Who led Roman legions during the Republic, and did they all have the immense power that men like Marius and Caesar possessed as a result of these positions of command?

by Responsible-Leg-6558

I’m taking a history class on the fall of the Roman Republic, and I’m a little bit confused about the impact of the legions and their commanders. I learned from lectures that Sulla was a general, who also held two consulships. He and Gaius Marius, another general, both were able to use their personal legions to fight a civil war against each other and seize power in Rome.

I’m confused as to how exactly this diehard loyalty of the legions to their commanders (also mentioned with Julius Caesar) came to be. Why were the Roman legions so loyal to their generals, rather than a sense of duty to uphold the Republic and its democratic processes?

ParallelPain

This is a fairly outdated view on the Late Roman Republic.

Please see, courtesy of /u/XenophonTheAthenian:

  1. There was no such thing as the Marian reforms[1][2] and [3] (by /u/Duncan-M)
  2. The expansion of Roman armies were by Sulla, and not through changes in the citizen group that can be conscripted, but in the magistrates who were allowed to raise armies.
  3. Roman citizens and soldiers did not become blindly obedient fanatics to their senator patrons and army generals [1][2]
  4. The image of Augustus being a benevolent tyrant is a product of his own propaganda and Victorian scholars. A lot of contemporary criticisms of him survives to this day, if only because they were told with enough ambiguity or paired with enough praises to not get the author killed.

The question here is specifically addressed in the third point. While not speaking for every single person, it is important to remember the people and common soldiers very often thought that they were upholding "a sense of duty to the Republic and its democratic processes" by following, or indeed demanding they be led against another Roman they believed were desecrating said democratic processes.