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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

From the end of the second Carthaginia* wav till the fallof the Roman republic, the armies of Rome were in everyrespect standing armies. The standing army of Macedonmade some resistance to their arms. In the height of theirgrandeur, it cost them two great wars, and three great bat-tles, to subdue that little kingdom ; of which the conquestwould probably have been still more difficult, had it notbeen for the cowardice of its last king. The militias of allthe civilized nations of the ancient world, of Greece, of Syria ,and of Egypt , made but a feeble resistance to the standingarmies of Rome . The militias of some barbarous nationsdefended themselves much better. The Scythian or Tartar militia, which Mithridates drew from the countries north ofthe Euxine and Caspian seas, were the most formidable ene-mies whom the Romans had to encounter after the secondCarthaginian war. The Parthian and German militias toowere always respectable, and, upon several occasions, gainedvery considerable advantages over the Roman armies. Ingeneral, however, and when the Roman armies were wellcommanded, they appear to have been very much superior ;and if the Romans did not pursue the final conquest eitherof Parthia or Germany , it was probably because they judgedthat it was not worth while to add those two barbarouscountries to an empire which was already too large. Theancient Parthians appear to have been a nation of Scythian or Tartar extraction, and to have always retained a good dealof the manners of their ancestors. The ancient Germans were, like the Scythians or Tartars , a nation of wanderingshepherds who went to war under the same chiefs whomthey were accustomed to tollow in peace. Their militiawas exactly of the same kind with that of the Scythians orTartars , from whom too they were probably descended.

Many different causes contributed to relax the disciplineof the Roman armies. Its extreme severity was, perhaps,one of those causes. In the days of their grandeur, whenno enemy appeared capable of opposing them, their heavyarmour was laid aside as unnecessarily burdensome, their la-borious exercises were neglected as unnecessarily toilsome.Under the Roman emperors, besides the standing armies ofRome, those particularly which guarded the German andPannonian frontiers, became dangerous to their masters,against whom they used frequently to set up their own gene-rals. In order to render them less formidable, according