Salaries Of Roman Public Officials?

[David Amicus]

Back in ancient Rome the public officials like Senators, Consuls, Tribunes, Praetors, Quaestors etc. didn't receive a salary did they?

What got me asking was on the radio just now they were saying that there is an effort to raise the state sales tax by two cents in order to pay school teachers the same salary that members of the state legislature make.


My solution was not to pay the legislators.

[Ed Cryer]

These two websites tell it all;
http://tinyurl.com/yadmzggg
http://tinyurl.com/ydaqj6en

The political ladder (cursus honorum) was unpaid; and it's a constant
subject for students. Why did they do it? What did it get them?
Well, the higher-minded Romans liked to say "social prestige", "favour
with the gods"; public and religious heights. But when you look a bit
closer you see nepotism, corruption, power-hungry fascists and
demagogues, aristocracy competing for "top man in Rome", millionaires
made from stripping the provinces dry.
When you read Cicero's case against Verres (who was a senior
staff-officer with the governor of Sicily (consuls of Rome got a year's
governorship of a province after their one year term)) you learn a lot.
Sallust, too, the writer, on the staff of Julius Caesar in N Africa (who
came back to Rome a multi-millionaire (the "horti Sallustiani" (gardens
of Sallust) were still famous in Rome centuries later). The Hellenistic
civilisation and culture that they stripped and sold had many Elgin
Marble types of beauty.

Let me take two politicians; Caesar and Cicero.
Cicero made his name in the courts, as a lawyer; very daring in
prosecuting senior officials. Got money, inheritances and clients
showered on him. Stepped up the cursus honorum like a knife through
butter, making consul "suo anno" (youngest legally permitted). On the
heights there, Crassus and many other "optimates" (conservatives in the
senate) poured villas, works of art, libraries into his lap.

Caesar was a "popularis" (people's man). He staged games (always known
as "munera" (free gifts)), rose up the cursus getting into massive debt,
chose a province well disposed for adjacent warfare, provoked one, went
in with full forces, conquered, enslaved tens of thousands, became
richer than Croesus; solved his problem of how to get back into Rome
without being prosecuted by simply marching in with his veteran army of
Gaul.

Having written that, I can't feel very self-righteous as a Brit because
of what the British Raj did in India. In the 18th c the East India
Company bribed, conquered, wheeler-dealered, tortured and extorted their
way to millionairedom. We still have massive country piles all over our
little island built by the returned "nabobs".

Ed (and, yes, my political sympathies are with left of centre)

[Ed Cryer]

A subnote on Vespasian and Titus.

Suetonius praised V for rescuing the Empire from tottering on the edge
of ruin in civil war; and his son Titus as utterly beloved of the Roman
people.
But V rose to greatness with the JC thing; conquer, tame, bring under
control. And Titus was his right-hand accomplice. They reduced Judaea to
rubble; pillaged and burnt the Temple, used the dough to finance the
Colosseum and other monuments back in Rome, put on games in it that
lasted for ages and must have almost denuded central and n Africa of its
wildlife.
And the plebs adored them. And once you'd won the plebs' hearts you were
untouchable in Rome.

Ed