was in earnest, but the work was less easy than was expected. Army
management had fallen into disorder. In earlier times each Roman citizen
had provided his own equipments at his own expense. To be a soldier was
part of the business of his life, and military training was an essential
feature of his education. The old system had broken down; the peasantry,
from whom the rank and file of the legions had been recruited, were no
longer able to furnish their own arms. Caius Gracchus had intended that
arms should be furnished by the government, that a special department
should be constituted to take charge of the arsenals and to see to the
distribution. But Gracchus was dead, and his project had died with him.
When the legions were enrolled, the men were ill armed, undrilled, and
unprovided--a mere mob, gathered hastily together and ignorant of the
first elements of their duty. With the officers it was still worse. The
subordinate commands fell to young patricians, carpet knights who went on
campaigns with their families of slaves. The generals, when a movement was
to be made, looked for instruction to their staff. It sometimes happened
that a consul waited for his election to open for the first time a book of
military history or a Greek manual of the art of war.[2]


[Sidenote: B.C 109.]
An army so composed and so led was not likely to prosper. The Numidians
were not very formidable enemies, but, after a month or two of
manoeuvring, half the Romans were destroyed and the remainder were obliged
to surrender. About the same time, and from similar causes, two Roman
armies were cut to pieces on the Rhone. While the great men at Rome were
building palaces, inventing new dishes, and hiring cooks at unheard-of
salaries, the barbarians were at the gates of Italy. The passes of the
Alps were open, and if a few tribes of Gauls had cared to pour through
them, the Empire was at their mercy. Stung with these accumulating