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As the territorial extent of the republic grew, the citizens who were eligible for service in the military were seeing ever increasing terms of service. The vast majority of the citizenry who served as infantry in the republican militia were landowning farmers who, as a result of the growing extent of the republic, were seeing deployment to provinces such as Hispania, Asia or Syria.
The system of levy established during the early republic which depended on these citizen farmers would deploy for a single campaigning season, coinciding with the planting and harvesting of crops. As a result of the extension of length of service in further afield provinces the citizen farmers would no longer be able to return to their farmsteads in order to plant and harvest their crops and so their land fell into a state of neglect.
The senators of Rome were not permitted to engage in any mercantile activities to generate income and so the acquisition of land was a priority (however it must be noted they were not the only rich individuals engaged in such practices). The neglected farmsteads of the citizens soldiers serving in the provinces were acquired by the rich who would employ slave labour to maximise the profitability of the estates and subsequently these events and circumstances created a number of issues, two of which were:
Plutarch notes in the Life of Tiberius Gracchus Ch.8:
Of the territory which the Romans won in war from their neighbours, a part they sold, and a part they made common land, and assigned it for occupation to the poor and indigent among the citizens, on payment of a small rent into the public treasury.
He goes on in greater detail about the causes of the symptoms you mention in your question which continued well into the first century B.C. which the Gracchi and others attempted to rectify with Julius Caesar being another.
And when the rich began to offer larger rents and drove out the poor, a law was enacted forbidding the holding by one person of more than five hundred acres of land. For a short time this enactment gave a check to the rapacity of the rich, and was of assistance to the poor, who remained in their places on the land which they had rented and occupied the allotment which each had held from the outset. But later on the neighbouring rich men, by means of fictitious personages, transferred these rentals to themselves, and finally held most of the land openly in their own names. Then the poor, who had been ejected from their land, no longer showed themselves eager for military service, and neglected the bringing up of children...
And as you have said, Marius capitalised on this and reduced the previously required property qualifications for service from property worth 3500 sesterces and having to supply his own arms to effectively no necessary qualifications. So the class known as the capite censi or "head count", i.e. those who had no property to qualify for being assessed in the the census, were now eligible for service in the military.
With the growth in territory naturally came an increase in bordering other states. One of the most notorious and organised of Rome's later rivals was the Parthians whom they often squabbled with over buffer states and border disputes as well as the migrating hordes of Gauls and Germans and rebellious, resistant Hispanic tribes. So yes, Rome did face a different strategic situation which required a greater level of organisation due to the increasing distance from Italy they engaged in conflicts and governance in.
Upvote:1
This occurs as a country goes from "pre-Empire" to Empire. Another example was the Prussia of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
In the "pre-Empire" stage, a country needs a relative small, elite army, of which the aristocracy usually forms the core. This is used against a single, major enemy, e.g. Carthage. Here, quality is more important than quantity if your opponent is Hannibal.
After a country grows to a certain size, and becomes an "Empire," it develops "multiple" enemies, each of whom are smaller and weaker than itself. Here, the need is not for an elite army to beat one "high quality" enemy, but a "mass" army to beat down a number of enemies, each of which is small and weak by itself, but are numerous in the aggregate.
By about 100 BC, the time of the "Marian" reforms, Rome had made the above transition.
Upvote:2
The Roman Empire had lost 80,000 soldiers at the battle of Arausio, effectively destroying any remaining standing force in the Northern Empire. This was a hammer blow to the Aristocracy, many of who's warring generals were killed early on in the Cimbrian war.
Marius had three basic impetuses to initiate the landless:
1). From a wonderful source: The Social War of 91- 87 BCE (from the Latin socii allies) highlights that manpower was still a problem for the Roman army, as citizenship was granted to the allied Italians at the end of the war, granting a greater pool of men for the army.
2.) Adding on to the former point, the Aristocracy that was granted land in battle consisted initially of former plebeians. What this ended up doing was ensuring Marius had considerable power in terms of his command and loyalty from the Roman soldiers. This served to give him political influence and a tangible sign of power ("you and what army?...") over his rivals, such as the dictator Sulla.
3.) Yes, they did. Wikipedia's narration of the Cimbrian war states that the tribes almost always outnumbered the Romans by a margin not less than 7-8000 men. Roman styles of fighting in the trifold system they used had become ineffective due to superior numbers engaging multiple areas of the rank as well rather than allowing the periodical progression through the ranks as usually battles went with Republican Roman armies. Read more in my sources.
Hope this helped to a certain degree.
Sources: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ancient.eu/amp/1-11830/?client=safari https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbrian_War Read here for more on the Reforms: http://romans.etrusia.co.uk/roman_army_print