The fact that the government of Rome was exclusively in the hands of a military committee[1] from 390 to 367[2] reveals pretty clearly that the army had a policy of its own. It is well known that Alexander, the Romanticist of the Second Tyrannis, fell more and more under the influence of his generals, who not only compelled the retreat from India but also disposed of his inheritance amongst themselves as a matter of course.
This is essentially Napoleonism, and so is the extension of personal rule over regions united by ties neither national nor jural, but merely military and administrative. But extension was just what was essentially incompatible with the Polis. The Classical State is the one State that was incapable of any organic widening, and the conquests of the Second Tyrannis therefore resolved themselves into a juxtaposition of two political units, the Polis and the subjugated territory, the cohesion of which was initially accidental and perpetually in danger. Thus arose that strange picture of the Hellenistic-Roman world, the true significance of which is not even yet recognized — a circle of border-regions, and within them a congeries of Poleis to which, small as they were, the conception of the State proper, the res publica, continued to be bound as exclusively as ever. In this middle (indeed, so far as concerned each individual, hegemony was in one point) was the theatre of all real politics. The "orbis terrarum" — a significant expression — was merely a means or object to it. The Roman notions of "imperium" — dictatorial powers of administration outside the city moat (which were automatically extinguished when its holder entered the Pomœrium) — and of "provincia" as the opposite of "res publica," express the common Classical instinct, which knew only the city's body as the State and political subject, and the "outside" only in relation to it, as object to it. Dionysius made his city of Syracuse into a fortress surrounded by a "scrap-heap of states," and extended his field of power thence, over Upper Italy and the Dalmatian coast, into the northern Adriatic, where he possessed Ancona and Hatria at the mouth of the Po. Philip of Macedon, following the example of his teacher Jason of Pheræ (murdered in 370), adopted the reverse plan, placing his centre of gravity in the periphery (that is, practically in the army) and thence exercising a hegemony over the Hellenic world of States. Thus Macedonia came to extend to the Danube, and after Alexander's death there were added to this outer circle the empires of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies —
- ↑ Three to six "tribuni militares consulari protestate" instead of the Consuls. Just at this juncture, as the result of the introduction of pay and longer duration of service with the colours, there must have come into being a nucleus of true professional soldiers, who would have the election of centurions in their own hands and by whom the spirit of the army was determined. It is entirely erroneous to speak of a peasant-levy at this stage, quite apart from the fact that the four great city-tribes contributed a considerable part of the rank and rile and a part, too, whose influence was even greater than its numerical strength. Even in the " good old days" picture presented to us by Livy and others we can clearly perceive the influence exerted by the standing formations upon the contests of parties.
- ↑ It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that 367 is the year of Dionysius's death.
