Ancient Rome, during the times of the Republic, was a primarily agricultural society. The legions, which played a fundamental role in territorial expansion, were made up of free citizens, who in times of peace worked their lands, and who were recruited for war.
But that model of a part-time army proved insufficient, both to meet the innumerable and prolonged campaigns of conquest in which Rome embarked, and to establish garrisons in the subject territories. A circumstance that forced to reorganize the legions, turning them into a regular army. But of course, this measure had consequences, the main one being economic. Because: the stipendium, or stipend.
The problem is that they had to find how to deal with this expense. And they decided that they were not going to pay for it, but that they were going to put it on others. If the Roman eagles reached your territory, the tribe in question had two options: sign a treaty or face the all-powerful legions. The most advisable thing used to bet on reaching an agreement, and becoming a free or allied city. Because if you went to war and lost… you were conquered, and you became stipendiare. , and you had to pay tributes, both in the form of money, provisions, or any other service.
Monetary system
The part that was paid financially was liquidated in currency, and was used to pay the legionnaires who had conquered the territory. It was paid in denarii, the silver coin that was.
The denarius weighed 4.5 grams, and was almost pure silver. It began to be minted in the 3rd century BC, and from the beginning it became a protagonist of the economic policy of Rome. Every time they needed financing, they had two options: raise taxes or devalue the denarius. Since the value of the coin was determined by the metal used in its manufacture and by its weight, , and therefore, its weight.
In the year 145 BC the weight of the denarius had already fallen to 3.9 grams. And in Nero’s time it reached 3.41. In this way, , and there was more money to spend. It must be added that, in addition, the denarii stopped being made of pure silver, mixing it with less valuable metals. In fact, in Caracalla’s time, the coins came to have less than 50% silver. The perfect ingredients to trigger inflation.
Beyond the devaluations decreed by the different emperors, there was an additional one, caused by the classic Mediterranean picaresque, carried out by the citizens. As these coins were made of precious metals, the less favored, who had neither circus nor much less bread, scraped the edges of the coins and sold the metal filings after melting them down.
In fact, one of the functions of the argentarii, the private bankers of the time, was to withdraw from circulation the most deteriorated coins that, after passing through so many hands, had lost weight and value. A solution applied then to fight against this activity, and which has survived to this day, is to put ridges on the edges of the coins, so that it is easier to detect the manipulation with the naked eye.
The soldiers wanted to get paid in a more stable and reliable currency than the denarius
These successive inflations translated into significant discontent among the population, especially among the workers who received their pay in denarii. And the most angry, as is normal due to their number and their importance in the empire, were the legionnaires. So much so that in the fourth century they demanded a more stable and reliable currency.
The Emperor Constantine then decided to mint a gold coin, the solidus, with which the stipend of the legions began to be paid. In this way, the name of the new currency came to designate the periodic pay of the legionnaires, and later that of all those hired to do a job. While the solidus, the solid, is the etymological origin of our salary.
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