The people had succeeded in getting one of their own class, Marius by name, appointed as general of an army in Africa, which conquered a restless and powerful people called the Numidians, who had been giving much anxiety to the Romans and had defeated the armies under the general that the Senate had sent out in command. When Marius came back, as victor, from Africa, some of the northern barbarous tribes were harassing Italy itself. He took command of the army against them, and again was completely successful. Thus he rose to great power, and one of his acts, when at the height of his power, was to repeal the law according to which it had always been compulsory on the people to serve in certain legions, and to allow them to enlist in what legions they pleased. {195} Do you see what that meant? It meant that the people would go and enlist under a popular general, and, this being so, the general became the authority to whom they gave their allegiance and to whom they looked up as their head. It was no longer to Rome that the soldiers looked as the great authority. They looked to their general. That made a very great difference in the whole state of affairs. It meant that the general who was able to rely on his army became really independent of the power of either Senate or Comitia. They might give him orders, but he had the armed force at his back and could almost please himself as to whether he should obey the orders or not. Thus it was that the real power passed altogether out of the hands of the Senate and Comitia and fell into that of the commanders of the legions, or of whichever of the several commanders of legions might prove the strongest. The Senate or the Comitia, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, might appoint the commanders, but once the commanders were appointed, the power was with them so long as they could rely on the support of the soldiers. The Senate succeeded in getting leaders devoted to their interests appointed to command some of the legions, and the Comitia got men of their own side appointed to others, and so it came to pass that there were these two opposing forces in the world, the legions that were under a general who was on the side of the aristocratic party and the legions that were commanded by one who favoured the popular side. It is much more easy to see, long after it all happened, how one state of affairs grows out of what has gone before, than it is for the people who are acting in them {196} to see it. We can see how it all happened much better than they can have seen then, but I suppose that even those Romans who were in the very middle of it all and were actors in the story must have realised that something was going on which they had never known before, and which was certain to make a great difference, when they saw one of these commanders of the legions march his forces right up to Rome and take forcible possession of the city. [Illustration: ROMAN LEGIONARIES.]