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<p>[QUOTE="lehmansterms, post: 3938346, member: 80804"]Mercenaries - like Danubian Celtic warriors in the Hellenistic period - at the end of the campaigns for which they were hired took their pay from Alexander or whomever in the large Greek silver coins which were created to pay them and went home with their loot. Then for several generations you see imitative types created locally using those pieces as prototypes. This is one example where I actually know what some soldiers did with their pay. The less formally "Hellenized" might not have used coins in a way that would seem familiar to us since their home economies may still have been primarily conducted through in-kind trade. They couldn't "spend" them until their societies had advanced to the point of using coins for everyday transactions so they tended to be trophies, or were considered to be something like medals or jewelry, a store of value, ingots, etc.</p><p>The Roman army - the legions, at any rate - consisted of lifetime professionals. "Home", as a concept, somewhere they aspired to return to, was nowhere nearly so strong as it had been with the Greek/Celtic mercenaries. The Roman soldiers served until they had fought in X number of campaigns (the number changed from time to time, but usually took an entire adult lifetime) and until they were retired, "paroled", presented with their army diplomas and settled on a piece of land in a newly created military retirement settlement, wherever the army happened to be at any given time was "home", wherever it might be.</p><p>I'm not sure the actual legionnaires had access to or carried very much money. However, armies and cohorts within armies did tend to be transferred and/or travel all around as their services were needed in various conflicts or to garrison the frontiers, etc, and they certainly brought at least a few coins with them. Metal detecting finds in hinterlands like Britannia will occasionally include "erratic" items from distant places which you wouldn't think would be in circulation there. These are very much the minority of types found, however. </p><p>Chances are tetradrachms like these were created primarily to buy bulk equipment and supplies for the whole army, pay huge bribes, etc, and few of them were actually in the soldiers' hands. The soldiers had some small change for personal things, but to the extent any of them was able after having their equipment, food, etc, deducted from their pay and devoting a fairly large percentage of what was left to the burial societies and/or a few sending it to a wife or family somewhere, their wealth, such as it was, existed on the army's books and the balance might eventually be paid out to them sometime, but soldiers on the march - and they marched everywhere they went - or in the field don't really carry or use much money.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="lehmansterms, post: 3938346, member: 80804"]Mercenaries - like Danubian Celtic warriors in the Hellenistic period - at the end of the campaigns for which they were hired took their pay from Alexander or whomever in the large Greek silver coins which were created to pay them and went home with their loot. Then for several generations you see imitative types created locally using those pieces as prototypes. This is one example where I actually know what some soldiers did with their pay. The less formally "Hellenized" might not have used coins in a way that would seem familiar to us since their home economies may still have been primarily conducted through in-kind trade. They couldn't "spend" them until their societies had advanced to the point of using coins for everyday transactions so they tended to be trophies, or were considered to be something like medals or jewelry, a store of value, ingots, etc. The Roman army - the legions, at any rate - consisted of lifetime professionals. "Home", as a concept, somewhere they aspired to return to, was nowhere nearly so strong as it had been with the Greek/Celtic mercenaries. The Roman soldiers served until they had fought in X number of campaigns (the number changed from time to time, but usually took an entire adult lifetime) and until they were retired, "paroled", presented with their army diplomas and settled on a piece of land in a newly created military retirement settlement, wherever the army happened to be at any given time was "home", wherever it might be. I'm not sure the actual legionnaires had access to or carried very much money. However, armies and cohorts within armies did tend to be transferred and/or travel all around as their services were needed in various conflicts or to garrison the frontiers, etc, and they certainly brought at least a few coins with them. Metal detecting finds in hinterlands like Britannia will occasionally include "erratic" items from distant places which you wouldn't think would be in circulation there. These are very much the minority of types found, however. Chances are tetradrachms like these were created primarily to buy bulk equipment and supplies for the whole army, pay huge bribes, etc, and few of them were actually in the soldiers' hands. The soldiers had some small change for personal things, but to the extent any of them was able after having their equipment, food, etc, deducted from their pay and devoting a fairly large percentage of what was left to the burial societies and/or a few sending it to a wife or family somewhere, their wealth, such as it was, existed on the army's books and the balance might eventually be paid out to them sometime, but soldiers on the march - and they marched everywhere they went - or in the field don't really carry or use much money.[/QUOTE]
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