ABSTRACT
The army of the third and second century Bc was an amateur citizen militia with troops raised on an annual basis from the whole body of Roman citizen men. These troops served for the duration of the campaign (ideally a single year) before returning to their pre-enlistment professions. By the mid-first century Ad, this army had been transformed into a professional force with troops serving for 20 or 25 years. Historians have traditionally placed this fundamental change in the nature of Rome's armed forces at the end of the second century Bc and have associated this development with the great Republican general Marius. More recently, the extent to which Marius changed the army has been questioned and historians have pointed to continuities between the army of the mid-second century Bc and that of Caesar. It seems that far-reaching changes were instituted during the reign of Augustus, who developed the framework for the later army. He established terms and conditions of service, the legal framework which governed the soldiers while in service, the benefits the soldiers received on discharge, the standing units into which the soldiers were recruited, the fiscal system to pay for the troops, the political framework in which the army was to operate, and he developed (though it is unclear quite what is Augustan) the auxiliary system (see below).
