{"id":83259,"date":"2026-08-16T01:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T05:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=83259"},"modified":"2026-08-19T12:55:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T16:55:59","slug":"qotd-the-marian-reforms-were-not-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/qotd-the-marian-reforms-were-not-a-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The &#8220;Marian reforms&#8221; were <em>not a thing<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>We can then return to our list at the beginning:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Cohort\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Cohorts<\/em><\/a>: <strong>Experimented with before Marius<\/strong>, especially in Spain. <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Marius\" target=\"_blank\">Marius<\/a> uses cohorts, but there&#8217;s no evidence he systematized or standardized this or was particularly new or unusual in doing so. <strong>Probably the actual breakpoint here is the <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#SocialWar\" target=\"_blank\">Social War<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><em>Poor Volunteers Instead of Conscripted Assidui<\/em>: <strong>Marius does not represent a break in the normal function of the Roman <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Dilectus\" target=\"_blank\"><em>dilectus<\/em><\/a><\/strong> but a continuation of the Roman tradition of taking volunteers or dipping into the <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#CapiteCensi\" target=\"_blank\"><em>capite censi<\/em><\/a> in a crisis. The traditional Roman conscription system functions for decades after Marius and a full professional army doesn&#8217;t emerge until <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Augustus\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Augustus<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><em>Discharge bonuses or land as a regular feature of Roman service<\/em>: Once again, <strong>this isn&#8217;t Marius<\/strong> but <strong>Imperator Caesar Augustus<\/strong> who does this. Rewarding soldiers with loot and using conquered lands to form colonies wasn&#8217;t new and Marius doesn&#8217;t standardize it, Augustus does.<\/li>\n<li><em>No More <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Equites\" target=\"_blank\">equites<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Velites\" target=\"_blank\">velites<\/a><\/em>: No reason in the source to suppose Marius does this and plenty of reasons to suppose he doesn&#8217;t. Both <em>velites<\/em> and <em>equites<\/em> seem to continue at least a little bit into the first century. Fully replacing these roles with <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Auxilia\" target=\"_blank\"><em>auxilia<\/em><\/a> is once again a job for our man, <strong>Imperator Caesar Augustus, <em>divi filius<\/em>, <em>pater patriae<\/em>, reformer of armies, <em>gestae<\/em> of <em>res<\/em><\/strong>, and all the rest.<\/li>\n<li><em>State-Supplied Equipment<\/em>: <strong>No evidence in the sources<\/strong>. This shift is happening but is not associated with Marius. In any event, the conformity of imperial pay records with <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Polybius\" target=\"_blank\">Polybius&#8217;<\/a> system of deductions for the second century BC suggests <strong>no major, clean break in the system<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><em>A New Sort of <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Pila\" target=\"_blank\">Pilum<\/a><\/em>: <strong>No evidence, probably didn&#8217;t exist<\/strong>, made up by <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Plutarch\" target=\"_blank\">Plutarch<\/a> or his sources. Roman <em>pilum<\/em> design is shifting, but not in the ways Plutarch suggests. <em>If<\/em> a Marian <em>pilum<\/em> did exist, the idea didn&#8217;t stick.<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Aquila\" target=\"_blank\">Aquila<\/a> Standards<\/em>: Eagle standards pre-date Marius and non-eagle standards post-date him, but <strong>this may be one thing he actually does do<\/strong>, amplifying the importance of the eagle as the primary standard of the <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Legion\" target=\"_blank\">legion<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><em>The <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Sarcina\" target=\"_blank\">sarcina<\/a> and furca and making Roman soldiers carry things<\/em>: <strong>By no means new to Marius<\/strong>. This is a <em>topos<\/em> of Roman commanders before and after Marius. There is no reason to suppose he was unusual in this regard.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So the Marian reforms &#8230; were not a thing. Functionally none of what is described as happening in them was new or unique to Marius. <strong>Indeed, the most substantial reforms are either things that were <em>already<\/em> changing (and which Marius seems to have had little role in) or things which had not <em>yet<\/em> changed but which would, under Augustus<\/strong>. Indeed, one of the <em>problems<\/em> with the assumption of a Marian reform is that it takes a whole lot of changes which were more likely a package of reforms under Augustus and pulls them <em>forward<\/em> in time to Marius, doing some damage to our understanding of both figures.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But Augustus makes <em>much more sense<\/em> as the figure doing many of those organizational changes<\/strong>. For one we have sources actually telling us he did them, from the standardization of military service (Dio 54.25.6), the creation of retirement bonuses and the <em>aerarium militare<\/em> to fund them (Dio 54.25.6 again, but also <em>Res Gestae<\/em> 17), and the radical expansion and formalization of the <em>auxilia<\/em> as part of the Roman army (Tac. <em>Ann<\/em>. 4.5). The one thing missing is citizenship-for-service, which we can see emerging under <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Tiberius\" target=\"_blank\">Tiberius<\/a>, the next emperor immediately after Augustus. And it makes sense because Augustus is, by necessity, doing a bunch of <em>other<\/em> things with the legions too. He&#8217;s instituting a whole new command structure, with dedicated legionary commanders (the <em>legatus legionis<\/em>) serving under his own provincial commanders (<em>legati Augusti<\/em>) with imperial <em>procuratores<\/em> handling the former role of the <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mqO#Quaestor\" target=\"_blank\"><em>quaestors<\/em><\/a>. Also, the legions get their citizen cavalry (though a quite small detachment of it) back too.<\/p>\n<p>So instead of thinking, &#8220;Marian reforms&#8221; \u2013 which were, I must stress, <strong><em>not a thing<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 you ought to be thinking about a period of tactical, organizational and institutional change beginning in the second century, accelerating in the first century and then finally being instituted as a comprehensive set of reforms and formalization <strong><em>by Augustus<\/em>, not by Marius, which codified a lot of change that had already happened over that long period. A long process with a punctuation mark at the end rather than a singular moment of reform associated with a singular Roman general.<\/p>\n<p>Alright. Now one of you go and fix the Wikipedia entry.<\/p>\n<p>Bret Devereaux, <a href=\"https:\/\/acoup.blog\/2023\/06\/30\/collections-the-marian-reforms-werent-a-thing\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Collections: The Marian Reforms Weren&#8217;t a Thing&#8221;, <em>A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2023-06-30.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We can then return to our list at the beginning: Cohorts: Experimented with before Marius, especially in Spain. Marius uses cohorts, but there&#8217;s no evidence he systematized or standardized this or was particularly new or unusual in doing so. Probably the actual breakpoint here is the Social War. Poor Volunteers Instead of Conscripted Assidui: Marius [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,7,5,41],"tags":[31,1340,1457,347,1345],"class_list":["post-83259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","tag-army","tag-augustus","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-debunking","tag-romanrepublic"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-lET","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83259"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104280,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83259\/revisions\/104280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}