ABSTRACT
Much Greek political thought was devoted to the place of warfare in the constitution, originally focusing on the obvious question of which type of constitution was best at war. The Romans never doubted that theirs was, and those who were drawn to the Greek sort of constitutional speculation found a ready-made explanation in Polybius: Rome had produced the perfect mixed constitution. The Sallustian doctrine of the metus hostilis became axiomatic among Romans. Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus claims that what he describes is the military organization of the Roman republic, based on sources going back to the time of Cato the Elder, who wrote the first Latin treatise on the art of war in the second century B.C. Vegetius notes that the Roman infantry wore heavy armor from the founding of Rome down to the reign of Gratian but had now abandoned it.
