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Comment by v01dlight | Hacker News Reader

"According to Dr. Struck, chariot racer from Ancient Rome named Gaius Appuleius Diocles, amassed a fortune of 35,863,120 sesterces – the equivalent of $15 billion." ... “His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period – enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year”

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So the highest paid provincial governors were typically getting paid $3B over 18 years? Sounds kind of high and makes me rather dubious of how the $15B figure is calculated.

It's also interesting that the Roman Army apparently ate five times as much as the entire city of Rome. Resource allocation was clearly very different back then (and apparently in our favor.)

Pay <> eat.

Food wouldn’t have been the military’s main expense. In a pre-industrial society weapons and equipment were extremely expensive.

I understand that roman governors weren't really paid, they were allowed (expected) to squeeze as much money as they could out of the provinces, and could keep any "extra" after the required taxes for Rome

$3B is a totally plausible modern equivalent

It helps if you think of Rome less as a modern democracy, and more as a kind of mafia state. These weren’t civil servants; it was very normal for them to make a fortune out of a provincial governorship.

A provincal governor was responsible for tax collection, law, security, etc. They got to keep a percentage of the taxes they collected. So if you were the governor of a very prosperous province you made a lot of money. This also incentivized the governor to make their province to generate as much tax revenue as possible (good for both the governor and Rome itself)

But in turn you have to remember that it was a political position and in roman politics money was everything. They most likely paid a crazy amount of money to get the post and had to keep paying to keep it. And any further advances in politics would just cost more.

Another thing to know is that they were the leader of the provinces legion. If there was a revolt and you failed to squash it you most likely ended up dead way before more legions would arrive from other provinces.

This was pre imperial era. After that the power of a governor came from the emperor directly. They had exactly as much power and/or money as the emperor wanted to give them.

Well explained

I'd add one point

> This also incentivized the governor to make their province to generate as much tax revenue as possible (good for both the governor and Rome itself)

That society was slave labour-based, so at some point of their history they needed lots of tax revenue, to support the army, for it to collect as many slaves as possible (or, in general, for it to protect their sources of slave labour). That particular arrangement with provincial governors was one of the solutions they tried. See also the progressive extension of the right of citizenship, first limited to the city of Rome and few other places, then after various intermediate phases, extended to the whole of the Empire: citizens were the ones who were taxed.

Roman taxes varied a lot over the course of ~2000 years, so it is implicitly complicated. On big difference is that Roman tax collectors bought the right to collect taxes, the publicani.

Basically, some Roman lesser-noble (equite) goes to an auction. He buys the right to collect taxes in some village or port or something else. They even give him a special stick so that all the plebs know they gotta pay this guy. Usually, the cost of this stick was about the amount of taxes generated. The money that the guy gives Rome is treated as a loan, and it accrues interest. So the guy gets the money back at the end of his term as tax collector, plus a little bit more. Critically, if the guy just lies to the people and takes more in taxes than what he paid for the stick, he get to just keep that too. Totally legal. Usually, this guy doesn't have the cash up front, so he goes to other people to gin up the money for the auction. If the port gets hammered by a storm or the village burns down, tough cookies for the guy with the stick. He's still gonna owe the money to his creditors at the end of his term.

Jesus even talks about this in the Bible. He uses the Publican as a foil to the Pharisee (a super religious person) and talk about needing forgiveness and praying humbly. Basically, the publican is the most hated person that even Christ could think of. Not the legionaries, not the Emperors, but the tax man.

Again though, these tax systems changed a lot over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisee_and_the_Publican

> Usually, the cost of this stick was about the amount of taxes generated.

Over what time period? And was the cashflow discounted at the "risk-free" rate?

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