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class of advocates must take the lion's share. Among all the numerous pleadings in criminal causes which have come down to us from this epoch, scarcely one makes a serious attempt to fix the crime and to put the proof or counterproof into proper shape. Civil procedure suffered in the same way, though, from the nature of the case, of course in a minor degree. Caesar retained and even made more severe the curb imposed on forensic eloquence by Pompeius, and under his rule of course open corruption and intimidation of the courts came to an end. But he could not pluck up the roots of the evil, or reproduce in the minds of the people the sacred sense of right and reverence for law which alone can insure the purity of judicial administration.

Nowhere was the general decay of the state more conspicuously exemplified than in the condition of the military system. This was now in much the same condition as that of the Carthaginians in the time of Hannibal. The governing classes furnished the officers; the subjects, plebeians and provincials, the rank and file. The general was left practically to himself, and to the resources of his province. All civic or national spirit had deserted the army; esprit de corps alone held it together; it had ceased to be the instrument of the commonwealth, and had become that of the general who commanded it. Under the ordinary wretched commanders it became a rabble, but in the hands of a capable leader it attained a perfection of which the burgess army was incapable. The higher ranks in the state became more and more averse to arms; so that the military tribuneship, once so keenly competed for, was open to any man of equestrian rank who chose to serve. The staff of officers usually gave the signal for mutiny and desertion. Caesar himself has described the scene at his own headquarters when orders were given. to advance against Ariovistus-the cursing and weeping, the making of wills, the requests for furlough. The levy was held with great unfairness; and soldiers once levied were kept thirty years. under the standards. The burgess cavalry had degenerated into an ornamental guard; the "burgess" infantry was a troop of mercenaries collected from the lowest dregs of the populace. The subjects furnished the whole of the cavalry and light-armed troops, and began to be employed extensively in the infantry. The post of centurion went by favor, or was even sold to the highest bidder: the payment of the soldiers was most defective and irregular. Of the decay of the navy enough has been said before; here, too, as elseHist. Nat. III

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where, everything that could be ruined had been reduced to ruin under the oligarchic government.

Caesar's military reorganization was limited substantially to the tightening and strengthening of the reins of discipline. The system itself he did not attempt-perhaps he did not wish-to reform. He did indeed enact that, in order to hold a municipal magistracy or sit on a municipal council before the thirtieth year, a man must serve, either three years as an officer, or six years in the ranks; and thus attempted to attract the better classes into the army. But he dared not associate the holding of an honorary office unconditionally with the fulfillment of the time of service. The levy was better arranged, and the time of service shortened; for the rest, the infantry continued to be raised chiefly from the lower orders of burgesses, the cavalry and light infantry from the other subjects. Two innovations must be placed to Caesar's account: one the use of mercenaries in the cavalry, to which he was driven by the untrustworthiness of the subject cavalry; the other the appointment of adjutants of the legion with pretorian powers. Hitherto the legion had been led by its military tribunes, who were appointed partly by the burgesses, partly by the general, and who, as a rule, commanded the legion in succession. But henceforward colonels

or adjutants of the whole legion were nominated by the imperator in Rome, and were meant chiefly as a counterpoise to the governor's authority. The most important change in the military system was, of course, the new supreme command; for the first time. the armies of the state were under the real and energetic control of the supreme government. In all probability the governor would still retain the supreme military authority in his own province, but subject to the authority of the imperator, who might take it from him at any moment and assume it for himself or his delegates. There was no longer any fear, either that the armies might become utterly disorganized or that they might forget that they belonged to the commonwealth in their devotion to their leaders.

Perhaps it was the sole illusion which Caesar allowed himself to cherish that the monarchy he had founded could be otherwise than military. That a standing army was necessary he saw of course, but only because the nature of the empire required permanent frontier garrisons; and to the regulation of the frontier his military plans were substantially limited. He had already taken measures for the tranquillization of Spain, and had provided for

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the defense of the Gallic and the African boundaries; he had similar plans for the countries bordering on the Euphrates and the Danube. Above all, he was determined to avenge the day of Carrhae, and to set bounds to the power of Boerebistas, king of the Getae, who was extending his dominions on both sides of the Danube. Fabulous schemes of world-wide conquest are ascribed to Caesar, but on no respectable authority, and his conduct in Gaul and Britain gives little countenance to such traditions. At any rate it is certain that

he did not intend to rest his monarchy primarily on the army, or to set the military power above the civil. The magnificent Gallic legions were dissolved as incompatible with a civic commonwealth; only their glorious names were perpetuated by newly founded. colonies. The soldiers who obtained allotments were not settled together to form military colonies, but scattered throughout Italy, except where, as in Campania, aggregation could not be avoided. Caesar attempted in every way to keep the soldiers within the sphere of civil life: by allowing them to serve their term, not continuously, but by instalments; by shortening the term of service; by settling the emeriti as agricultural colonists; by keeping the army aloof from Italy, on the distant frontiers. No corps of guards—