ABSTRACT

Frequent riots, party strife, and finally civil wars broke out, during which a few powerful men, to whose influential position most people had lent their support, were attempting to win absolute rule masquerading as champions of the senate or of the people. Marius's reform unopposed at the time, opened a Pandora's box. Roman were armies of pillagers. Only with the rise of Julius Caesar would Rome regain and restore at least the pretense of the old soldierly virtues. Initially the Italian allies had provided soldiers that equaled or doubled the Roman contribution. The new attitude of the socii was evident indirectly in a series of laws beginning with the older Gracchus to Marius. The civil wars were not the sole problem plaguing the Roman commonwealth in the first century B.C. A slave revolt blossomed from a few dozen to probably about 150,000 men. The profession of arms and the troops' proletarization tended to separate the soldiers from the civilian population.