Chapter 11
One of the most noted aspects of Marius’ tenure as Rome’s leading commander in this period is a number of reforms he made, or is alleged to have made, to the Roman military, both in terms of manpower, equipment and tactics. As a number of these have become quite contentious in historical scholarship, it is necessary to study them separately from the analysis of the warfare to gain a better understanding of them. In fact, there can rarely be a topic in Roman history which has so much written about it based on so little actual evidence. Thus, as always, we must begin by going back to our surviving source to see what they actually say.
Recruitment
i) Reform of qualification criteria for military service (107 BC)
Of all of Marius’ reforms, none have provoked more debate than the apparent changes he made to the eligibility criteria for military service. To be eligible for military service in the Roman army, each Roman citizen (as opposed to Italians) was assessed once every five years at the census, to see how much he was worth (in terms of assets). Each citizen was then placed into one of five bands according to their wealth, along with a sixth category for those whose assets fell below the minimum standard. This was the system that had evolved from Rome’s earliest days, with the citizenry divided by wealth. This allowed the state to see the total wealth available to the city and was the basis of the political and military system, with each band having more military duties but rewarded by a greater political say. Thus the more money a citizen was worth the more he had to contribute to the city’s defence, but this was rewarded by having a more influential vote in the public assemblies. Those that fell below the minimum amount for a citizen were exempted from military service; the underlying ethic being that such men would not be able to afford their own military equipment and that a man who fights for his own land is far more valuable a soldier than a mercenary who fights for money.
Naturally enough, a system that was created before the sixth century BC (it is claimed that it dated back to the early kings) would have evolved a great deal before reaching the period under analysis.425 The problem we have today is that we have no clear idea of this process of evolution. All we have are the accounts of Cicero,426 Livy and Dionysius, who ascribe minimum values for each census class, but these accounts were written long after the system’s creation. Polybius, who was writing in the mid-second century BC, placed the minimum amount a citizen needed to be eligible for military service at 400 drachmas.427 This has been calculated to be the equivalent of 4,000 Roman asses (the unit of measurement). Citizens above this level were referred to by the Latin term ofassidui; those who fell below these criteria and were ineligible for military service were labelled as proletarii or capite censi. Polybius says that they were only fit for service in the navy, as oarsmen.
Naturally enough, from a purely military point of view this meant that there was a large group of men not eligible for military service. This was exacerbated by Rome’s increased military commitments. However, we must not make the mistake of assuming that the Romans never recruited the proletarii into their armies. In times of national emergency (tumultus), as we would expect, such social norms went out of the window. This can be seen in 281 BC when they fought Pyrrhus and in 217 BC against Hannibal.428
Nevertheless, this system remained throughout the second century BC, though many have argued that the actual monetary level of the lowest class was lowered to enable more men to be eligible for military service. It has to be stressed that this is speculation only and there is no actual evidence for this (see Appendix III). Thus, the important aspect for us is that when Marius was elected consul in 107 BC this distinction remained, and men below the set level were ineligible for military service. It was this eligibility criterion that Marius challenged:
He [Marius] himself in the meantime enrolled soldiers, not according to the classes in the manner of our forefathers, but allowing anyone to volunteer, for the most part the proletarii. Some say he did this through a lack of good men, others because of a desire to curry favour, since that class had given him honour and rank [by voting for him].429
Plutarch has it thus:
Contrary to law and custom he enlisted many a poor and insignificant man, although former commanders had not accepted such persons, but bestowed arms, just as they would any other honour, only on those whose property assessment made them worthy to receive these.430
Florus tells us:
Finally, Marius with considerably increased forces, for acting as one would expect a low man to act, had forced the lowest class of citizens to enlist.431
From Valerius Maximus we have:
Laudable also is the modesty of the people who by briskly offering themselves for the toils and dangers of military service saw to it that commanders did not have to ask capite censi to take the military oath, whose excessive poverty made them suspect and on that account they did not trust them with public arms. But this custom, fortified though it was by long observance, was broken by C. Marius when he enlisted capite censi into the army.432
Julius Exsuperantius has this:
When he conscripted new soldiers, he was the first general to take into war the capite censi, who were useless and untrustworthy citizens. But the citizens who had no possessions were recorded in the census by their head, which was all they owned, and in times of war they stayed within the city walls, because they could easily turn into traitors, as poverty often leads to evil. Marius took these men, who should not have been entrusted with public business, to fight in the war.433
Gellius quotes Sallust434 but also throws in some doubt as to the date of this action:
Caius Marius is said to have been the first, according to some in the war with the Cimbri, in a most critical period for our country, or more probably, as Sallust says, in the Jugurthine War, to have enrolled soldiers from the capite censi, since such an act was unheard of before that time.435
Thus we can see that we actually have little detail to go on, with most merely quoting what was commonly accepted in the historical tradition of this period. As we can see, all of the sources overlook the fact that commanders prior to Marius had recruited thecapite censi in times of emergency, and there is absolutely nothing to say that Marius abolished the old system, merely that on this one occasion he ignored it. Furthermore, as we have already seen in this work, Marius hardly stands out as the first man to tackle the issue of recruitment. In the 140s, Marius’ former commander and, as we have seen, sometime role model, P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, recruited an army of volunteers to fight at Numantia. Ti. Sempronius Gracchus fought to increase recruitment, and his brother formalized the procedure whereby the state paid for the troops’ equipment (Chapter 1). Furthermore, the consuls of 109 BC tried to increase the available manpower (Chapter 6). This move by Marius can thus be seen as a temporary solution to a temporary problem, regardless of any longer-term trends (see Appendix III) caused by the heavy losses in Gaul, Macedon and North Africa. A further interesting point is made by Sallust when he states that: ‘Marius set sail for Africa with a considerably larger force than had been authorized’. But authorized by whom? The assembly had given him the command in Numidia, and it is tempting to see the Senate attempting retaliation against this attack on their prerogative by limiting the army he could take to Africa and thus limit his effectiveness.
From a military point of view, this greatly-increased force provided Marius with enough troops to occupy the towns and fortifications of Numidia and still pursue Jugurtha. If Marius was planning a surge then a far greater army was needed than the one currently in Africa. Furthermore, Marius was able to take an army composed of volunteers rather than those who had been drafted, which always makes for a more effective fighting force. Such a campaign offered the riches of Numidia as loot, though there is no evidence to suggest that he offered land as well, as an inducement. Evans, in his excellent article on the evasion of military service in Rome, points out that one of Marius’ first acts when in Numidia was to march into a rich Numidian region and allow his men some plunder, thereby giving them an immediate payback.436
ii) Military consequences
Thus we come to the issue of long-term and short-term effects of this reform. It is unlikely that Marius was motivated by a desire to overturn the traditional method of recruitment, but that in the short term, with manpower such an issue, the constitutional niceties needed to be dispensed with. In the short term, this reform clearly worked, allowing Rome to tap into greater reserves of manpower than previously they had been able to utilize. An interesting question is whether he repeated this move for the campaigns against the northern tribesmen, as the two sources which mention this appear to be confused between the two wars. One obvious source of this confusion is that Marius did indeed repeat this tactic from 104 onwards, which given the circumstances is understandable. If Rome was suffering from manpower shortages before 105, then the loss of 60,000 soldiers or more at Arausio only made the issue worse. In fact, when you consider these losses, it is hard to argue against Marius repeating this recruitment tactic after 104 BC.
The problem that Marius did raise, was that an army composed primarily of the capite censi (though we have no figures for their percentages) was just as competent in the field as those recruited from the traditional Roman classes; in fact many may argue that it was more so. Although this went against tradition, it was only supposed to be an emergency measure. Yet, this emergency measure seemed to hold many advantages over the traditional methods of recruiting and went a long way to solving the manpower issue that had been plaguing Rome, or at least had seemed to be plaguing Rome. The problem with a good idea such as this was that it would have been difficult to turn the clock back and return to the traditional method, especially if another crisis occurred, as they had the habit of doing. Thus, whilst Marius seems not to have deliberately aimed to overturn the system of recruitment on a permanent basis, he may have unwittingly found that he did so by example.
An issue consistently raised about this ‘reform’ is that it made soldiers more loyal to their commander than the state, and thus when the two came into conflict they chose their commander. This argument is flawed on a number of levels, beginning with the premise that landless soldiers had a greater desire for plunder than any previous ‘landed’ Roman soldiers. Whilst a conscripted Roman soldier had little choice in fighting for his country, unless he avoided being called up altogether, the greatest benefit was the booty that a campaign brought. The central basis of a soldier’s loyalty to his commander always remained his competency, based on a soldier’s calculation of survival and prosperity. On the battlefield, soldiers fought primarily for survival and the chance of booty rather than loyalty to one’s country.
Another argument often used is that Marius’ reform meant that Rome changed from having a citizen army raised whenever it was necessary, to having a professional standing army. A consequence of this being that it led to there being a greater bond created between commander and men as they served more time together. If we deal with consequences first, such a view overlooks the actual situation, as Roman armies had been fighting long campaigns for more than a century. Rosenstein’s recent work makes a case for it being the third century BC when Rome began fighting longer and more arduous campaigns rather than the second century.437 The Roman legionaries were hardly amateur in these days, but had been hardened by continuous fighting on multiple campaigns and had been doing so generation after generation.
Furthermore, it is clear that Rome had no real standing army as such until the Principate. Both Civil Wars produced long-standing armies yet this represented merely a lengthy campaign. Commanders such as Sulla, Pompey and Caesar all disbanded their legions once they had finished campaigning. A standing army only really came about with permanent legions under the Emperor Augustus. Thus it is difficult to find any evidence in the period immediately after Marius.
It is clear that for many of the landless poor a career in the army was an attractive proposition, but only so far as it provided some reward, which meant that they could enjoy a better life after campaign, with booty, or latterly with land. In many ways this had been the basis of the amateur citizen soldier. Although he had little choice in fighting overseas, he did so primarily hoping that there would be some tangible reward from it. Thus both types of men had the same motivations once they were actually serving, the only difference is whether they volunteered or were drafted.
iii) Political consequences
Two other issues become entangled in this question, based on the veterans of these campaigns, in both their colonial settlement and their political use. Following the war in Africa, Marius did organize colonies in Africa for his veterans and again after the Northern Wars. From a strategic point of view this made perfect sense, merely exporting the policy the Romans had used for centuries in securing Italy to their control, across the Mediterranean. However, most previous colonial settlements had been organized by the Senate in conjunction with the tribunes and the assemblies. C. Gracchus’ clash with the Senate and his proposed colonies had set the tone for a more confrontational policy. Thus we have two models to choose from. As we will see when examining Marius’ sixth consulship (Appendix I), his African colonies seem to have passed without incident whilst the colonial programme of 100, led by the tribune Saturninus, followed the more confrontational route. The key point here is that the foundation of colonies for veterans was a sound policy for both strategic and social reasons (relieving tension amongst the landless citizens) and did not intrinsically lead to clashes between Senate and general, only in cases where there was existing tension or when a third party (such as a particular tribune) was involved.
Furthermore, it is true that Marius utilized his veterans in Roman politics, but then it would be difficult to say that this was any different from usual Roman custom and practice. Any leading Roman statesmen utilized his clients in Rome for his own political ends and if he had been a general then a number would be veterans of his. What we have to separate is this usual non-violent practice from the events that took place in Rome in 133, 121 and 100, when normal Roman political practice was transformed into bloodshed. Whilst the Gracchan bloodshed was managed without the use of veterans, they certainly made it easier and if Roman politics was becoming bloodier, it was certainly safer to use veterans in Rome.
Attested Military Reforms (104–102 BC)
During the three years that Marius had command of his army in Gaul, awaiting the return of the northern tribes, it is clear that he undertook an intensive programme of training and reform. This crucial period apparently allowed him to mould his army into one capable of reversing a decade of losses and defeat to the vastly-numerically-superior tribal armies. Regrettably for us, this is one of the least-known periods in our surviving sources, who are all too eager to move onto accounts of the battles that followed. Thus, despite all that is said about the Marian reforms of the Roman army we actually possess very little real evidence for these reforms, around half a dozen passages at most.
Furthermore, this situation is further complicated by the poor state of our knowledge concerning the Roman army prior to this period, as so well detailed by Rawson.438 Added to this is the question of permanency. Each army was moulded by its commander and then disbanded upon the completion of a campaign. Thus there is no certainly that an innovation introduced by Marius would automatically be copied by the commanders and armies that followed. Given that so much is made of these reforms, we need to go back to the evidence and see what we actually know.
i) Mobility
In terms of mobility, Marius is credited with the introduction of the practice whereby each legionary carried his own baggage. Frontinus’ Stratagems tells us:
For the purpose of limiting the number of pack animals, by which the march of the army was especially hampered, Caius Marius had his soldiers fasten their utensils and food up in bundles and hang these on forked poles, to make the burden easy and to facilitate rest, whence the expression Marius’s mules.439
From Plutarch:
he [Marius] laboured to perfect his army as it went along, practicing the men in all kinds of running and in long marches and compelling them to carry their own baggage and to prepare their own food. Hence, in later times, men who joined upon them contentedly and without a murmur were called Marian mules.440
Thus each legionary carried his own tools and utensils. We are given no details as to what they comprised, but in later times legionary had to carry his bed roll and cloak, cooking pot and three days worth of supplies as well as a number of tools, all supported on a T-shaped pole carried on their backs.
Carrying the bulk of their own supplies greatly increased the army’s mobility as a whole (even if it did weigh the individual soldiers down), and reduced the size of the baggage trains. This would have allowed them to move quicker, and thus be more responsive. This would especially have been useful against an army the size of the northern tribes, who, as well as their vast numbers, also had their families with them. It must be pointed out that this did not eliminate the need for baggage trains altogether from the Roman army, and as late as 36 BC, Antony’s Parthian campaign was undermined by the loss of his baggage train.441 In the short term, however, it made the Roman army far more adept at responding to any moves made by the tribes.
ii) Weaponry
Plutarch reports that Marius introduced a new type of javelin (pilum) to the legion:
Marius introduced an innovation in the structure of the javelin. Up to this time its seems that part of the shaft which was let into the iron head was fastened there by two iron nails; but now, leaving one of these as it was, Marius removed the other and put in its place a wooden pin that could easily be broken. His design was that the javelin after striking the enemy’s shield should not stand straight out, but that the wooden peg should break, thus allowing the shaft to bend in the iron head and trail along the ground, being held fast by the twist at the point of the weapon.442
The point behind this was that it rendered the pilum buckled and useless and thus was not able to be used by the enemy. Archaeology, however, has shown that both types of pilum (modified and not) were still in use in the late Republic. Here we again encounter the issue of whether a Marian reform was introduced as standard after these wars.
iii) Standards
Although the legionary eagle is considered to be the archetypal Roman standard, it was not always the case. Pliny reports the following:
The eagle was assigned to the Roman legions as their special badge by Caius Marius in his second consulship (104 BC). Even previously it had been their first badge, with four others; wolves, minotaurs, horses and boars going in front of the respective ranks; but took a few years before the custom came into action, the rest being left behind in camps.443
Thus it seems that Marius made the legionary eagle the sole standard, instead of being just one amongst many.
Possible Military Reforms – The Introduction of the Cohort
Given the noted role Marius is supposed to have played in reforming the Roman military, it is perhaps surprising that we have evidence only for the three reforms attested above. Thus Marius gave his legionaries more mobility, with less reliance on a baggage train, armed them with a modified type of pilum, and made the legionary eagle the sole Roman standard. Yet given the paucity of our evidence, why has so much been made of the so-called Marian military reforms? In short, this is a recent construct, created by modern historians. The argument goes that these few fragments form part of an overarching process of military reform that Marius undertook in this period. Central to this problem is the replacement of the maniple by the cohort as the basic tactical unit in battle. Bell sums up the problem that modern historians face with this issue most succinctly:
At some point between the time of Polybius and that of Julius Caesar, a major tactical reform of the Roman army took place, which is not explicitly described by any ancient authority. The major component of this reform was the replacement of the legion of thirty maniples by the legion of ten cohorts. In addition, the velites or Roman light troops distributed among the maniples were abolished.444
Thus the problem is one of modern making, in that Polybius’ account of the Roman military centres primarily on the use of the maniple, whereby a hundred years later in the accounts of Caesar we have the cohort. Put simply, many historians, unable to accept that there was a major military reform which is no longer documented, chose Marius as being the most logical source of this reform, given that he is recorded as having introduced some measure of military reform. Parker, in his work on the Roman legions even goes into the details of why Marius would have introduced the measures, being that the maniple was a smaller tactical unit and fought with more gaps between them, thus making them unsuited to meet the challenge of a massed tribal army.445 This ignores the fact that such an army seemed to present no problems to the Romans in their victories in southern Gaul in the 120s BC (see Chapter 1).
Aside from the inherent problems of ascribing such a sweeping change in the Roman military system to a particular time period without a single shred of actual evidence, it is clear that Polybius’ account is far from consistent in his use of the terms maniple and cohort (when translated from the Greek), and that whilst his main account of the Roman army is based on the maniple, cohorts crop up in a number of places in his narrative, from as early as 206 BC onwards.446 Further uncertainty is added by both Livy and Sallust. In his histories, Livy consistently uses the term cohort from the Second Punic Wars onwards. This is naturally complicated by his works not being contemporaneous. Sallust in his account of the Battle of Muthul, where Metellus fought Jugurtha, uses the term maniple.447 Thus we have total confusion in our few sources about what the major Roman tactical unit was.
We have to raise the possibility that this ‘confusion’ was a reflection of the true situation. Even if the sources are completely accurate in their use of the correct terms for the correct period (which is a large debate in itself) there is nothing to say that the Romans rigidly used the same formation on each occasion and that at some fixed point they altered one for the other. This is the conclusion that Bell comes to, detailing the various occasions when a Roman commander would use one rather than the other. Again we must remember that during this period of Roman history, the Republic had no standing armies. Instead, they were raised as necessary for each campaign by each commander and trained and fought in the manner that their commander was most comfortable with.
Thus we have to conclude that there is no evidence whatsoever that Marius was responsible for reorganizing the Roman legion based on the cohort as opposed to the maniple. In fact, the existing evidence suggests that this change had already taken place and that it was not a straight replacement of one with the other, once again being more a case of evolution rather than revolution.
Summary – A New Roman Army?
Thus we come down to the question of whether there was a ‘Marian’ programme of military reforms based on one man’s desire to reshape the Roman military system, or merely a series of ad-hoc innovations with no greater aim than to mould an army capable of defeating the northern tribes. Ultimately, it is up to every reader to decide for themselves, based on the evidence they have analysed.
However, there are several aspects that need to be highlighted in this process. Firstly, there is a fundamental understanding needed of the nature of the Roman Republican army. Each army was raised as was needed for each campaign; Rome had no standing armies either before or immediately after Marius. In fact, so many of the domestic disputes of the first century BC revolved around the need for commanders to dismiss their armies. As such it makes it difficult for one commander’s innovations to automatically be copied by the commanders that followed, even if they served under him as junior officers, such as L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Sertorius. Certainly, word of mouth would have passed them on, but there was no necessity for a new commander to follow what had been done before, if he did not think it was necessary or helpful to him.
Secondly, what were Marius’ aims? A wholesale reform of the Roman military system or the need for a well-manned and well-trained army to fight the tribes? Thirdly, even with his multiple consulships, did Marius have the authority to abandon the class-based recruitment system that underpinned Roman society? Lastly, do we believe that the evidence for wider-scale reforms of the Roman military once existed and is now lost to us? No source even mentions that there was a deliberate and consciousness reform of the maniple to the cohort. Or is this a modern invention?
Ultimately, unless our sources for this period drastically improve, we can never know, but in the author’s opinion, the balance of evidence favours Marius making small-scale innovations to create the best force possible, one capable of defeating the tribal armies. Far more important than any individual innovations is the fact that the lull in fighting and his continuous command gave him two whole years to train his army for the coming battles. Veterans and raw recruits, whatever their class, were drilled and disciplined in the art of fighting a tribal enemy. Marius trained them to march and fight quickly, matching the speed of the tribal armies, and thus fight them on an equal footing. Therefore, the period 104–103 BC was probably one of the most crucial ones for Marius and Rome. The Cimbric invasion of Spain gave Marius the time he needed to forge his army as well as perfect his tactics and choose his ground. When the tribal forces did attack Italy, they found a Roman army that had been specifically prepared and trained to fight them, the one factor that had been missing from Rome’s effort in 113, 109 and 105. It was this careful preparation and meticulous planning that allowed the Roman military dominance to finally tell. Once again, we are left with the question of whether this represents military genius or a man who was clearly the most competent Roman commander of his day.