The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

by Mike Duncan

As he prepared to raise new legions, Marius ran into the same problem that had plagued Rome for a generation. As more and more families were pushed off their land, fewer and fewer men met the minimum property requirement for service in the legions. But while the consuls were forced to scrape the bottom of a very dry barrel looking for potential legionaries, tens of thousands of young men sat idle. The only mark against them was that they did not own land. So to fill his legions, Marius took a fateful step in the long history of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic—he requested exemption from the property qualification. Of this request to recruit from among the poorest plebs, Sallust says: “Some say that he did this through lack of good men, others because of a desire to curry favor… As a matter of fact, to one who aspires to power the poorest man is the most helpful, since he has no regard for his property, having none, and considers anything honorable for which he receives pay.” Any man, no matter how poor and destitute, could now serve in the army. With the promise of plunder and glory dangled before their eyes, poor men from across Italy rushed to sign up for Marius’s open legions.48 Emergency suspension of the property requirements was not without precedent. An ancestor of the Gracchi had even led a legion composed of slaves and gladiators during the darkest days of the Second Punic War. But what makes this moment so important is that it marked a permanent transi...