The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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Decay of the Roman Military System
The Roman military system of this period was nearly in the same condition
as the Carthaginian at the time of Hannibal. The governing classes
furnished only the officers; the subjects, plebeians and provincials,
formed the army. The general was, financially and militarily,
almost independent of the central government, and, whether
in fortune or misfortune, substantially left to himself
and to the resources of his province. Civic and even national spirit
had vanished from the army, and the esprit de corps was alone
left as a bond of inward union. The army had ceased to be
an instrument of the commonwealth; in a political point of view
it had no will of its own, but it was doubtless able to adopt
that of the master who wielded it; in a military point of 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 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 better arranged,
the time of service was regulated and abridged; otherwise matters
remained on the footing that the infantry of the line were raised
chiefly from the lower orders of the Roman burgesses, the cavalry
and the light infantry from the subjects. That nothing was done
for the reorganization of the fleet, is surprising.
Foreign Mercenaries
Adjutants of the Legion
It was an innovation--hazardous beyond doubt even in the view
of its author--to which the untrustworthy character of the cavalry
furnished by the subjects compelled him,(34) that Caesar
for the first time deviated from the old Roman system of never fighting
with mercenaries, and incorporated in the cavalry hired foreigners,
especially Germans. Another innovation was the appointment of adjutants
of the legion (-legati legionis-). Hitherto the military tribunes,
nominated partly by the burgesses, partly by the governor concerned,
had led the legions in such a way that six of them were placed
over each legion, and the command alternated among these;
a single commandant of the legion was appointed by the general
only as a temporary and extraordinary measure. In subsequent times
on the other hand those colonels or adjutants of legions appear
as a permanent and organic institution, and as nominated no longer
by the governor whom they obey, but by the supreme command in Rome;
both changes seem referable to Caesar's arrangements connected
with the Gabinian law.(35) The reason for the introduction
of this important intervening step in the military hierarchy
must be sought partly in the necessity for a more energetic
centralization of the command, partly in the felt want of capable
superior officers, partly and chiefly in the design of providing
a counterpoise to the governor by associating with him one or more
colonels nominated by the Imperator.
The New Commandership-in-Chief
The most essential change in the military system consisted
in the institution of a permanent military head in the person
of the Imperator, who, superseding the previous unmilitary
and in every respect incapable governing corporation, united
in his hands the whole control of the army, and thus converted it
from a direction which for the most part was merely nominal
into a real and energetic supreme command. We are not properly informed
as to the position which this supreme command occupied towards
the special commands hitherto omnipotent in their respective spheres.
Probably the analogy of the relation subsisting between the praetor
and the consul or the consul and the dictator served generally
as a basis, so that, while the governor in his own right retained
the supreme military authority in his province, the Imperator
was entitled at any moment to take it away from him and assume it
for himself or his delegates, and, while the authority of the governor
was confined to the province, that of the Imperator, like the regal
and the earlier consular authority, extended over the whole empire.
Moreover it is extremely probable that now the nomination
of the officers, both the military tribunes and the centurions,
so far as it had hitherto belonged to the governor,(36) as well as
the nomination of the new adjutants of the legion, passed directly
into the hands of the Imperator; and in like manner even now
the arrangement of the levies, the bestowal of leave of absence,
and the more important criminal cases, may have been submitted
to the judgment of the commander-in-chief. With this limitation
of the powers of the governors and with the regulated control
of the Imperator, there was no great room to apprehend
in future either that the armies might be utterly disorganized
or that they might be converted into retainers personally devoted
to their respective officers.
Caesar's Military Plans
Defence of the Frontier
But, however decidedly and urgently the circumstances pointed
to military monarchy, and however distinctly Caesar took the supreme
command exclusively for himself, he was nevertheless not at all
inclined to establish his authority by means of, and on, the army.
No doubt he deemed a standing army necessary for his state,
but only because from its geographical position it required
a comprehensive regulation of the frontiers and permanent frontier
garrisons. Partly at earlier periods, partly during the recent
civil war, he had worked at the tranquillizing of Spain,
and had established strong positions for the defence of the frontier
in Africa along the great desert, and in the north-west of the empire
along the line of the Rhine. He occupied himself with similar plans
for the regions on the Euphrates and on the Danube. Above all
he designed an expedition against the Parthians, to avenge the day
of Carrhae; he had destined three years for this war, and was resolved
to settle accounts with these dangerous enemies once for all
and not less cautiously than thoroughly. In like manner
he had projected the scheme of attacking Burebistas king of the Getae,
who was greatly extending his power on both sides of the Danube,(37)
and of protecting Italy in the north-east by border-districts
similar to those which he had created for it in Gaul. On the other hand
there is no evidence at all that Caesar contemplated like Alexander
a career of victory extending indefinitely far; it is said indeed
that he had intended to march from Parthia to the Caspian
and from this to the Black Sea and then along its northern shores
to the Danube, to annex to the empire all Scythia and Germany as far as
the Northern Ocean--which according to the notions of that time was not
so very distant from the Mediterranean--and to return home through Gaul;
but no authority at all deserving of credit vouches for the existence
of these fabulous projects. In the case of a state which, like the Roman
state of Caesar, already included a mass of barbaric elements difficult
to be controlled, and had still for centuries to come more than enough
to do with their assimilation, such conquests, even granting their
military practicability, would have been nothing but blunders
far more brilliant and far worse than the Indian expedition
of Alexander. Judging both from Caesar's conduct in Britain
and Germany and from the conduct of those who became the heirs
of his political ideas, it is in a high degree probable that Caesar
with Scipio Aemilianus called on the gods not to increase the empire,
but to preserve it, and that his schemes of conquest restricted
themselves to a settlement of the frontier--measured, it is true,
by his own great scale--which should secure the line of the Euphrates,
and, instead of the fluctuating and militarily useless boundary
of the empire on the north-east, should establish and render defensible
the line of the Danube.
Attempts of Caesar to Avert Military Despotism
But, if it remains a mere probability that Caesar ought not
to be designated a world-conqueror in the same sense as Alexander
and Napoleon, it is quite certain that his design was not to rest
his new monarchy primarily on the support of the army nor generally
to place the military authority above the civil, but to incorporate
it with, and as far as possible subordinate it to, the civil
commonwealth. The invaluable pillars of a military state,
those old and far-famed Gallic legions, were honourably dissolved
just on account of the incompatibility of their esprit de corps
with a civil commonwealth, and their glorious names were only perpetuated
in newly-founded urban communities. The soldiers presented
by Caesar with allotments of land on their discharge were not,
like those of Sulla, settled together--as it were militarily--
in colonies of their own, but, especially when they settled in Italy,
were isolated as much as possible and scattered throughout the peninsula;
it was only in the case of the portions of the Campanian land
that remained for disposal, that an aggregation of the old soldiers
of Caesar could not be avoided. Caesar sought to solve
the difficult task of keeping the soldiers of a standing army
within the spheres of civil life, partly by retaining the former
arrangement which prescribed merely certain years of service,
and not a service strictly constant, that is, uninterrupted
by any discharge; partly by the already-mentioned shortening of the term
of service, which occasioned a speedier change in the personal
composition of the army; partly by the regular settlement
of the soldiers who had served out their time as agricultural colonists;
partly and principally by keeping the army aloof from Italy
and generally from the proper seats of the civil and political life
of the nation, and directing the soldier to the points,
where according to the opinion of the great king he was alone,
in his place--to the frontier stations, that he might ward off
the extraneous foe.
Absence of Corps of Guards
The true criterion also of the military state--the development of,
and the privileged position assigned to, the corps of guards--
is not to be met with in the case of Caesar. Although as respects
the army on active service the institution of a special bodyguard
for the general had been already long in existence,(38) in Caesar's
system this fell completely into the background; his praetorian
cohort seems to have essentially consisted merely of orderly
officers or non-military attendants, and never to have been
in the proper sense a select corps, consequently never an object
of jealousy to the troops of the line. While Caesar even as general
practically dropped the bodyguard, he still, less as king tolerated
a guard round his person. Although constantly beset by lurking
assassins and well aware of it, he yet rejected the proposal
of the senate to institute a select guard; dismissed,
as soon as things grew in some measure quiet, the Spanish escort
which he had made use of at first in the capital; and contented himself
with the retinue of lictors sanctioned by traditional usage
for the Roman supreme magistrates.
Impracticableness of Ideal
However much of the idea of his party and of his youth--
to found a Periclean government in Rome not by virtue of the sword,
but by virtue of the confidence of the nation--Caesar had been obliged
to abandon in the struggle with realities, he retained even now
the fundamental idea--of not founding a military monarchy--
with an energy to which history scarcely supplies a parallel.
Certainly this too was an impracticable ideal--it was the sole illusion,
in regard to which the earnest longing of that vigorous mind
was more powerful than its clear judgment. A government, such as Caesar
had in view, was not merely of necessity in its nature highly personal,
and so liable to perish with the death of its author just as
the kindred creations of Pericles and Cromwell with the death
of their founders; but, amidst the deeply disorganized state
of the nation, it was not at all credible that the eighth king of Rome
would succeed even for his lifetime in ruling, as his seven predecessors
had ruled, his fellow-burgesses merely by virtue of law and justice,
and as little probable that he would succeed in incorporating
the standing army--after it had during the last civil war
learned its power and unlearned its reverence--once more
as a subservient element in civil society. To any one who calmly
considered to what extent reverence for the law had disappeared
from the lowest as from the highest ranks of society, the former hope
must have seemed almost a dream; and, if with the Marian reform
of the military system the soldier generally had ceased
to be a citizen,(39) the Campanian mutiny and the battle-field
of Thapsus showed with painful clearness the nature of the support
which the army now lent to the law. Even the great democrat
could only with difficulty and imperfectly hold in check the powers
which he had unchained; thousands of swords still at his signal
flew from the scabbard, but they were no longer equally ready
upon that signal to return to the sheath. Fate is mightier than genius.
Caesar desired to become the restorer of the civil commonwealth,
and became the founder of the military monarchy which he abhorred;
he overthrew the regime of aristocrats and bankers in the state,
only to put a military regime in their place, and the commonwealth
continued as before to be tyrannized and worked for profit
by a privileged minority. And yet it is a privilege of the highest
natures thus creatively to err. The brilliant attempts of great men
to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim,
form the best treasure of the nations. It was owing to the work
of Caesar that the Roman military state did not become a police-state
till after the lapse of several centuries, and that the Roman Imperators,
however little they otherwise resembled the great founder
of their sovereignty, yet employed the soldier in the main
not against the citizen but against the public foe, and esteemed
both nation and army too highly to set the latter as constable
over the former.
Financial Administration
The regulation of financial matters occasioned comparatively
little difficulty in consequence of the solid foundations
which the immense magnitude of the empire and the exclusion
of the system of credit supplied. If the state had hitherto found itself
in constant financial embarrassment, the fault was far from chargeable
on the inadequacy of the state revenues; on the contrary these had
of late years immensely increased. To the earlier aggregate income,
which is estimated at 200,000,000 sesterces (2,000,000 pounds),
there were added 85,000,000 sesterces (850,000 pounds)
by the erection of the provinces of Bithynia-Pontus and Syria;
which increase, along with the other newly opened up or augmented
sources of income, especially from the constantly increasing produce
of the taxes on luxuries, far outweighed the loss of the Campanian rents.
Besides, immense sums had been brought from extraordinary sources
into the exchequer through Lucullus, Metellus, Pompeius, Cato,
and others. The cause of the financial embarrassments rather la
partly in the increase of the ordinary and extraordinary expenditure,
partly in the disorder of management. Under the former head,
the distribution of corn to the multitude of the capital claimed
almost exorbitant sums; through the extension given to it
by Cato in 691(40) the yearly expenditure for that purpose amounted
to 30,000,000 sesterces (300,000 pounds) and after the abolition
in 696 of the compensation hitherto paid, it swallowed up even
a fifth of the state revenues. The military budget also had risen,
since the garrisons of Cilicia, Syria, and Gaul had been added
to those of Spain, Macedonia, and the other provinces.
Among the extraordinary items of expenditure must be named
in the first place the great cost of fitting out fleets, on which,
for example, five years after the great razzia of 687, 34,000,000
sesterces (340,000 pounds) were expended at once. Add to this
the very considerable sums which were consumed in wars and warlike
preparations; such as 18,000,000 sesterces (180,000 pounds)
paid at once to Piso merely for the outfit of the Macedonian army,
24,000,000 sesterces (240,000 pounds) even annually to Pompeius
for the maintenance and pay of the Spanish army, and similar sums
to Caesar for the Gallic legions. But considerable as were
these demands made on the Roman exchequer, it would still have
beenable probably to meet them, had not its administration once
so exemplary been affected by the universal laxity and dishonesty
of this age; the payments of the treasury were often suspended
merely because of the neglect to call up its outstanding claims.
The magistrates placed over it, two of the quaestors--young men
annually changed--contented themselves at the best with inaction;
among the official staff of clerks and others, formerly so justly held
in high esteem for its integrity, the worst abuses now prevailed,
more especially since such posts had come to be bought and sold.
Financial Reforms of Caesar
Leasing of the Direct Taxes Abolished
As soon however as the threads of Roman state-finance were concentrated
no longer as hitherto in the senate, but in the cabinet of Caesar,
new life, stricter order, and more compact connection at once pervaded
all the wheels and springs of that great machine. the two institutions,
which originated with Gaius Gracchus and ate like a gangrene
into the Roman financial system--the leasing of the direct taxes,
and the distributions of grain--were partly abolished,
partly remodelled. Caesar wished not, like his predecessor,
to hold the nobility in check by the banker-aristocracy
and the populace of the capital, but to set them aside and to deliver
the commonwealth from all parasites whether of high or lower rank;
and therefore he went in these two important questions
not with Gaius Gracchus, but with the oligarch Sulla. The leasing system
was allowed to continue for the indirect taxes, in the case of which
it was very old and--under the maxim of Roman financial administration,
which was retained inviolable also by Caesar, that the levying
of the taxes should at any cost be kept simple and readily manageable--
absolutely could not be dispensed with. But the direct taxes
were thenceforth universally either treated, like the African
and Sardinian deliveries of corn and oil, as contributions
in kind to be directly supplied to the state, or converted,
like the revenues of Asia Minor, into fixed money payments,
in which case the collection of the several sums payable
was entrusted to the tax-districts themselves.
Reform of the Distribution of Corn
The corn-distributions in the capital had hitherto been looked on
as a profitable prerogative of the community which ruled and,
because it ruled, had to be fed by its subjects. This infamous
principle was set aside by Caesar; but it could not be overlooked
that a multitude of wholly destitute burgesses had been protected
solely by these largesses of food from starvation. In this aspect
Caesar retained them. While according to the Sempronian ordinance
renewed by Cato every Roman burgess settled in Rome had legally
a claim to bread-corn without payment, this list of recipients,
which had at last risen to the number of 320,000, was reduced
by the exclusion of all individuals having means or otherwise
provided for to 150,000, and this number was fixed once for all
as the maximum number of recipients of free corn; at the same time
an annual revision of the list was ordered, so that the places vacated
by removal or death might be again filled up with the most needful
among the applicants. By this conversion of the political privilege
into a provision for the poor, a principle remarkable in a moral
as well as in a historical point of view came for the first time
into living operation. Civil society but slowly and gradually
works its way to a perception of the interdependence of interests;
in earlier antiquity the state doubtless protected its members
from the public enemy and the murderer, but it was not bound to protect
the totally helpless fellow-citizen from the worse enemy, want,
by affording the needful means of subsistence. It was the Attic
civilization which first developed, in the Solonian and post-Solonian
legislation, the principle that it is the duty of the community
to provide for its invalids and indeed for its poor generally
and it was Caesar that first developed what in the restricted compass
of Attic life had remained a municipal matter into an organic
institution of state, and transformed an arrangement,
which was a burden and a disgrace for the commonwealth,
into the first of those institutions--in modern times as countless
as they are beneficial--where the infinite depth of human compassion
contends with the infinite depth of human misery.