The soldiers enrolled themselves for twenty years; their time completed, they reëngaged 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 Cæsar. THE REVOLUTION =Necessity of the Revolution.=--The Roman people was no longer anything but an indigent and lazy multitude, the army only an aggregation of adventurers. Neither the assembly nor the legions obeyed the Senate, for the corrupt nobles had lost all moral authority, so that there was left but one real power--the army; there were no men of influence beside the generals, and the generals had no longer any desire to obey. The government by the Senate, now no longer practicable, gave place to the government of the general. =The Civil Wars.=--The revolution was inevitable, but it did not come at one stroke; it required more than a hundred years to accomplish it. The Senate resisted, but too weak itself to govern, it was strong enough to prevent domination by another power. The generals fought among themselves to see who should remain master. For a century the Romans and their subjects lived in the midst of riot and civil war.