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 the imperium 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 the needs of the small city-state. The army was simply the citizen body, leaving its routine work for a few days and campaigning in the near neighborhood under the command of the ordinary magistrates of the city. Such a system could not long continue in the face of the rapidly changing conditions. The very success of Rome in conquering her immediate enemies soon led to alterations in her methods of warfare. Once master of the immediate vicinity, her armies were compelled to march ever farther and farther afield and the burden which was imposed upon the soldier became greater with each added mile. Nor was it only the soldier who felt the increasing burden; the longer the march to and from the fighting, the longer the magistrate was obliged to be absent from his post in the city. Thus the success of Roman arms, coupled as it was with the steady growth in the size of the city and the extent of territory subject to its authority, imposed an ever increasing burden of civic business on the officials of the state; and while the armies were forced to make longer and more distant campaigns with each advance of the eagles, the inconvenience caused by the absence from Rome of the magistrates would be felt with a steadily increasing force. Another factor should also be noted in this connection: as the boundaries of the state expanded, the length of the frontier to be guarded increased in due proportion. In the beginning of the republic Rome probably did not often find herself engaged in more than one war at a time. When all central Italy had come under Roman control the occurrence of several simultaneous wars must have become more and more common, and this fact imposed another and heavy burden upon the political machinery of the state.

The increasing demands of the army were, no doubt, very gradually felt, and for a considerable time the primitive system of government and command could bear the added strain. Moreover, in those early days the republican machine possessed considerable elasticity, and it was no very difficult matter to adjust it to meet the new needs whenever they had made themselves sufficiently felt. Such readjustments are found from a very early period, although, in the accounts we have of them, they are connected rather with the early political and social struggle between the patricians and plebeians than with the increasing demands of the growing state. Still it may well be suspected that these had their part in the early changes that were made. When the republic was first established its constitution provided for but two magistrates with the imperium, namely the two consuls. But in the course of the struggle between the orders, the dominant patricians had suspended the appointment of the consuls and had replaced them by a board of six consular tribunes. The motives for this change were, doubtless, chiefly to be found in the political exigencies of the struggle with the plebeians who were demanding a full equality with the privileged class. Yet, whatever the motive, it served to increase the staff of officials available to meet the needs of the state and of the army, and this fact may have been one reason for the rather protracted use of this somewhat clumsy political evasion.

In the course of time the pressure on the dominant patricians became irresistible and they were finally forced to concede at once the restoration of the consulship and the admission of the plebeians to that office. It was, however, clear that the old arrangement no longer provided an adequate staff for the management of affairs. When, therefore, the consular tribunes were replaced by the two consuls a new office, the praetorship, was invented which increased the number of the magistrates with the imperium to three. No doubt the patricians were intending by this device to diminish to some extent the scope of the concession which they had been forced to make, but, it may be confidently surmised, it was the obvious and undeniable needs of the state that induced the plebeians to accept this lessening of the completeness of the victory which they had won by the passage of the Licinian laws.

With the internal conflict settled, and as the event proved permanently settled, Rome found herself equipped with three magistrates with the imperium. It is probable that one reason for the new office of praetor was the frequent absence of both consuls from the city at the head of the legions. The new system was one which, as things stood, admitted of considerable expansion. There was no serious objection, at first, to a further increase in the number of the praetors and it was not long in taking place; by the outbreak of the First Punic War, the number had been raised to two. Thus Rome entered on her mighty struggle with Carthage with four magistrates capable of carrying on the business of government and commanding her armies. This staff of officers had proved sufficient for her needs in the conflicts which had resulted in making her the head of an Italian confederacy embracing the whole of the peninsula south of the Apennines. The conduct of the first great war outside of Italy did not call for any increase in the number of the magistrates, but its successful issue brought new responsibilities. With the close of the war Rome annexed the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. Annexation was soon found to imply government, and to meet the new requirements the Romans, as was shown in the preceding chapter, increased the number of the praetors from two to four. This proved sufficient for a time, but events soon compelled further changes.

The Second Punic War led directly to two important developments in the Roman governmental machinery. In the first place the acquisition of two new provinces in Spain forced a new increase in the size of the praetorian college, this time to six members, which number remained unaltered until the reorganization of the constitution by Sulla. In the second place the terrible struggle with Hannibal, which taxed to the utmost the stern pride and unyielding patriotism of the Romans, gave rise to a new and most significant institution. When the great invader had been turned from central Italy into the south and stood there at bay, Rome found herself compelled to resort to warfare of a kind and on a scale which she had never yet attempted. It was no longer a question of one or two armies for a short campaign. A number of armies operating continuously were now necessary to wear out and overcome the revolted peoples of southern Italy and the mighty Carthaginian who had induced them to rise against the Roman supremacy. Little by little Rome succeeded, but to do so called for more commanders than the state possessed ready to hand in its annual magistrates and this made necessary the expedient of the proconsulship. It is probable that the device was not a wholly new one, but the circumstances of the war against Hannibal led to a great development of it and made it a regular part of the machinery of the state. The Romans had no leisure in the midst of such a struggle to undertake elaborate constitutional adjustments, and the use of the proconsul met the immediate needs of the hour with the least change possible in the formal requirements of the law.

Originally a proconsul was simply a consul who remained in charge of...