple, one commanding the first and the other the second century, and taking rank according to the cohort to which they belonged, which might be from the first to the tenth. The youngest centurion officered the second century of the third maniple of the tenth cohort. The oldest officered the first century of the first maniple of the first cohort, and was called 'primus-pilus,' and the 'primi ordines,' or first class of centurions, consisted of the six centurions of the first cohort. These corresponded to our non-commissioned officers, were taken from the lower classes of society, and were seldom made tribunes. [The tribunes.] The tribunes were six to each legion, were taken from the upper class, and after being attached to the general's suite, received the rank of tribune, if they were supposed to be qualified for it. The tribunes were originally appointed by the consuls. Afterwards they had been elected, partly by the people and partly by the consuls. Caesar superseded the tribunes by 'legati' of his own, to one of whom he would entrust a legion, and appointed some, but probably not all, of the tribunes, and Marius, it seems likely, did the same. [Numbers of the legion.] The normal number of a legion had been 4,200 men and 300 horse, but was often larger. [The pay.] The pay of a legionary was in the time of Polybius two obols a day for the private, four for a centurion, and six for a horse soldier, besides an allowance of corn. But deductions were made for clothing, arms, and food. Hence the law of Caius Gracchus (cf. p. 51); but from the first book of the Annals of Tacitus we find that such deductions long continued to be the soldier's grievance. Auxiliary troops received an allowance of corn, but no pay from Rome. [The engineers.] The engineers of the army were called Fabri, under a 'praefectus,' the 'Fabri Lignarii' having the woodwork, and the 'Fabri Ferrarii' the ironwork of the enginery under their special charge, [The staff.] and all were attached to the staff of the army, which consisted of the general and certain officers, such as the legati, or generals of division, and the quaestors, or managers of the commissariat. [The Cohors Praetoria.] One of the most significant changes that had sprung up of late years was one which was introduced by Scipio Aemilianus at Numantia - the institution of a body-guard, or Cohors Praetoria. It consisted of young men of rank, who went with the general to learn their profession, or as volunteers of troops specially enlisted for the post, who would often be veterans from his former armies. The term Evocati was applied to such veterans strictly, but also to any men specially enlisted for the purpose. [The equites.] It is probable that the equites no longer formed the cavalry of a legion, but only served in the general's body-guard, as tribunes and praefects, or on extraordinary commissions. The cavalry in Caesar's time appears to have consisted entirely of auxiliaries.
[Disinclination for service at Rome.] There had been for a long time among the wealthier classes a growing disinclination for service, and as the middle class was rapidly disappearing, there had been great difficulty in filling the ranks. The speeches of the Gracchi alluded to this, and it had been experienced in the wars with Viriathus, with Jugurtha, with Tryphon, and with the Cimbri. One device for avoiding it we have seen, by the orders issued to the captains of ships in Italian ports. Among Roman citizens, if not among the allies, some property qualification had been required in a soldier. [Sidenote: Marius enrols the Capite Censi.] Marius tapped a lower stratum, and allowed the Capite Censi to volunteer. To such men the prospect of plunder would be an object, and they would be far more at the bidding of individual generals than soldiers of the old stamp. Thus though obligation to service was not abolished, volunteering was allowed, and became the practice; and the army, with a new drill, and no longer consisting of Romans or even Italians, but of men of all nations, became as effective as of old, if not more so, and at the same time a body detached from the State. [The army ceases to be a citizen army.] The citizen was lost in the professional, and patriotism was superseded by the personal attachment of soldiers of fortune, who knew no will but that of their favourite commander or their own selfishness. Their general could reward them with money, and extort land for them from the State; and when Marius after Vercellae gave the franchise to two Italian cohorts, saying that he could not hear the laws in the din of arms, he was giving to what was becoming a standing army privileges which could not be conferred by a consul, but only by a king.
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