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Replica of a Roman military diploma discharging an auxiliary and granting him citizenship, bronze, based on 1st century AD original
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Empires doing empire things, like running pyramid schemes of infinite growth. Until there's no more spoils to share.
what
I claim that empire (the Roman empire as well as other empires before and after it) has always been a pyramid scheme, and granting citizenship was a way to keep the scheme running in Rome (Roman soldiers would fight to conquer more lands for the empire, and in return be granted citizenship and some of the conquered lands.) This could only work in an ever-expanding empire, and in that is it is somewhat similar to the 'infinite growth' narratives of modern times.
That's not a very strong claim by the time of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire expanded comparatively little, in contrast to the strongly expansionist Roman Republic. War booty was a negligible amount of the Roman economy and government budget, and the Empire was at its most prosperous and successful in times of extended peace. Auxiliary soldiers which received citizenship did not receive land; legionaries who received retirement bonuses already had citizenship. Roman soldiers at the time of the Empire were rarely directly awarded land - more often their retirement bonus was paid in cash. There was generally resistance to further expanding the military in the Roman government because it was not economical, and did not make greater returns than its expense.
Thanks for correcting me and adding detail, after all my knowledge is rather vague.
No worries! In the early Imperial era, great attention is paid to Roman wars, and they certainly made a few opportunistic men very rich, but generally were inconsequential to the Empire as a whole.