difficult for citizen soldiers, of drawing the line between civil and
military life. The turbulent democracy of the former, led into the
field, doffed the citizen, donned the soldier; and obeyed the orders of
a commander whom as citizens they detested, and whom when they were led
back to the forum at the end of the summer campaign they were ready
again to oppose and to impeach. No doubt all this part of the history
has been immensely embellished by the patriotic imagination, the heroic
features have been exaggerated, the harsher features softened though not
suppressed. Still it is impossible to question the general fact. The
result attests the process. The Roman legions were formed in the first
instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid
discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.
When, to keep up the siege of Veii, military pay was introduced, a step
was taken in the transition from a citizen soldiery to a regular army,
such as the legions ultimately became, with its standing discipline of
the camp; and that the measure should have been possible is another
proof that Rome was a great city, with a well-supplied treasury, not a
collection of mud huts. No doubt the habit of military discipline
reacted on the political character of the people, and gave it the
strength and self-control which were so fatally wanting in the case of
Florence.

The line was drawn, under the pressure of a stern necessity, between
civil and military life, and between the rights and duties of each. The
power of the magistrate, jealously limited in the city, was enlarged to
absolutism for the preservation of discipline in the field. But the
distinction between the king or magistrate and the general, and between
the special capacities required for the duties of each, is everywhere of
late growth. We may say the same of departmental distinctions
altogether. The executive, the legislative, the judicial power, civil