It still remained the legal duty of every Roman citizen to serve in the army. But since the days of Marius that duty had become obsolete, no one wanted the city riff-raff in the legions. Soldiering had become a profession, and there was never now any general levy of the kind involved in modern conscription. There must have been some compulsion upon the upper classes to serve as officers, for Suetonius tells of a Roman knight who was sold into slavery because he had chopped off his son’s thumbs in order to evade military service. There had been a “City Legion” fighting at Actium, but the army was now mainly recruited from Italy and the imperial provinces. Allied princes like Herod the Great had their own militias, but were also liable to be asked for contributions of trained auxiliaries to the imperial army. From the provinces troops were demanded in proportion to their warlike activity. The Dutch horsemen were famous, and the Batavians supplied large contributions of cavalry. The only people in the East who were enrolled in the legions were the Galatians, who were, of course, Gauls by ancestry. Augustus himself had a bodyguard of German slaves. As a rule only freemen were enrolled in the legions, but at the crisis of the great Pannonian and German revolts,

FIG. 1
STUCCO RELIEF VICTORY		FIG. 2
DECORATIVE ORNAMENT,
“ARA PACIS”


FIG. 3. STUCCO RELIEF: BACCHIC FESTIVAL
Plate XLI.

the duty was laid upon rich citizens of equipping and maintaining for six months a certain number of freedmen and slaves who were promised their liberty and citizenship at the end of six months. These would probably consist very largely of gladiators. This fact is evidence of serious military weakness in the Roman Empire. Although there were over four million full Roman citizens, there were only about 140,000 men in the ranks of the legions, and as there was a very long period of service, twenty-five years and more, it follows that only a small number of recruits would be wanted every year. It seems a dangerously small army to hold such vast frontiers.

Augustus was successful in reducing the enormous rate of pay which had prevailed during the civil wars. After the death of Augustus the troops mutinied and demanded an increase of their pay to a denarius (less than a franc) a day. Augustus established a special military chest to provide pensions for his veterans in place of the farms which they were still accustomed to expect.

How greatly—how dangerously—Augustus had reduced the size of the army may be seen from the fact that there were at least fifty legions during the civil wars, and only twenty-five at the death of Augustus. These troops were for the most part stationed along the northern and eastern frontiers.

In Spain3 legions
Lower Germany 4”
Upper Germany4”
Pannonia3”
Dalmatia2”
Mœsia2”
Syria3”
Egypt3”
Africa1”