In this respect it must have become a matter of importance that, while previously the subaltern as well as the staff-officers had been uniformly nominated by the general, after 392 some of the latter posts were filled up through election by the burgesses.( 21) Lastly, the old, fearfully strict, military discipline remained unaltered.

Still, as formerly, the general was at liberty to behead any man serving in his camp, and to scourge with rods the staff-officer as well as the common soldier; nor were such punishments inflicted merely on account of common crimes, but also when an officer had allowed himself to deviate from the orders which he had received, or when a division had allowed itself to be surprised or had fled from the field of battle.

On the other hand, the new military organization necessitated a far more serious and prolonged military training than the previous phalanx system, in which the solidity of the mass kept even the inexperienced in their ranks.

If nevertheless no special soldier-class sprang up, but on the contrary the army still remained, as before, a burgess army, this object was chiefly attained by abandoning the former mode of ranking the soldiers according to property( 22) and arranging them according to length of service.

The Roman recruit now entered among the light-armed "skirmishers" (-rorarii-), who fought outside of the line and especially with stone slings, and he advanced from this step by step to the first and then to the second division, till at length the soldiers of long service and experience were associated together in the corps of the -triarii-, which was numerically the weakest but imparted its tone and spirit to the whole army.
The excellence of this military organization, which became the primary cause of the superior political position of the Roman community, chiefly depended on the three great military principles of maintaining a reserve, of combining the close and distant modes of fighting, and of combining the offensive and the defensive.