[Sidenote: Disinclination for service at Rome.] There had been for a long time among the wealthier classes a growing disinclination for service, and as the middle class was rapidly disappearing, there had been great difficulty in filling the ranks. The speeches of the Gracchi alluded to this, and it had been experienced in the wars with Viriathus, with Jugurtha, with Tryphon, and with the Cimbri. One device for avoiding it we have seen, by the orders issued to the captains of ships in Italian ports. Among Roman citizens, if not among the allies, some property qualification had been required in a soldier. [Sidenote: Marius enrols the Capite Censi.] Marius tapped a lower stratum, and allowed the Capite Censi to volunteer. To such men the prospect of plunder would be an object, and they would be far more at the bidding of individual generals than soldiers of the old stamp. Thus though obligation to service was not abolished, volunteering was allowed, and became the practice; and the army, with a new drill, and no longer consisting of Romans or even Italians, but of men of all nations, became as effective as of old, if not more so, and at the same time a body detached from the State. [Sidenote: The army ceases to be a citizen army.] The citizen was lost in the professional, and patriotism was superseded by the personal attachment of soldiers of fortune, who knew no will but that of their favourite commander or their own selfishness. Their general could reward them with money, and extort land for them from the State; and when Marius after Vercellae gave the franchise to two Italian cohorts, saying that he could not hear the laws in the din of arms, he was giving to what was becoming a standing army privileges which could not be conferred by a consul, but only by a king. * * * * * CHAPTER VII. SATURNINUS AND DRUSUS.