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The distant wars of the republic such as the prolonged operations of Caesar in Gaul, and the civil contests made a standing army a necessity. During the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey the legions were forty in number; under Augustus, but twenty-five. Alexander Severus increased them to thirty-two.
He sat grieving over it, and at times he dashed his head against the wall, crying, "Varus, Varus! give me back my legions." His friends were dead, he was an old man now, and sadness was around him. He was soon, however, grave and composed again; and, as his health began to fail, he sent for Tiberius and put his affairs into his hands. When his dying day came, he met it calmly.
II. Alarmed by these tidings and letters, Caesar levied two new legions in Hither Gaul, and, at the beginning of summer, sent Q. Pedius, his lieutenant, to conduct them further into Gaul. He himself, as soon as there began to be plenty of forage, came to the army. These all uniformly reported that troops were being raised, and that an army was being collected in one place.
The roads became sloughs, our feet were drawn heavily out of the clay, the burns and brooks raged from bank to brae, and the horses swithered at the fords, in so much, that towards the gloaming, when we were come to Bathgate, several of our broken legions were seen far behind; and when we halted for the night, scarcely more than half the number with whom we had that morning left Lanerk could be mustered, and few of those who had fallen behind came up.
The Novatian peasants, animated by despair and religious fury, boldly encountered the invaders of their country; and though many of the Paphlagonians were slain, the Roman legions were vanquished by an irregular multitude, armed only with scythes and axes; and, except a few who escaped by an ignominious flight, four thousand soldiers were left dead on the field of battle.
Imagination in that terrific moment magnified them into millions. He saw the foaming mouths, the white teeth and the flashing eyes of the horses, and then the tense faces and eyes of their riders. Lances and sabers were held aloft, and the earth thundered with the tread of the mounted legions. "Good God!" cried Wharton. "Wheel, men, wheel!" shouted Captain Colton.
This person, whom I may call the Positive Barbarian, must be rather more superficially up-to-date than what I may call the Negative Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions: but for all that he destroyed Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos could have done it at all neatly.
"New armies at the beck of Napoleon will spring from the ground, his military chests will be filled with new millions, and the invincible chieftain will lead his legions to new victories.
Encompassed on every side, trampled down by the cavalry, slaughtered by the swords of the legions, they disdained to ask for mercy; and with an undaunted countenance, still grasped their weapons in the agonies of death.
But as the centre of the Imperial fabric became weaker the dependencies were abandoned, and the Roman legions recalled early in the fifth century.
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