What Really Happened on a Roman Soldier's LAST DAY Before Retirement? 25 Years Paid in One Morning

What Really Happened on a Roman Soldier's LAST DAY Before Retirement? 25 Years Paid in One Morning What happened on a Roman soldier's last day before retirement? Roman soldier retirement was not a farewell party: after twenty-five years in the Roman army, a legionary's whole career was settled in one morning, in coins, land and rights. We follow Gaius, a Roman legionary of the Third Legion, through that last day, using real Roman documents, real laws and real archaeology. You wake up in a Roman fortress in North Africa, and for the last time a centurion is allowed to beat you with a stick. By sunset you are a veteran, with a purse of silver, a plot of land in a town that does not exist yet, and a list of things the army will never give back. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT ROMAN SOLDIER RETIREMENT 1. The contract: how long a Roman soldier really served, and why sixteen years became twenty-five. 2. Roman soldier pay: what a legionary earned, and what the army took back for hay, food, boots and the camp Saturnalia. 3. The savings cap: why a revolt on the Rhine in AD 89 limited what a soldier could keep. 4. The praemia: 12,000 sesterces, about ten years of a Roman soldier's salary, paid in one morning. 5. Who paid: the military treasury of Augustus and its new tax on inheritances. 6. The way out: the three kinds of discharge, and why only one was honourable. 7. The paperwork: the bronze diploma that a legionary like Gaius never received. 8. The family: why Roman soldiers could not legally marry until Septimius Severus. 9. The land: how a Roman legion built Timgad from nothing for its own veterans. KEY NUMBERS FROM THE VIDEO 25 years: the service of a Roman legionary by the end of the first century. 1,200 sesterces: a legionary's yearly pay after Domitian's raise, the only one between Augustus and Septimius Severus. 1,000 sesterces: the most a soldier could keep at the standards after the revolt of AD 89. 12,000 sesterces: the praemia, about ten years of pay in one payment. 5 percent: the tax on inheritances Augustus created to fill the military treasury. AD 197: the year Roman soldiers were finally allowed to marry, almost a century after Gaius. WHAT GAIUS GAINS AND WHAT HE LOSES Gained: 12,000 sesterces, a plot of land in a new veterans' town, freedom from many taxes, and the right to a legal family. Under Roman law, a veteran could no longer be beaten, thrown to the beasts or sent to the mines. Lost: his salary of 1,200 sesterces a year, his rations, his bunk, the legion's doctors, and the men he shared a tent with for twenty years. A tombstone from his own legion sums up another soldier's life in two numbers: forty-five years lived, eighteen served. WHO THIS IS FOR Anyone curious about the real life of a Roman soldier: not the battles, but the contract, the payslip, the savings and the retirement. If you are searching what happened when Roman soldiers retired, how much a Roman soldier was paid, or what life was like for Roman veterans in ancient Rome, start here. CHAPTERS 00:00 The Last Morning Under the Vine Stick 01:32 The Twenty-Five Year Contract 02:57 A Roman Legionary's Payslip 05:04 12,000 Sesterces, and Who Paid for Them 06:31 Three Ways Out of the Legion 07:23 The Bronze Diploma Gaius Never Got 09:02 The Family He Was Never Allowed to Have 10:17 Timgad, the Town That Did Not Exist Yet 13:07 What Gaius Loses Today 14:51 Was It Worth It? Stay to the end: a sentence carved into the stone of Timgad, spelling mistake included, says what Roman veterans really wanted from the rest of their lives. SOURCES The pay account of the legionary Quintus Julius Proculus, AD 81 (P. Gen. Lat. 1). Tacitus, Annals 1.17, 1.23 and 1.34 (the mutinies of AD 14). Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.25 and 55.23 to 55.25 (terms of service and the military treasury). Augustus, Res Gestae 3, 16 and 17. Suetonius, Domitian 7 and 23. Digest 49.16 and 49.18 (soldiers and veterans in Roman law). Gaius, Institutes 1.57. Roman military diplomas, CIL XVI. The founding inscription of Timgad, CIL VIII 17843. Phang, The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (2001). Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (2003). After 25 years in the legion, which reward would you keep: the 12,000 sesterces, a house plot in Timgad, or the right to marry? Tell us in the comments, and subscribe to BELOW Rome History for a new Roman history documentary every 3 days. Gaius is a fictional Roman soldier; the documents, laws and numbers in this video are real. Illustrations are artistic reconstructions made for this documentary. #romansoldier #ancientrome #romanhistory