look with confidence for the support of the army and navy of their respective countries, when their lives, liberty, or property are threatened. _ii._ IN TIMES OF WAR We have just been considering the fortunate position of the Roman citizen in times of peace. When wars arose, he became the servant of the state. Unlike the Carthaginians, the Romans did not during the periods of the Great Wars, employ mercenaries. Service in the army was compulsory on all citizens between seventeen and forty-six years of age who had property of a certain amount. Those who avoided service were liable to have their property confiscated, or to be sold as slaves, and desertion was a capital offence. Discipline was strict, and punishments were severe. But at the end of a campaign the soldier returned to civil life. Before the close of the third century B.C., however, the territory of Rome extended beyond the sea, and a soldier’s term of service was correspondingly lengthened. This fact made the well-to-do, who were already disinclined to service in the army, still more opposed to it. This was the situation which led Marius to substitute voluntary enlistment for conscription toward the end of the second century. The new plan quickly filled the ranks of the army. The needy and the adventurous found a soldier’s career attractive. They accepted it as their life’s work. Their home was the camp. “_Esprit de corps_ took the place of patriotism.” As I have remarked in my _Roman Political Institutions_: “Henceforth the soldiers who came back to the city after protracted campaigns did not look on their commander, as their fathers had done, as a simple fellow-citizen, who had like themselves been serving the state, and now resumed his place by their side. Long periods of service abroad under the direction of one man had led them to follow implicitly the guidance of an individual.” The veterans of Marius, of Sulla, of Pompey, and of Caesar could be trusted to follow at home the political leadership of the man under whom they had served abroad. This situation threw the control of politics into the hands of those who commanded the largest armies. What was still worse, the state could no longer count on the fidelity of its soldiers. Their allegiance had been transferred from Rome to their commander-in-chief, and the security of the government itself might depend on his loyalty or his lack of political ambition. From the beginning of the first century before Christ to the end of the empire the sinister figure of the army is ever in the background. It was a disturbing force in politics, as we have just seen, by giving political offices and an undue influence to military men without regard to their fitness for political leadership, and by organizing forcible interference with public meetings of which the veterans disapproved; and the claims which the soldiers made for lands and bonuses often put the government in a difficult position.