At the end of the war between Octavian and Antony, their combined armies totaled some 60 legions (about 300,000 men, estimated on the basis of RG 3.3). Augustus reduced this to 28 legions. This entailed both risks and opportunities. He might create a mass of discontented ex-soldiers to provide military support for a future challenger for power. He might lose the support of Italian towns by expropriating land to resettle veterans. On the other hand if he rewarded the veterans appropriately, their future loyalty would lie with him and thus secure his position.
Augustus advertised prominently in the Res Gestae his foundation of provincial veteran colonies as well as Italian settlements and the discharge of 300,000 veterans to those colonies or to their homes, each rewarded with money or land (RG 28; 3.3). He boasted that he had given 600 million sesterces (150 million denarii) to pay for land for veterans settled in Italy and 260 million denarii to buy provincial land (RG 16.1). Payment rather than confiscation may have reduced the tensions caused by Octavian’s earlier resettlements of veterans (see, for example, Verg. Ecl. 1 and Suet. Aug. 13). His major colonial settlements took place in 30 and 14 bce, but subsequently he rewarded veterans primarily with cash praemia rather than land. From 6
CE these were drawn from the aerarium militare, a new military treasury primed with 170 million sesterces of Augustus’ own money (Dio 55.25.1-3; RG 17.2), another largess by the emperor to secure the veterans’ loyalty. Thereafter this treasury drew funds from new taxes on inheritance and auction sales (Dio 55.25.5-6; 56.28.4; Tac. Ann. 1.78). The provision of a regular structure for the retirement of veterans focused their loyalty on the emperor and the state and avoided some of the problems of the republican period, when soldiers looked to individual commanders to provide for their retirement from booty and confiscated land.
World History
