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Explanation: Roman soldiers were paid according to a set scale - with centurions making 16 times that of the common enlisted man - including 16 times the retirement bonus. Quite a pretty penny! Auxiliaries, non-citizen troops, got even less than enlisted legionaries - but oftentimes, in other contemporary militaries, pay was unreliable or nonexistent. At least knowing you have a paycheck is something!
I thought Auxilia got supplies on mission from Rome, but we paid by their home provinces. Maybe this is a time varying thing.
There’s a lot of variance over time, but you might be thinking of foederati, who were troops provided by allied ‘barbarian’ polities, supplied by Rome (because what use are starving troops?) but otherwise kept under their own military traditions. How much auxiliary pay was is a surprisingly contentious topic in academia, but it’s generally accepted that they were paid, and paid less than legionaries (I used the 2/3s estimate).
The home provinces of most auxiliaries would not have had the institutional capacity to get money from Point A to Point B on the other side of the Empire - provinces had surprisingly ad hoc organization, in contrast to local cities and the Empire itself.
The home provinces of most auxiliaries would not have had the institutional capacity to get money from Point A to Point B on the other side of the Empire - provinces had surprisingly ad hoc organization, in contrast to local cities and the Empire itself.
Hmm, I wonder if that was deliberate. Give the illusion of self-governance and keep local elites happy, while minimising revolt risk and red tape.
At least partially, definitely. Divide et Impera, ‘Divide and rule’. But part of it is the fact that Rome itself had grown in a kind of ad hoc way, and part of it was the wide latitude afforded to provincial governors and their personal staffs. “I’m going to make you governor, be sure to listen to all the different local secretaries, regulations, and councils” doesn’t sound nearly as appealing to be handed as a reward compared to “I’m going to make you governor; try not to look like you’re breaking the law”
A lot of nepotism and corruption in Roman government. Even so, locals, even the lower classes, often preferred to take their disagreements to provincial Roman officials, for the simple reason that it was still less corrupt than local government, lmao. C’est la vie!
