CHAPTER II.THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MILITARY SYSTEM

IF THE ADMINISTRATIVE NEEDS OF a world empire proved embarrassing to the Roman government, the military demands which such an empire made inevitable presented a difficulty no less serious. The two problems were very closely bound together, since the Roman made no clear distinction between military and civil affairs and was accustomed to deal with both through the same agents. Nevertheless, although the two were thus united, it will make for clearness to consider them separately, bearing in mind that they presented themselves to the Roman as different phases of a single intricate and complex problem.

In early days Rome was essentially a city-state, and like the city-states of Greece, fought her battles with a citizen militia. The so-called Servian constitution reveals the army as practically identical with the whole body of Roman citizens. The muster of the people for war was, at the same time, the assembly of the people for political purposes. In these primitive times the whole matter of war was extremely simple. The citizens assembled at the call of a magistrate to decide upon all questions of peace or war. If the decision was in favor of war, the people who had voted it marched forth at once under the command of the magistrate who had presided over their deliberations in the assembly, or of his colleague. The battle over, the soldiers returned to their customary occupations, in the case of the majority to their farms. The campaigns on which they were engaged were neither carried on at any great distance nor did they last for any great length of time. Aggressive wars, at any rate, were usually so timed as to fall within the slack season of agriculture when the farmer could very well leave his land to the care of his wife and children for a week or two, and the whole campaign was generally finished before serious harm had been done by the neglect of the daily work. Nor was the absence of the magistrate from the city a matter of much consequence in these rude and simple days. If the courts of justice were closed for a week or two, or if the ordinary work of the government was suspended for a short time, no great amount of damage could result. In case of need the number of magistrates with theimperium was sufficient so that one could usually be left in Rome to act, if action was imperatively called for by the circumstances.

Thus, at first, the military and political machinery was entirely adequate to