8 The Growth in Roman Manpower

By the middle of the fourth century Rome had emerged as the single most powerful city-state in central Italy and was poised at the take-off stage for rapid expansion. The First Samnite War of 343-341 resulted in the merging of the Roman state and the league of northern Campanian communities headed by Capua through their sharing of citizenship. This augmentation in manpower was followed immediately by Rome’s absorption of Latium into the Roman state. The Latin War of 340-338 ended in Roman victory and all the smaller communities of Latium being incorporated into Roman territory. Only the two larger states of Tibur and Praeneste retained their independence and were bound to Rome by bilateral treaties. During the Second Samnite War of 326-304 Rome continued to increase the size of its territory, as well as its manpower, both citizen and allied, available for military service; and the Romans’ victory in this war placed them in the position of contemplating the conquest of peninsular Italy. Rome’s rapid growth in territory, manpower, and other resources during the fourth century must have had major consequences for Rome’s military organization. Under the year 311 Livy (9.30.3) records that the Romans began to elect 16 military tribunes to serve in four legions. The increase in the number of these annually elected officers from six in 362 (Livy 7.5.9) to 16 in 311 suggests a major change or restructuring of the Roman army. The six earlier military tribunes had probably been assigned three each to two legions, presumably reflecting a legionary organization that was still in part based upon the three archaic tribes of the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres. The 16 military tribunes elected in 311, however, must have been assigned in groups of four to four legions, thus indicating a doubling in the size of the normal Roman military annual recruitment. Four legions still formed the usual yearly military levy of the Roman state 150 years later in Polybius’ day (Polybius 6.19-20).

With the first decades of the third century, i. e., the closing years of the early republic (300-264), our knowledge of the Roman state finally emerges from myth, legend, and murky twilight into the dawn of the historical period. The census figures recorded for these years are to be trusted. They represent the total number of adult male Roman citizens available for military service and show that Roman manpower at this time numbered more than a quarter of a million.19 They are as follows.

Roman census figures for the early third century