Roman Empire

C

4

Coinage and Taxes

Merchants throughout the empire and as far away as India used Roman coins, but the monetary system primarily served as a way for the emperors to pay their troops, because the soldiers expected cash. When an emperor had insufficient income, he was forced to raise taxes, seize property, or, as a final measure, melt down existing coins and mint new ones that weighed less or contained smaller amounts of precious metals. Silver coins were a basic medium of exchange during the empire, and one of the major Roman coins, a denarius (plural, denarii), equaled four of the smaller silver coins called sesterces. During the reign of Augustus, a silver denarius weighed 5.7 gm (.20 oz) and was 99 percent pure. By ad 193 it had dropped to 4.3 gm (.15 oz) and was only 70 percent pure. The deficit spending of later emperors nearly halved the silver value of the coinage.

The Roman Empire taxed the people under its control, and the taxes fell most heavily on conquered peoples in the empire. Roman citizens did not have to pay the individual or head tax required of each subject of the empire, and the empire exempted Italian land from tribute. However Roman citizens did have to pay the 5 percent inheritance tax, a 1 percent sales tax, a customs or import duty, and a tax on freed slaves. Local magistrates, imperial officials, and professional tax collectors were all employed to gather taxes, and the imperial census became an important tool to identify potential taxpayers. Total taxes amounted to about 10 percent of the empire’s gross national product. That percentage of tax may seem low by modern standards, but the imperial government provided minimal services. For provincials who could barely make a living, paying 10 percent of their income to the government was a considerable burden.

D

The Roman Military

Once Augustus had defeated Mark Antony, he began to reduce the empire’s remaining military forces from 60 legions to 28. He then had to provide over 100,000 men with land, which was the traditional form of pension. Augustus knew that earlier seizures of land had led to insurrections, so he used the spoils of his successful Egyptian campaign against Antony and Cleopatra to purchase property for some soldiers. He settled others in 40 new colonies around the Mediterranean. These colonies provided additional security in the provinces, and eventually became important centers for spreading the Roman way of life. Augustus founded the cities of Turin in Italy; Barcelona, Spain; Nîmes, France; Trier, Germany; Tangier, Morocco, and Beirut, Lebanon.

During the republic, the general who recruited an army often armed and paid the soldiers. Augustus wanted to ensure that in the future no rebellious general could threaten the regime, so he established a central military treasury. He set funds aside for the legionaries. When they retired, they received a grant to purchase a plot of land to support their families. Augustus also tried to make his troops more professional by instituting a standard legionary command structure, system of rank, and rate of pay. Roman soldiers swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. These legionaries also received their pay, bonuses, and pensions from the emperor, so they were not often tempted to follow a renegade commander.

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Augustus also bound his troops to him with regular compensation rather than the prospect of booty or goods seized during war. Each legionary received an annual salary of 225 denarii, from which the military deducted the cost of food and clothing. The government supplemented these wages with an occasional bonus like the 75 denarii provided in Augustus's will. Promotions also brought enormous salary increases. In each legion 60 centurions, noncommissioned officers who came from the ranks, each received 3,750 denarii, while the head centurion earned 15,000 denarii. After 20 years of service, a legionary received land or cash equal to 14 years' pay to support him in retirement. Until ad 200, the military did not permit legionaries to marry, although many had unofficial wives and children living alongside the camps in makeshift towns. The land granted to the legionaries on retirement was usually located in provincial colonies where the veterans could reinforce the power of the legions.

The legionaries who made up the empire's heavy infantry were citizens, but conquered peoples provided auxiliary troops with the skills that the Romans lacked. Cavalry from Gaul, archers from Lebanon, and slingers from the Spanish island of Mallorca (who used large slingshots to hurl rocks at the enemy) all fought for Rome, and they received two-thirds of a legionary's salary. These colonial soldiers, who came from diverse cultural backgrounds, learned Latin and received Roman citizenship for themselves and their families when they retired. The auxiliaries helped bring Latin and Roman civilization to their homeland. In the early empire, the number of auxiliaries equaled the 175,000 legionaries. However, the empire's 350,000 soldiers were not an enormous force to secure 6,000 miles of frontier and to ensure internal security for an empire of 50 million people.

The Romans did not normally station legions in Italy, which was protected by the special troops known as the praetorian guard. This elite force, which was responsible for the safety of the emperor, received triple pay and special bonuses. The prefect or commander of the guard controlled access to the emperor, and later prefects acquired administrative and judicial authority. The increasing power of the praetorians had both favorable and unfavorable consequences: The guards protected some emperors but murdered others.

Augustus and his successors busied Roman troops with expanding and protecting the borders of the empire. After the civil war, Augustus turned his attention to tribal invasions in the western portion of the empire. The inscription on the Trophy of Augustus, which stands 100 feet high at La Turbie in the mountains high above Monaco, records his suppression of the stubborn Alpine tribes between Italy and France. Augustus also pacified Spain, and in 12 bc his stepson Drusus (Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus) conquered Germany as far as the Elbe River. Eventually Roman rule extended to the Danube River, where the new provinces of Rhaetia, Noricum, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Moesia stretched from present-day Switzerland through Austria, Yugoslavia, and Hungary to Bulgaria on the Black Sea.

Despite the strength of the Roman military, conquest was not accomplished without resistance. The Romans did not have a large force in the Balkans, for example, and when the Pannonians rebelled against Roman rule in ad 6, Tiberius, another stepson of Augustus, needed three years and 100,000 men to put it down. But the greatest disaster took place in Germany. In ad 9, the Roman general Publius Quintilius Varus led three legions into an ambush, and they were annihilated by a Germanic tribe called the Cherusci in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. This catastrophe, the worst Roman defeat in two centuries, forced the aging Augustus to adopt a policy of caution and restraint.

E

The Legacy of Augustus

As the result of his long reign, Augustus left a legacy of peace and prosperity to the Roman people. He reduced class warfare in the city, and his new political system ended civil conflict for the first time in a century. Internal peace revived Roman patriotism and economic prosperity, and Augustus improved the defense of the frontiers and the administration of the provinces. Some senators lamented the loss of their “freedom,” but the benefits of Augustus’s rule far outweighed the costs to senatorial privileges. His new political system, which is known as the Roman Empire, brought peace and prosperity that lasted, with the exception of the brief civil war of ad 69, for two hundred years.

On his deathbed at the age of 76 in ad 14, Augustus asked those assembled around him if he had played his part well in the “comedy of life.” Augustus had played many roles well. He had begun as the dutiful heir of Caesar and then transformed himself into the ruthless young military commander, the self-righteous moralist against Antony, and the shrewd politician of reconstruction. Augustus was also a generous patron of literature and art and, in his final decades, the father figure who provided food, entertainment, and security to the Roman people. The Greeks had called Augustus a god in his lifetime, and at his death the Romans deified him as well.

IV

Expansion and Consolidation

The rule of Augustus brought social stability, economic revival, and efficient administration to Rome, but it was unable to ensure the future. Augustus seemingly owed his power to the Senate and Roman people; in fact, his power came from his personal authority, and there was a real possibility his death might trigger a renewed civil war. For decades, Augustus watched his chosen successors die until only his stepson, Tiberius, remained. His selection of an heir outside of his immediate bloodline set the precedent for the future; struggles for power once fought on the battlefield were now waged in the imperial palace.

Augustus hoped to retain power within the Julian family, while disguising the fact that he had established a monarchy. He had only one child, a daughter Julia by his first wife, and his 51-year marriage to his third wife, Livia, brought him much personal happiness and a remarkable political partnership, but no further children. Livia had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, from a previous marriage to Tiberius Claudius Nero. Tiberius and later Drusus’s son Claudius became emperors of the Claudian line. Julia’s grandson Gaius-Caligula and her great-grandson Nero eventually reached the imperial throne. Together these rulers made up what came to be known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

A

Julio-Claudian Emperors

Tiberius (ad 14-37 ) was a successful general in Germany and a fine imperial administrator. He lacked the charisma of Augustus and alienated senators with his personal moodiness. He finally withdrew to his villa in Capri and placed the Roman government in the hands of his praetorian prefect, Aelius Sejanus. Despite his weaknesses, Tiberius left the empire with secure boundaries and a healthy treasury.

The great-nephew of Tiberius and his chosen successor, Gaius (ad 37-41), grew up on the German frontier where his father’s soldiers nicknamed him Caligula (“Little Boot” in Latin) because of his tiny military boots. A great-grandson of both Augustus and Mark Antony, Caligula was a popular choice for the imperial throne. He abolished the sales tax and sponsored frequent public athletic games and spectacles, but a severe illness transformed him into a vicious tyrant. Caligula murdered senators for their property and their wives, gave away Rome’s provinces to his boyhood playmates, considered making his horse consul, and demanded to be worshiped as Jupiter. Not surprisingly, one of his own guards murdered him.

In the confusion following Caligula’s assassination, some senators decided they might dispense with emperors and debated the return of the republic. The praetorian soldiers, who had profited under imperial rule, wanted a new emperor. The traditional story is that they found the only plausible candidate, Caligula’s uncle, hiding fearfully in the palace and gave him the imperial throne. Polio in childhood had left Claudius I (ad 41-54) with a limp and a stammer, but he ruled well and added Britain to the Roman Empire. He showed both intelligence and compassion in his grants of citizenship, his admission of Gauls to the Senate, and his humanitarian legislation on debt and the treatment of slaves. His fourth wife Agrippina (known as Agrippina the Younger) poisoned him to ensure that her son Nero would inherit the throne.

The 15-year-old Nero (ad 54-68) began his reign amid predictions of a new Golden Age for Rome, but fawning courtiers encouraged his despotic tendencies. He murdered both his mother and his wife at the urging of his mistress. In ad 64 a fire devastated much of Rome. The historian Tacitus suggests in his writings that Nero blamed the fledgling Christian community for the blaze. According to some sources, his persecution of Christians resulted in the deaths of two of Christianity’s most influential apostles, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Nero had a childish need for applause, and he gave vocal concerts at Greek festivals. The spectacle of a singing emperor disgusted the Romans. The neglected legions became restless, and rebellions erupted throughout the empire. All four Julio-Claudian emperors lived in the shadow of Augustus, and none felt secure on his throne. Insecurity brought tyranny, which then provoked conspiracies in the Senate and in the palace. Finally, even the army turned away from the dynasty that had created the empire.

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