What Happened on a Roman Soldier's Last Day Before Retirement?

Your knees ache, North African grit sits in your teeth, and after twenty years under the standard, today decides what your service was worth. Roman soldier retirement was meant to be the reward, and you may recognise its catch from any pension promise made today. It is AD 100. You are a legionary of the Third Augustan Legion on your last day, waiting to learn whether you leave with a purse of 12,000 sesterces or a field that might be swamp. This reconstruction follows that day from the dawn line to sunset on the slopes of the Aurès mountains. You'll see what a legionary's 10 asses a day bought against a 2-as loaf at Pompeii, and why the pension fund Augustus created in AD 6 with 170 million sesterces of his own was kept full by a 5 percent tax on strangers' inheritances. The Res Gestae shows the choice between land and cash, and the new military colony of Thamugadi, today's Timgad, shows where the land went. Tacitus records the Pannonian mutiny of AD 14, when soldiers demanded a denarius a day and discharge after 16 years, and how a 1 percent tax on auction sales took that shorter term away the very next year. Suetonius describes how Caligula cut the reward to 6,000 sesterces. The day ends at Thamugadi's founding inscription, where you count the names it chose to carve. Chapters 0:00 Your Last Day in the Legion, AD 100 1:29 Mutiny Over Old Men and Swamp Land 1:52 What 10 Asses a Day Really Bought 2:27 Dawn: The 20-Year Rule on Paper 3:29 Morning: Who Filled the Pension Fund 4:29 Midday: Cash Payout or a Land Grant 5:36 Afternoon: Walking the Timgad Grid 6:50 Evening: The 16-Year Deal of AD 14 7:52 How a Sales Tax Set Your Exit Date 9:34 The Founding Stone of Thamugadi 10:43 Your First Free Morning #AncientRome #RomanSoldiers #RomanHistory Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Timgad (Thamugadi), Aurès, Algeria, AD 100: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/194 Trajan; legate L. Munatius Gallus; Legio III Augusta, Thamugadi (Timgad), Numidia, AD 100: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of... Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 55 (Loeb translation, LacusCurtius), AD 5: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/... Augustus; Cassius Dio, Res Gestae Divi Augusti 17 (trans. Thomas Bushnell); Roman History 55.25, AD 6: http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deed... Tacitus (speech of Percennius), Annals 1.17 (trans. Church & Brodribb, 1876), Pannonian legions, AD 14: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_An... Music (0m00s–4m31s): "Vowel of the Deep Sacred Drone by Mantice" by bassimat (freesound.org, CC0) https://freesound.org/people/bassimat... Music (4m28s–11m12s): "Theta Gateway Sacred Drone by Mantice" by bassimat (freesound.org, CC0) https://freesound.org/people/bassimat...