But whatever the later practice, the original intention of the imperial government in raising this new class of troops seems to be clear. The local recruiting of the regular auxilia presupposes a rapid progress of ‘Romanization’ among the provincials and the disappearance of all such national feeling as had caused the mutiny of the German and Pannonian auxilia in the first century. From the military point of view, however, this advance in culture, although it facilitated the raising of recruits, was by no means an unmixed blessing. The old levies of wild tribesmen, schooled by centuries of local warfare, who strove to preserve in the Roman service their local reputation, had qualities which were lacking to the regiments of civilized Latin-speaking provincials, in which national methods of fighting[278] had been replaced by a uniform training and clan feeling by _esprit de corps_. It was to provide a leaven of the old spirit that the _numeri_ were raised from the wildest of the border tribes, and not only encouraged to fight after the manner of their fathers, but even permitted to continue the use of their native tongues.[279] The first experiment of this kind was made by Trajan, when he brought over Lusius Quietus and his _Mauri gentiles_ for the Dacian war,[280] but it was probably Hadrian who made the _numeri_ a regular part of the military system. It is in his reign that they first appear on inscriptions, and it is to the _numeri_ that we must refer the passage in Arrian’s _Tactica_, in which the emperor is praised for encouraging his troops to keep up their national methods of fighting, and even their national war-cries.[281] The tribes to whom he refers are Κελτοί (by which Germans are probably meant),[282] Dacians, and Raetians. For the first and third there is epigraphical evidence, and the last two appear also among the _nationes_ of Hyginus. It appears, then, that Hadrian was not, as is sometimes stated, the originator of the system of local recruiting; rather he found it already in existence, and sought to correct its defects by utilizing again in the service of the Empire the clan spirit of uncivilized tribes, which had often proved so useful in the past. _The Praefecti._