The army itself had been demoralised by civil wars, and the chiefs no longer maintained discipline. “Flamininus, Aquilius, Paulus Æmilius,” says Dio Cassius, “commanded men well disciplined, who had learnt to execute the orders of their generals in silence. The law was their rule; with a royal soul, simple in life, bounding their expenses within reasonable limits, they held it more shameful to flatter the soldiery than to fear the enemy. From the time of Sylla, on the contrary, the generals, raised to the first rank by violence and not by merit, forced to turn their arms against each other rather than against the enemy, were reduced to court popularity. Charged with the command, they squandered gold to procure enjoyments for an army, the fatigues of which they paid dearly; they rendered their country venal, without caring for it; and made themselves the slaves of the most depraved men, to bring under their authority those who were worth more than themselves. This is what drove Marius out of Rome, and led him back against Sylla; this is what made Cinna the murderer of Octavius, and Fimbria the murderer of Flaccus. Sylla was the principal cause of these evils, he who, to seduce the soldiers enrolled under other chiefs, and bring them under his own flag, scattered gold in handfuls among his army.”[837] Far were they from the times when the soldier, after a short campaign, laid down his arms to take up the plough again; since then, retained under his standards for long years, and returning in the train of a victorious general to vote in the Campus Martius, the citizen had disappeared; there remained the warrior, with the sole inspiration of the camp. At the end of the expeditions, the army was disbanded, and Italy thus found itself overrun with an immense number of veterans, united in colonies or dispersed over the territory, more inclined to follow a leader than to obey the law. The veterans of the ancient legions of Marius and Sylla were to be counted by hundreds of thousands.