Section eight of the Grachy Marius and Sulla by A. H. Beasley. This librovox recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamelinagami, Chapter six the Roman Army. While Rome was trembling for the issue of the war with the Kimbri, she was forced to send an army elsewhere. There was at this time another general stir among the slave population. There were risings at Neucaria, at Capua, in the silver mines of Attica, and in Turie, and the last was headed by a
Roman equois named Minutius or Whetdius. He wanted to buy a female slave, and, failing to raise the money which was her price, armed his own slaves, was joined by others, assumed the state and title of king, and fortified a camp, being at the head of thirty five hundred men. Lucullus the pratur marched against him, worth four thousand, four hundred men, but though superior in numbers, he preferred Jugurthine tactics and bribed a Greek to betray Whttius, who anticipated Oer's fate
by suicide. But as before, the fiercest outbreak was in Sicily. Marius had applied for men for his levies to Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, who replied that he had none to send, because the Roman Publiicani had carried off most of his subjects and sold them as slaves. Thereupon, the Senate issued orders that no free member of an allied state should
be kept as a slave in a Roman province. Publius Licinius Nerva, governor of Sicily, in accordance with these orders, set free a number of sicily and slaves, But worked on by the indignation of the proprietors, he backed out of what he had begun to do, and, having raised the hopes of the slaves, caused an insurrection by disappointing them.
He suppressed the first rebels by treachery, but he was a weak man and delayed so long in attacking another body near Heraclea, that when he sent the lieutenant to attack them with six hundred men, they were strong enough to beat him. By this success, they supplied themselves with arms and then elected Salvius as their king, who found himself at the head of twenty thousand infantry and two
thousand horse. With these troops, he attacked Morgantia, and on the governor coming to relieve it, turned on him and routed him, and by proclaiming that anyone who threw down his arms should be spared, he got a fresh supply for his men. Then the slaves of the west rose near Liullis Baium, headed by Athenian, a Solici robber captain before he was a slave and a man of great courage and capacity, who pretended to be a magician and was elected king. Salvius took the name of Trifon, a
usurper of the Syrian throne. In one forty nine, Athenion, deferring to his authority, became his general, and Triocala, supposed to be near the modern Calata Belota, was their headquarters. In some respects, this second slave revolt was a repetition of the first. As the Solici cleons submitted to the impostor Eunus, who called himself Antiochus, so now the Solici Athenian submitted to the impostor Salvius, who called himself Trifon.
The outbreak had probably begun in one O five, but it was not until one O three that Lucullus, who put down Whetius, was sent to Sicily with sixteen hundred or seventeen hundred men. Trifon, distrusting Athenion, had put him in prison, but he released him now, and at Scirtaia a great battle was fought, in which twenty thousand slaves
were slain, and Athenian left for dead. Lucullus, however, delayed to attack Triocala, and did nothing more unless he destroyed his own military stores in order to injure his successor, Gaius Servilius, to say that if he did so, such mean treason could only happen in a government where a place depends on a popular vote is a random criticism, for though nominally open to all, the consulship was virtually closed except to a few families, which retained now as
they had always done, the high offices in their own hands. And when Marius forced this close circle, Metellus is said to have acted much as Lucullus did. Servilius was incapable. Athenian, who at Trifon's death became king, surprised his camp and nearly captured Messana, but in one o one Marcus Aquilius was sent out an defeated Athenian and slew him with his own hand, a batch of one thousand still remained under arms, but surrendered to Aquilius. He sent them to
Rome to fight with wild beasts in the arena. They preferred to die by each other's swords. There Sityrus and one other was left blast, and Styrus, after killing his comrade, slew himself. The misery caused in Sicily by this long war, which ended in one hundred BC, may be estimated by the fact that whereas Sicily usually supplied Rome with corn, it was now desolated by famine, and its towns had
to be supplied with grain from Rome. After this narration of the military events of the period to the beginning of the second century b C. It is natural to consider the changes which Marius had effected in the army the instrument of his late conquests. We cannot tell how many of thenations now introduced were initiated by him, but they were introduced about this date. Before his time. The Hastati, prinkipase, and triarii, ranked according to length of service, had superseded
the servian classes. From his time. This second classification also ceased. Every legionary was armed alike with the heavy pelum, an iron headed javelin six feet nine inches long, the light pelum, a sword, and a coat of armor. Besides these, he had to carry food and other burdens which would vary according to the lengthen object of the march, such as
stakes for encampment tools in et cetera. Marius invented what was called mariani muli to ease the soldier, forked sticks with a board at the end to bear the bundle carried over the shoulders. Before his time, the army had ceased to be recruited solely from Roman citizens. Not only had Italians been drafted into it, but foreign mercenaries were employed, such as Thracians, Africans, Ligurians, and Baalierians. After his time, the veltes are not mentioned, and all the light armed
troops were auxiliaries. Before his time, the manipole had been the tactical unit. Now it was the cohort. A legion consisted of ten cohorts, each cohort containing three manipoles, and each manipole two centuries. The legion's standard was the eagle, borne by the oldest centurion of the first cohort. Each cohort had its signum or ensign. Each manipole had its vexillium,
or standard. There were two centurions for each manipole, one commanding the first and the other the second century, and taking rank according to the cohort to which they belong, which might be from the first to the tenth. The youngest centurion officered the second century of the third maniple
of the tenth cohort. The oldest officered the first century of the first maniple of the first cohort, and was called primus pilas, and the premi ordinas, or first class of centurions, consisted of the six centurions of the first cohort. These corresponded to our non commissioned officers, were taken from the lower classes of society and were seldom made tribunes.
The tribunes were six to each legion, were taken from the upper class, and, after being attached to the general suite, received the rank of tribune if they were supposed to be qualified for it. The tribunes were originally appointed by the consuls. Afterwards they had been elected partly by the
people and partly by the consuls. Caesar superseded the tribunes by legati of his own to one of whom he would entrust a legion, and appointed some, but probably not all, of the tribunes and Marius, it seems likely did the same. The normal number of the legion had been forty two hundred men and three hundred horse, but was often larger.
The pay of a legionary was in the time of Polybius two opals a day for the private, four for the centurion, and six for a horse soldier, besides an allowance of corn, but deductions were made for clothing, arms, and food, hence the law of Caius Gracus. But from the first book of the Annals of Tascitus we find that such deductions long continued to be the soldier's grievance. Auxiliary troops received an allowance of corn but no pay
from Rome. The engineers of the army were called fabri under a prefectus, the filignari e having the woodwork, and the fabri ferrari e the iron work of the engineery under their special charge, and all were attached to the staff of the army, which consisted of the general and certain officers, such as the legati or generals of division,
and the christ doors or managers of the Commissariat. One of the most significant changes that had sprung up of late years was one which was introduced by Scipio Eimilianus at Numantia, the institution of a bodyguard or cohors prietoria. It consisted of young men of rank who went with the generals to learn their profession, or as volunteers of troops specially enlisted for the post, who would often be
veterans from his former armies. The term evocati was applied to such veterans strictly, but also to any men specially enlisted for the purpose. It is probable that the ecoquitase no longer formed the cavalry of a legion, but only served in the general's bodyguard, as tribunes and prefects, or on extraordinary commissions. The cavalry in Caesar's time appears to
have consisted entirely of auxiliaries. There had been, for a long time among the wealthier classes a growing disinclination for service, and as the middle class was rapidly disappearing, there had been great difficulty in filling the ranks. The speeches of the Gracchi alluded to this, and it had been experienced in the wars with Viriathus, with Jugurtha, with trifon, and with the kimbri one device for avoiding it. We have seen by the orders issued to the captains of ships
in Italian ports. Among Roman citizens, if not among the allies, some property qualification had been required in a soldier. Marius tapped a lower stratum and allowed the copytake Kensi to volunteer. To such men, the prospect of plunder would be an object, and they would be far more at the bidding of
individual generals than soldiers of the old stamp. Thus, though obligation to service was not abolished, volunteering was allowed and became the practice, and the army, with a new drill, and no longer consisting of Romans or even Italians, but of men of all nations, became as effective as of old,
if not more so. And at the same time a body detached from the state, the citizen was lost in the professional and patriotism was superseded by the personal attachment of the soldiers of fortune, who knew no will but that of their favorite commander or their own selfishness. Their general could reward them with money and extort land for them from the state. And when Marius after Vercelli gave the franchise to two Italian cohorts, saying that he could
not hear the laws in the din of Arms. He was giving to what was becoming a standing army privileges which could not be conferred by a consul, but only by a king, and of section eight