Military problems 339 



which the Bastarnae faithfully adhered, we are not told. Probably the 

 grant of lands carried with it the duty of furnishing recruits to Roman 

 armies and accepting the command of Roman officers. 



In connexion with agricultural conditions we must not omit to 

 notice the change that was passing over Roman armies. The straits to 

 which Marcus had been reduced by the years of plague and losses in 

 the field had compelled him to raise fresh troops by any means, en- 

 rolling slaves, hiring barbarian mercenaries, and so forth. With this 

 miscellaneous force he just managed to hold his ground in the North. 

 But the army never recovered its old tone. The period 180-284 shews 

 it going from bad to worse. It is full of sectional jealousy and losing 

 all sense of common imperial duty ; only effective when some one 

 strong man destroys his rivals and is for the moment supreme. The 

 rise and fall of pretenders 1 is a main topic of the imperial history. As 

 from the foundation of the Empire, the numbers of the army were in- 

 adequate for defence against simultaneous attacks on several frontiers. 

 The lack of cooperation among their enemies, and the mobility of 

 Roman frontier armies, had sufficed to keep invaders at bay. But as 

 pressure became more continuous it was more difficult to meet the 

 needs of the moment by moving armies to and fro. More and more 

 1 they took on the character of garrisons, their chief camps grew into 

 towns, local recruits filled up their ranks, and they were less and less 

 available for service as field-armies. But it was obviously necessary 

 that the country round about their quarters should be under cultivation, 

 in order to supply them with at least part of their food. It may safely 

 ' be assumed that this department was carefully attended to in the 

 formation of all these military stations. And it seems that under the 

 ', new conditions one of the evils that had hitherto embarrassed the em- 

 pire was gradually brought to an end. For the fact remains that, after 

 all the wholesale waste of lives in the bloody wars of the third century, 

 i it was still possible to raise great and efficient armies. Reorganized by 

 Diocletian and Constantine, the empire proved able to defend itself 

 ! | for many years yet, even in the West. The new system may have been 

 oppressive to the civil population, but it certainly revived military 

 strength. This could not have been achieved without an improvement 

 in the supply of man-power. It has been maintained 2 that this im- 

 provement was due to the permanent settlements of barbarians, mostly 

 of German race, within the territories of the empire during the third 

 century. Whether planted on the vacant lands as alien settlers (inqui- 

 liniy on easy terms, but bound to provide recruits for the army, or 



1 Even the extreme license of the soldiery, in deposing and murdering their own nominee, 

 occurs repeatedly, and was no doubt one of the chief evils that prompted the reforms of 



', Diocletian. 



2 O Seeck, Untergang der antiken Welt book II ch 6. 3 See index under the word. 



222 



