It is a significant fact, that this method considerably increased the military culture of the individual soldier, and was essentially based upon the training of the future gladiators which was usual in the fighting- schools of the time.

The arrangement of the legion became totally different.

The thirty companies (-manipuli-) of heavy infantry, which-- each in two sections (-centuriae-) composed respectively of 60 men in the first two, and of 30 men in the third, division--had hitherto formed the tactical unit, were replaced by 10 cohorts (-cohortes-) each with its own standard and each of 6, or often only of 5, sections of 100 men apiece; so that, although at the same time 1200 men were saved by the suppression of the light infantry of the legion, yet the total numbers of the legion were raised from 4200 to from 5000 to 6000 men.
The custom of fighting in three divisions was retained, but, while previously each division had formed a distinct corps, it was in future left to the general to distribute the cohorts, of which he had the disposal, in the three lines as he thought best.

Military rank was determined solely by the numerical order of the soldiers and of the divisions.

The four standards of the several parts of the legion--the wolf, the ox with a man's head, the horse, the boar--which had hitherto probably been carried before the cavalry and the three divisions of heavy infantry, disappeared; there came instead the ensigns of the new cohorts, and the new standard which Marius gave to the legion as a whole--the silver eagle.