The Romans had no standing army. Every Roman citizen between the complete ages of seventeen and forty-five, possessing property worth at least four thousand pounds of copper, was placed on the military roll. From this roll four legions, two for each consul, were enlisted every year, and in cases of necessity additional legions were raised. But at the close of the year’s campaign these legionary soldiers had a right to be relieved. Nor were there any fixed officers. Each legion had six tribunes and sixty centurions; but these were chosen, like the consuls and soldiers, fresh every year. The majority of the tribunes were elected at the comitia of the tribes, and the remainder were nominated by the consuls of the year, the only limitation to such choice being that those appointed should have served in the legions at least five campaigns. The centurions were then nominated by the tribunes, subject to the approval of the consuls.
Hence it appears that the Roman system, both in army and state, was strictly republican, that is, calculated to distribute public offices to as many citizens as possible, and to prevent power being absorbed by any single man or classes of men. There were no professed statesmen or officers, but there was a large number of men who had served for a time in each capacity. There was no standing army, but there was a good militia. There was no regularly trained soldiery, but every citizen had served in his time several campaigns, and every one was something of a soldier.
But no republic, however jealous, can rigidly carry out such a system; necessity will modify it in practice. During the Samnite Wars we find the same eminent men repeatedly elected to the consulship, notwithstanding a provision that no man should hold this high office except at intervals of ten years. Valerius Corvus was chosen consul at three-and-twenty; he held the office four times in fourteen years. So also Papirius Cursor, Fabius Maximus, and others held the same sovereign office repeatedly at short intervals. In the year 326 B.C. another plan was adopted to secure permanency. From this time it became common to continue a consul or prætor in his command for several successive years, with the title of proconsul or proprætor. The proconsul also was allowed to keep part of his old army, with his tribunes and centurions. The hope of booty and the desire to serve out his campaigns (for after a certain number of campaigns served the legionary was exempt, even though he was much under forty-five years) kept many soldiers in the field; and thus the nucleus of a regular army was formed by each commander. In the Punic Wars the ten years’ law was suspended altogether, and proconsuls were ordered to remain in office for years together.
No more vivid picture of the Roman army could be given than that of Polybius, who contrasts the Greek phalanx with the Roman arrangement as follows:
POLYBIUS ON GREEK AND ROMAN BATTLE-ORDERS
Pyrrhus employed not only the arms but the troops of Italy; and ranged in alternate order a company of those troops and a cohort disposed in the manner of the phalanx, in all his battles with the Romans. And yet, even with the advantage of this precaution, he was never able to obtain any clear or decisive victory against them. It was necessary to premise these observations for the sake of preventing any objection that might be made to the truth of what we shall hereafter say.
It is easy to demonstrate, by many reasons, that while the phalanx retains its proper form and full power of action, no force is able to stand against it in front or support the violence of its attack. When the ranks are closed in order to engage, each soldier, as he stands with his arms, occupies a space of three feet. The spears, in their most ancient form, contained seventeen cubits in length. But, for the sake of rendering them more commodious in action, they have since been reduced to fourteen. Of these, four cubits are contained between the part which the soldier grasps in his hands and the lower end of the spear behind, which serves as a counterpoise to the part that is extended before him; and the length of this last part from the body of the soldier, when the spear is pushed forwards with both hands against the enemy, is, by consequence, ten cubits. From hence it follows that when the phalanx is closed in its proper form, and every soldier pressed within the necessary distance with respect to the man that is before him and upon his side, the spears of the fifth rank are extended to the length of two cubits, and those of the second, third, and fourth to a still greater length, beyond the foremost rank. The manner in which the men are crowded together in this method is marked by Homer in the following lines:
“Shield stuck to shield, to helmet helmet joined,
And man to man; and at each nod that bowed
High waving on their heads the glittering cones,
Rattled the hair-crowned casques: so thick they stood.”