Introduction

During the third and second centuries bc, the armies of the Roman Republic lost many battles but not a single war. Part of the reason why Rome was able to recover from even the most disastrous defeats lies in the vast manpower resources upon which she could draw. One of the aims of this chapter is to outline the methods of recruitment that enabled the Romans to deploy between 150,000 and 200,000 fighting men (including marines) during the most critical phase of the Hannibalic War, and a roughly equal number of troops in the Second Macedonian War.1

A closely related theme is the development of Roman manpower resources during the second century bc. Basing their opinions on Appian’s description of the background to the Gracchan land reforms and on a particular interpretation of the census figures for the second century bc, many ancient historians have argued that constant warfare and the expansion of rural slavery caused the citizen population - and indeed the free population of Italy as a whole - to decline. Against this, I shall argue that the citizen body continued to grow throughout the second century bc. It will also be suggested that this steady demographic expansion had the seemingly paradoxical effect of reducing the number of citizens eligible for legionary service. My reconstruction of demographic developments implies that lowering the property requirement for military service could easily enlarge the number of potential legionaries. In the final section of this chapter, it will be argued that this is precisely what happened. This finding lends support to the views of those ancient historians who have argued that the Roman army became increasingly “proletarianized” during the final decades of the second century bc.