Hello,
I was looking around for information in primary sources on what were the qualifications to join the Roman army after the Punic wars and I was not able to find anything at all. However I later on I found this mention in Wikipedia "Livy implies that, after Cannae, the minimum property qualification for legionary service was largely ignored."
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army_of_the_mid-Republic?oldformat=true#Social_impact_of_military_service It is written right at the end of the first paragraph under "Social impact of military service"
Usually there is a reference to the source of what is written in Wikipedia but this time it is not there. I tried finding it myself in the Livy book but I could not find it. If Livy did wrote that and I had the source on it would be immensely helpful!
I posted this on r/history few hours ago too but I have not received a reply there yet and I can not figure out how to do the crosspost thing. I hope this is not against the rules
The reference you are looking for is as follows:
The senate then authorized the appointment of a dictator and Marcus Junius [Pera] was named to that office, with Tiberius Sempronius as master of the horse. Proclaiming a levy they enlisted the young men over seventeen and some who still wore the purple-bordered dress of boyhood. Of these they made up four legions and a thousand horse. They also sent men to the allies and the Latins to take over their soldiers, as by treaty provided. They gave orders that armour, weapons and other equipment should be made ready, and took down from the temples and porticoes the ancient spoils of enemies. The levy wore a strange appearance, for, owing to the scarcity of free men and the need of the hour, they bought, with money from the treasury, eight thousand young and stalwart slaves and armed them, first asking each if he were willing to serve. They preferred these slaves for soldiers, though they might have redeemed the prisoners of war at less expense (Livy 22.57.8-12).
As Livy states, in this period of emergency (I imagine a tumultus was declared, but the reference escapes me at the moment), all the rules were relaxed so that another consular army-sized force could be put into the field immediately. Men under 17, the minimum age, were apparently called up, and men who could not afford their equipment were supplied from temples and spoils. A large number of slaves, who gave excellent service over the next few years, were purchased and also equipped at the expense of the state. Note that even in these dire straits, the Senate refused to ransom the legions guarding the camp at Cannae that had surrendered and were captured mostly intact. These men were later returned to Rome by Hannibal and languished in Sicily for most of the war, until Scipio brought them over to Africa in 203 BC (as the Senate would not give him more troops). These hard-bitten, shamed Cannae veterans men redeemed themselves at Zama in 202 BC.
The extreme manpower needs of the Second Punic War, followed by the constant campaigns and garrisons in the 2nd century, particularly in Spain, saw the usual recruitment standards relaxed permanently. In particular, the state began to subsidize soldiers more regularly so that, by the time of the Marian reforms, the official mass enlistment of capite censi was really just the final formalisation of an old trend indeed.