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Incidentally, that was because before Gaius Marius every legionary had a plot of land. Marius introduced recruiting from the 'capite censi', the propertyless ci
by B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
Incidentally, that was because before Gaius Marius every legionary had a plot of land. Marius introduced recruiting from the 'capite censi', the propertyless citizens.
Rome fought off Carthage with just its small farmers. Probably did not have many urban poor at the time, either.
- jpt4 10y agoWhich shift in socio-economic demographics was only accelerated by the formation of latifundia [0], enormous aristocratic estates consolidated from small farmholds, at least partially due to the latter's failure when their owners were at war for more than a single planting/harvest season. This increased agricultural productivity employed slaves to fuel its economies of scale, at the expense of inflating the class of landless peasant citizen, who migrated to cities and became the urban poor. These were then recruited into the army, which conquered new territories and enslaved new peoples to work the lands from which their soldiers' lineages had been driven. This same dynamic repeats itself in Byzantium [1], though with a more explicitly feudal flavor. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundium [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynatoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynatoi
- jpt4 10y agoEdit: landless peasant citizens