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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
163
CHAP. VI.
_____profusion of the son was the policy of one reign, and the inevitable ruin both of the army and of the empire. The vigour of the soldiers, instead of being confirmed by the severe discipline of camps, melted away in the luxury of cities. The excessive increase of their pay and donatives [1] exhausted the state to enrich the military order, whose modesty in peace, and service in war, is best secured by an honourable poverty. The demeanour of Caracalla was haughty and full of pride; but with the troops he forgot even the proper dignity of his rank, encouraged their insolent familiarity, and, neglecting the essential duties of a general, affected to imitate the dress and manners of a common soldier.
- ↑ Dion (1. Ixxviii. p. 1343.) informs us, that the extraordinary gifts of Caracalla to the army amounted annually to seventy millions of drachmae (about two millions three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.) There is another passage in Dion, concerning the military pay, infinitely curious; were it not obscure, imperfect, and probably corrupt. The best sense seems to be, that the pretorian guards received twelve hundred and fifty drachmae (forty pounds) a year. Dion, 1. Ixxvii. p. 1307. Under the reign of Augustus, they were paid at the rate of two drachmae, or denarii, per day, seven hundred and twenty a year. Tacit. Annal. i. 17. Doraitian, who increased the soldiers' pay one fourth, must have raised the pretorians to nine hundred and sixty drachmae. Gronovius de Pecunia Vetere, 1. iii. c. 2. These successive augmentations ruined the empire, for, with the soldiers' pay, their numbers too were increased. We have seen the pretorians alone increased from ten thousand to fifty thousand men.