The idea long prevailed among modern historians that during the second century Rome suffered a shortage of military manpower. Appian started his books on the civil wars of the late Republic - written centuries after the events - with an account of the hardships of the common people in Italy in the late second century: as a result of Roman expansion the rich became richer, gathering large landholdings at the cost of the smallholder and replacing the free population with the slaves that had been captured during the wars. Part of the blame was put on military service: ‘‘The Italian people dwindled in numbers and strength, being oppressed by penury, taxes, and military service’’ (App. B Civ. 1.7). Similarly, the first-century historian Sallust wrote: ‘‘The people were burdened with military service and poverty. The generals divided the spoils of war with a few friends. Meanwhile the parents or little children of the soldiers, if they had a powerful neighbour, were driven from their homes’’ (lug. 41.7-8). Ti. Gracchus’ scheme to distribute public land among poor citizens (during his year as tribune of the plebs in 133) has often been interpreted as a means to restore the dwindling number of potential recruits. Similarly, a shortage of manpower explained the gradual reduction of the property qualifications for Roman recruits in this period.
In recent decades, however, opinions have significantly changed.18 Scholars realize that the decline of the peasantry has been much overstated. Indeed, it is true that the Second Punic War had a disastrous impact on the population size of Italy due to casualties of war, famine, and epidemics. However, the demographic impact of the
Second Punic War was only short term. Signs of recovery can be seen already before the mid-century.19 Moreover, the growth in the ownership of large estates in Italy was a gradual and uneven process. In some regions, the growth of commercial farming already started during the third century, while other regions remained untouched until the first. Peasant farms continued to thrive alongside wealthy estates and even predominated in those regions that were of little interest to rich landowners (see Chapters 27 and 28).
What about the disastrous effects of military service? It is true that in the second century most soldiers served for many years in succession. However, the traditional view that such soldiers returned to barren fields and to farms that were deserted by their wives and children has to be rejected. The regular but temporary withdrawal of a part of their adult males need not automatically have had a negative impact on peasant communities. For one thing, many recruits were young and unmarried, and they did not have families to support, although they contributed their labor to the cultivation of the family plots.20 One has to keep in mind, too, that peasant farming in preindustrial societies was generally characterized by underemployment. In other words, peasant households tended to have a surplus of labor that could not be fruitfully used on their small plots of land. Hence, the withdrawal of part of the labor was not disastrous. Moreover, family relations helped to spread the burden of recruitment. In each society, household formation is determined by social, economic, and demographic circumstances, and in second-century Italy, recruitment was - and had been for centuries - an important fact of life. Many rural households probably consisted of various married and unmarried adults, their offspring and/or parents. The coresidence of relatives and their sharing of land and other resources diminished the impact of the withdrawal of part of adult laborers from peasant farms. If adult men were recruited into the army, others within the household were left. Those men whose families had too little land to support all their members may actually have perceived recruitment as a temporary subsistence strategy.21 Most campaigns lasted for some years and, if successful, offered the veterans wealth in the form of booty. This is not to say that all conscripts were happy with their fate, but there is no indication that enlistment in general was rejected. Much depended on the war for which soldiers were enlisted, since some wars offered more booty and less hardship than others. Service in the armies that fought against the Spanish tribes or against the hostile peoples in northern Italy was, for instance, unpopular, while soldiers were ready to fight in the Greek East. In short, Rome’s armies did not suffer from a shortage of manpower.
The negative undertone in many of our sources on the second century should be seen in light of the moralistic tendency of such ancient historians as Sallust and Livy, who emphasized the negative side of Rome’s rise to empire. It was a part of the political rhetoric in late republican Rome to blame the leading political families for having established their wealth and power on the backs of the common people. In the introduction to his Civil Wars, Appian’s objective was to emphasize that Rome’s successes in its overseas wars caused the Italian farmers who manned its armies to suffer and forced them to abandon their land, their places taken by their enslaved former foes. Whatever the sources say, the changes during the second century do not reflect a shortage of military manpower but rather a gradual change in the nature of recruitment and military service.
World History
