io Greece. Macedon. Rome 



Greece could produce. In the later age of professional soldering they, 

 with the Aetolians and others in the less civilized parts, furnished 

 numbers of recruits to the Greek mercenary armies. But the regular 

 mercenary who had the luck to retire in comfortable circumstances, 

 on savings of pay and loot, is portrayed to us as more inclined to 

 luxury and wantonness in some great city than to the simple monotony 

 of rustic life. Nor must we forget that slaves were often an important 

 part 1 of war-booty, and that the professional warrior was used to the 

 attendance of slaves (male and female) even on campaigns. So far the 

 connexion of peasant and soldier does not amount to much more than 

 the admission that the former was a type of man able to endure the 

 hardships of a military career. 



The national regular army formed by Philip son of Amyntas in 

 Macedonia, afterwards the backbone of Alexander's mixed host, is in 

 itself a phenomenon of great interest: for in making it Philip made a 

 nation. That the ranks were mainly filled with country folk is certain. 

 But, what with wastage in wars and the settlement of many old 

 soldiers in the East, there is little evidence to shew whether any con- 

 siderable number of veterans returned to Macedon and settled on the 

 land. I believe that such cases were few. The endless wars waged by 

 Alexander's successors with mixed and mongrel armies were hardly 

 favourable to rustic pursuits: foundation of great new cities was the 

 characteristic of the times. When we turn to Rome we find a very 

 different story. Tradition represents landowners settled on the land 

 and tilling it as the persons responsible for the defence of the state, 

 Cincinnatus called from the plough to be dictator is the typical figure 

 of early patriotic legend. When the Roman Plebeians dislodged the 

 Patrician clans from their monopoly of political power, the burden of 

 military service still rested on the adsidui, the men with a footing on 

 the land. Tradition still shews us the farmer-soldier taking the risk 

 of disaster to his homestead during his absence on campaigns. In the 

 historical twilight of fragmentary details, coloured by later imagina- 

 tion, thus much is clear and credible. The connexion between land- 

 holding and soldiering was not openly disregarded until the reforms 

 of Marius. The age of revolution was then already begun, and one of 

 its most striking features was the creation of a professional soldiery, a 

 force which, as experience proved, was more easy to raise than to dis- 

 band. The method of pensioning veterans by assigning to them parcels 

 of land for settlement was in general a failure, for the men were 

 unused to thrift and indisposed to a life of patient and uneventful 

 labour. The problem of the Republic was inherited by the Empire, 

 and attempts at solution were only partially successful: but the system 



1 A good instance is Xen anab iv i 12-14. 



