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Pay in the Roman army was defined by the annual stipendium received by a Roman soldier, of whatever rank he was, from the Republican era until the Later Roman Empire. It constituted the main part of the Roman soldier's income, who from the end of the Republic began to receive, in addition to the spoils of war , prize money called donativa .
[5] [6] Livy mentions that the stipendium was established in the year 407 BCE during the war with Veii; he states that the patricians in the Senate decreed that payment shall be provided for Roman soldiers from the coffers of the Senate. Previously, according to Livy, Roman soldiers had financed their own military service. [7]
The much lower remuneration for 4th-century soldiers is reflected in total army costs. Duncan-Jones estimates the total annual cost of the military in c. 150 AD at c. 670 million sesterces . [ 22 ] This is 167.5 million denarii.
After the death of Julius Caesar, the state demanded increased funds for the civil war and so reintroduced the tributum. [17] Citizens in the provinces had continued to pay unless they were subject to immunity, as was seen in the case of Egypt, [18] but that did not free them from their obligation to hand in a declaration for the census. [19]
All soldiers of the army were paid 168 sestertii (equivalent to 42 denarii) [h] each from the spoils of war, officers were paid twice as much while cavaliers were paid thrice as much. [77] The loot Vulso brought to Rome was used by the Roman Senate to pay off the debts it had incurred during the Second Punic War .
President Francisco Solano López ordered the decimation of the battalion, which was accordingly formed into line and every tenth man shot. [19] In 1914, in France, there was a case in which a company of Tunisian tirailleurs (colonial soldiers) refused an order to attack and was ordered decimated by the divisional commander. This involved the ...
Even after the reduction in the number of Roman legions from about fifty to twenty-eight (500,000 down to 300,000 full-time soldiers and auxiliaries) the Roman state under Augustus still spent 640 million sesterces on military costs alone per annum (with total state expenses hovering around 1,000 million). [99]
Third-century Roman soldiers battling barbarian troops on the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260) Rome was established as a nation by making aggressive use of its high military potential. From very early on in its history, it would raise two armies annually to campaign abroad. The Roman military was far from being solely a defense force.