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138 empire could have survived, bleeding and faint as it was at the time from a fierce civil conflict of about eighteen months. The purpose of the confederates was to throw off then and for ever the yoke of Rome,—to effect on a far grander scale what the Italians had attempted more than a century and half before, when they set up a new capital, Italica, and threatened to destroy the den of the Roman wolves. It was a hostile empire that the Germans aimed at,—a far more formidable one than the Parthian had ever been, or than the great Mithridates had ever imagined. Independent Germany would not supply the legions with recruits: independent Gaul would not pay into the Roman treasury bars of silver, or sesterces. Both Gauls and Germans were well acquainted with Roman tactics; many thousands of both nations were enrolled in the legions or served as auxiliaries, and so were the better able to encounter them in the field.

On the other hand, the eastern provinces were ill fitted to recruit the armies of Rome, now in some measure thinned and exhausted by the civil war. By Italy itself, at least south of the Po, a very few cohorts only could be furnished. The brave and hardy Samnites and Marsians no longer existed in any number. They had been swept off in the Social and earlier Civil wars. Much of their land had become sheep-walks; and the place of hardy shepherds, ploughmen, and vine-dressers was filled up by slaves. The once populous Latium was divided among a few landholders, and towns like Gabii or Ulubrae now stood in huge parks, and when not quite deserted, were inhabited by a few peasants or tavern-keepers. The large farms, said Pliny the Naturalist, have been the ruin of Italy.