attractions of a campaign that seemed to promise plunder and glory,
especially when these prizes were accompanied by no exorbitant amount of
suffering or toil. Thus when it had become known that Scipio Africanus
would accompany his brother in the expedition against Antiochus, five
thousand veterans, both citizens and allies, who had served their full
time under the command of the former, offered their voluntary services
to the departing consul,[8] and nineteen' years later the experience
which had been gained of the wealth that might be reaped from a campaign
in Macedonia and Asia drew many willing recruits to the legions which
were to be engaged in the struggle with Perseus.[9] The
semi-professional soldier was in fact springing up, the man of a spirit
adventurous and restless such as did not promise contentment with the
small interests and small rewards of life in an Italian outpost. But, if
the days of formal colonisation were over, why might not the concurrent
system be adopted of dividing conquered lands amongst poorer citizens
without the establishment of a new political settlement or any strict
limitation of the number of the recipients? This 'viritane' assignation
had always run parallel to that which assumed the form of colonisation;
it merely required the existence of land capable of distribution, and
the allotments granted might be considered merely a means of affording
relief to the poorer members of existing municipalities. The system was
supposed to have existed from the times of the Kings; it was believed to
have formed the basis of the first agrarian law, that of Spurius Cassius
in 486;[10] it had been employed after the conquest of the Volscians in
the fourth century and that of the Sabines in the third;[11] it had
animated the agrarian legislation of Flaminius when in 232 he romanised
the _ager Gallicus_ south of Ariminum without planting a single colony
in this region;[12] and a date preceding the Gracchan legislation by
only forty years had seen the resumption of the method, when some Gallic
and Ligurian land, held to be the spoil of war and declared to be