egions with properly qualified persons bound to serve
proved in the ordinary course of things difficult; so that exertions,
such as were necessary after the battle of Arausio, would have been in
all probability really impracticable with the retention of the existing
rules as to the obligation of service. On the other hand even before
the time of Marius, especially in the cavalry and the light infantry,
extra-Italian subjects--the heavy mounted troopers of Thrace, the light
African cavalry, the excellent light infantry of the nimble Ligurians,
the slingers from the Baleares--were employed in ever-increasing numbers
even beyond their own provinces for the Roman armies; and at the same
time, while there was a want of qualified burgess-recruits, the non-
qualified poorer burgesses pressed forward unbidden to enter the army;
in fact, from the mass of the civic rabble without work or averse
to it, and from the considerable advantages which the Roman war-service
yielded, the enlistment of volunteers could not be difficult. It was
therefore simply a necessary consequence of the political and social
changes in the state, that its military arrangements should exhibit
a transition from the system of the burgess-levy to the system of
contingents and enlisting; that the cavalry and light troops should
be essentially formed out of the contingents of the subjects--in the
Cimbrian campaign, for instance, contingents were summoned from as far
as Bithynia; and that in the case of the infantry of the line, while
the former arrangement of obligation to service was not abolished,
every free-born burgess should at the same time be permitted voluntarily
to enter the army as was first done by Marius in 647.

To this was added the reducing the infantry of the line to a level,
which is likewise to be referred to Marius. The Roman method of
aristocratic classification had hitherto prevailed also within the
legion. Each of the four divisions of the -velites-, the -hastati-,
the -principes-, and the -triarii---or, as we may say, the vanguard,
the first, second, and third line--had hitherto possessed its special
qualification for service, as respected property or age, and in great
part also its distinctive equipment; each had its definite place once
for all assigned in the order of battle; each had its definite military
rank and its own standard. All these distinctions were now superseded.
Any one admitted as a legionary at all needed no further