Editing Marian reforms (section)

=== Post-war critiques ===

The view inherited from the 19th century sources was challenged in two articles published in 1949 and 1951 by [[Emilio Gabba]], an Italian historian, which held that instead of being a revolutionary change, Marius' decision to enrol the poor was the logical culmination of progressive reductions of the property qualifications in the face of chronic shortages of recruits. Marius' presumed reform then simply swept away the last vestige of a property qualification that by 107&nbsp;BC had largely ceased to be binding.{{sfn|Cadiou|2018|p=43}}

In these terms, the abolition of the property qualification was just another stage in the evolution of the Roman army on the long journey to the professional army of the Augustan age. With no sources indicating that the social background of the legions had changed much, if at all, Gabba attributed the notability of the episode to Marius' political opponents' fear that voluntary service undermined traditional methods of gaining political support.{{sfn|Faszcza|2021|p=30}}

Later historians also downplayed these reforms. The French historian {{Ill|Jacques Harmand|fr}}, writing in the 1960s, noted how the {{lang|la|dilectus}} ({{literally|selection}}) of conscripts continued through the 2nd century into the late republic; this undermined the previous assumption that volunteer service became dominant after 107&nbsp;BC.{{sfn|Faszcza|2021|p=31}} The British classicist [[Peter Brunt]], in his 1971 book ''Italian Manpower'', also questioned the extent to which Polybius' descriptions reflected the army of the mid-second century, noting that many aspects therein were notably archaic and only could have been true in the early third century&nbsp;BC. Gabba's posited property level qualifications and Brunt's attacks on Polybius' credibility broke one of the main assumptions of the 19th century German scholars, namely that the Polybian army persisted largely unchanged until Marius' time.{{sfn|Faszcza|2021|pp=31–32}} Brunt also found no evidence that volunteers took over the legions and instead concluded that the {{Lang|la|adsidui}} raised by the traditional levy still dominated.{{sfn|Faszcza|2021|p=32}}