Corruption of the Army.—The Roman army was composed of small proprietors who, when a war was finished, returned to the cultivation of their fields. In becoming soldiers they remained citizens and fought only for their country. Marins began to admit to the legions poor citizens who enrolled themselves for the purpose of making capital from their campaigns. Soon the whole army was full of adventurers who went to war, not to perform their service, but to enrich themselves from the vanquished. One was no longer a soldier from a sense of duty, but as a profession.

The soldiers enrolled themselves for twenty years; their time completed, they reëngaged themselves at higher pay and became veterans. These people knew neither the Senate nor the laws; their obedience was only to their general. To attach them to himself, the general distributed to them the money taken from the vanquished. During the war against Mithradates Sulla lodged his men with the rich inhabitants of Asia; they lived as they chose, they and their friends, receiving each sixteen drachmas a day. These first generals, Marius and Sulla, were still Roman magistrates. But soon rich individuals like Pompey and Crassus drew the soldiers to their pay. In 78 at the death of Sulla there were four armies, levied entirely and commanded by simple citizens. From that time there was no further question of the legions of Rome, there were left only the legions of Pompey or Cæsar.

THE REVOLUTION

Necessity of the Revolution.—The Roman people was no longer anything but an indigent and lazy multitude, the army only an aggregation of adventurers. Neither the assembly nor the legions obeyed the Senate, for the corrupt nobles had lost all moral authority, so that there was left but one real power—the army; there were no men of influence beside the generals, and the generals had no longer any desire to obey. The government by the Senate, now no longer practicable, gave place to the government of the general.

The Civil Wars.—The revolution was inevitable, but it did not come at one stroke; it required more than a hundred years to accomplish it. The Senate resisted, but too weak itself to govern, it was strong enough to prevent domination by another power. The generals fought among themselves to see who should remain master. For a century the Romans and their subjects lived in the midst of riot and civil war.

The Gracchi.—The first civil discord that blazed up in Rome was the contest of the Gracchi against the Senate. The two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, were of one of the noblest families of Rome, but both endeavored to take the government from the nobles who formed the Senate by making themselves tribunes of the plebs. There was at that time, either in Rome or in Italy, a crowd of citizens without means who desired a revolution; even among the rich the majority were of the class of the knights, who complained that they had no part in the government. Tiberius Gracchus had himself named tribune of the plebs and sought to gain control of the government. He proposed to the people an agrarian law. All the lands of the public domain occupied by individuals were to be resumed by the state (with the exception of 500 acres for each one); these lands taken by the state were to be distributed in small lots to poor citizens. The law was voted. It caused general confusion regarding property, for almost all of the lands of the empire constituted a part of the public domain, but they had been occupied for a long time and the possessors were accustomed to regard themselves as proprietors. Further, as the Romans had no registry of the lands, it was often very difficult to ascertain whether a domain were private or public property. To direct these operations, Tiberius had three commissioners named on whom the people conferred absolute authority; they were Tiberius, his brother, and his father-in-law, and it was uncertain whether Tiberius had acted in the interest of the people, or simply to have a pretext for having power placed in his hands. For a year he was master of Rome; but when he wished to be elected tribune of the plebs for the succeeding year, his enemies protested, as this was contrary to custom. A riot followed. Tiberius and his friends seized the Capitol; the partisans of the Senate and their slaves, armed with clubs and fragments of benches, pursued them and despatched them (133).

Ten years later Gaius, the younger of the Gracchi, elected tribune of the plebs (123), had the agrarian law voted anew, and established distributions[141] of corn to the poor citizens. Then, to destroy the power of the nobles, he secured a decree that the judges should be taken from among the knights. For two years Gaius dominated the government, but while he was absent from the city conducting a colony of Roman citizens to Carthage the people abandoned him. On his return he could not be reëlected. The consul armed the partisans of the Senate and marched against Gaius and his friends who had fled to the Aventine Hill. Gaius had himself killed by a slave; his followers were massacred or executed in prison; their houses were razed and their property confiscated.

Marius and Sulla.—The contests of the Gracchi and the Senate had been no more than riots in the streets of Rome, terminating in a combat between bands hastily armed. The strife that followed was a succession of real wars between regular armies, wars in Italy, wars in all the provinces. From this time the party chiefs were no other than the generals.

The first to use his army to secure obedience in Rome was Marius. He was born in Arpinum, a little town in the mountains, and was not of noble descent. He had attained reputation as an officer in the army, and had been elected tribune of the plebs, then prætor, with the help of the nobles. He turned against them and was elected consul and commissioned with the war against Jugurtha, king of Numidia, who had already fought several Roman armies. It was then that Marius enrolled poor citizens for whom military service became a profession. With his army Marius conquered Jugurtha and the barbarians, the Cimbri and Teutones, who had invaded the empire. He then returned to Rome where he had himself elected consul for the sixth time and now exercised absolute power. Two parties now took form in Rome who called themselves the party of the people (the party of Marius), and the party of the nobles (that of the Senate).

The partisans of Marius committed so many acts of violence that they ended by making him unpopular. Sulla, a noble, of the great family of the Cornelii, profited by this circumstance to dispute the power of Marius; Sulla was also a general. When the Italians rose against Rome to secure the right of citizenship and levied great armies which marched almost to the gates of the city, it was Sulla who saved Rome by fighting the Italians.