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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2571144, member: 19463&quot;]Somewhere between Roman times and today, people gained the feeling that the army would remain loyal to the commanders or the state just because they swore an oath saying they would.&nbsp; Cutting the military budget rarely struck the Romans as a good idea.&nbsp; Promising soldiers extra &#039;benefits&#039; and failing to come through as advertised never worked out all that well either (ask Didius Julianus).&nbsp; Telling soldiers that the day would soon come when the huge army would no longer be needed and making them do menial labor when not fighting worked poorly (ask Probus).&nbsp; For much of the later empire, the only ballot box that was counted was the one with the most knives.&nbsp; As soldiers became decreasingly loyal to the state and increasingly to their generals and as more and more of them were recruited from people who were not remotely Roman, things were bound to change.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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