In all this it is easy to see how much Augustus owes to the institutions of the Republic, and when we come to consider details his debt becomes even more apparent. A standing army consisting of legions of _cives Romani_ and smaller units of _peregrini_, supported in the field by contingents from allied and nominally independent states, was already in existence. His task was merely to introduce such changes as might obviate the mistakes and failures of the past, and to establish principles which should make for permanence and stability. For in accepting the principle of maintaining a standing army Augustus could not have been blind to the political dangers which this institution brought with it. He endeavoured to meet them by fixing the conditions of service, in particular the sum which a soldier might claim at his discharge, and by establishing a special treasury from which those claims might be satisfied, thus accustoming the troops to look to the central government, not to their generals, for rewards due to them. Moreover, in this department of the state even Augustus allowed no respect for constitutional forms to veil or weaken his authority. When in 69 the legions on the Upper Rhine tore down the _imagines_ of Galba and swore allegiance to the _oblitterata iam nomina senatus populique Romani_ it was a manifest sign that after a century of peace a new period of anarchy had begun.[22] Since this military system, with its division of the troops into categories differing from each other in status and prestige, reflected the general conditions prevalent in the Empire, so it was inevitable that a change in these conditions should have its effect also upon the army. How far the political developments of the first century were foreseen or intended by Augustus it is perhaps impossible to say; it is certain, at any rate, that his system was capable of adapting itself to them. One of these developments was a steady increase in the power of the central government and a disappearance of all forms of local autonomy which involved a division of authority. By the reign of Vespasian almost all the great client kingdoms had been more or less peaceably absorbed into the ordinary provincial system. Cappadocia was annexed in 17, Mauretania in 39, Thrace in 46, Pontus in 63, and Commagene in 73. The troops which these kingdoms had maintained were naturally taken into the Roman service, transformed into auxiliary regiments, and lost the privilege which attached to their former condition of serving only in local campaigns. One instance of such a transference, in the case of a regiment which had been in the service of the kings of Pontus, is mentioned in Tacitus,[23] and we also meet with Hemeseni on the Danube,[24] Commageni in Africa and Noricum,[25] and the successors of one of Herod’s old Samaritan regiments in Mauretania.[26] The resentment with which the new conditions of service were sometimes received is an instructive comment on the wisdom