on of offices.

Accustomed to exercise power, some of the senators believed themselves
to be above the law. When Scipio was accused of embezzlement, he
refused even to exonerate himself and said at the tribune, "Romans, it
was on this day that I conquered Hannibal and the Carthaginians.
Follow me to the Capitol to render thanks to the gods and to beseech
them always to provide generals like myself."

To support their pretensions at home, the majority of the nobles
required a large amount of money. Many used their power to get it for
themselves: some sent as governors plundered the subjects of Rome;
others compelled foreign or hostile kings to pay for the peace granted
them, or even for letting their army be beaten. It was in this way
that Jugurtha bribed a Roman general. Cited to Rome to answer for a
murder, he escaped trial by buying up a tribune who forbade him to
speak. It was related that in leaving Rome he had said, "O city for
sale, if thou only couldst find a purchaser!"

=Corruption of the Army.=--The Roman army was composed of small
proprietors who, when a war was finished, returned to the cultivation
of their fields. In becoming soldiers they remained citizens and
fought only for their country. Marius began to admit to the legions
poor citizens who enrolled themselves for the purpose of making
capital from their campaigns. Soon the whole army was full of
adventurers who went to war, not to perform their service, but to
enrich themselves from the vanquished. One was no longer a soldier
from a sense of duty, but as a profession.

The soldiers enrolled themselves for twenty years; their time
completed, they reengaged themselves at higher pay and became
veterans. These people knew neither the Senate nor the laws; their
obedience was only to their general. To attach them to himself, the
general distributed to them the money taken from the vanquished.
During the war against Mithradates Sulla lodged his men with the rich
inhabitants of Asia; they lived as they chose, they and their friends,
receiving each sixteen drachmas a day. These first generals, Marius
and Sulla, were still Roman magistrates. But soon rich individuals
like Pompey and Crassus drew the soldiers to their pay. In 78 at the
death of Sulla there were four armies, levied entirely and commanded
by simple citizens. From that time there was no further question of
the legions of Rome, there were left only the legions of Pompey or
Caesar.

THE REVO