38
second century BCE, most Romans joined the army not simply to
be patriotic, but rather because they were poor and needed the salary
that soldiers earned. As the late, noted historian Ronald Syme put it,
“Military service was for livelihood,” not “a natural and normal part
of a citizen’s duty.” Also, “the soldiers, now recruited from the poorest
classes in Italy, were ceasing to feel alle-
giance to the state.”
21
Some generals saw these develop-
ments as opportunities to exploit both
the soldiers and the system. A military
commander who came from a fabulously
wealthy family could afford to provide
many, if not all, of his men with monetary
benefits, including pensions. Sometimes a
pension might consist of money, but more often it took the form of a
plot of land that the veteran could farm, rent, or sell.
As a result, in the early decades of the first century BCE, more
and more Roman soldiers, called legionaries, began to feel more loyal
to their generals than to the government. To exploit this reality, Syme
wrote, a “general had to be a politician, for his legionaries were a host
of clients, looking to their leader for spoils in war and estates in Italy
when their campaigns were over.” These were “the resources which
ambition required to win power in Rome and direct the policy of the
imperial Republic.”
22
Marius Versus Sulla
The first republican Roman general who in effect fashioned his own
personal army was Gaius Marius. Born in 157 BCE, he served as con-
sul seven times and became a national hero when in 102 BCE he
decisively defeated the Teutones, Germanic tribesmen who tried to
invade Italy. Marius was also popular with his troops. Realizing that
many of the soldiers had no pensions, he developed a policy of giving
his retiring troops plots of land in Sicily, southern Gaul (France), and
North Africa.This made these men fiercely loyal to him.
Following Marius’s example, in the years that followed, other gen-
erals produced their own loyal military followers. One was Cornelius
Sulla, who had earlier been one of Marius’s political associates. Over
“The soldiers, now
recruited from the
poorest classes in
Italy, were ceasing to
feel allegiance to the
state.”
21
—Historian Ronald Syme
