Augustus in 7 B.C., instead of the customary assignments of land. At
that time he gave gratuities to his discharged soldiers amounting to
400,000,000 sesterces, as he tells us in his biography.[34] Although
this is perhaps the earliest instance of the systematic award of a
large cash payment, occasional grants of this sort occurred much
earlier, because the bonus had its beginning in the division of the
spoils of war among the soldiers, and was given at the time of the
triumph. When the practice of granting a bonus had once been formally
established, the occasions on which it was given were multiplied
for political reasons. To win popularity with the army, Tiberius,
on his accession, made a grant of money to every soldier, and his
example was followed by Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and most of their
successors. In the later empire, when the support of the army became
all-important to an emperor, bonuses increased in size; they were
given on many anniversaries, and imposed a very heavy burden on the
imperial treasury. In the fourth century the Emperor Julian, who was
far from warlike, on mounting the throne, gave to every Roman soldier
a bonus whose nominal value was equal to about thirty-two dollars.
Since there were probably 400,000 soldiers in the army, this action
cost the government $12,800,000 or nearly $50,000,000 if we roughly
estimate that gold and silver would purchase four times as much then
as they do now. The militaristic spirit of Rome has descended to us
and makes its influence felt today. The campaigns and the conquests of
great Roman commanders have been studied with minute care by generals
and statesmen in modern times. Elaborate studies, for instance, have
been made of Caesar’s campaigns by Napoleon III, by Col. Stoffel
of his staff, and in General von Göler’s great work dedicated to
Marshall von Moltke with the noteworthy phrase: “Feldherr und Sieger
auf gallischem Boden.” Elsewhere, in a paper on the trend of classical
history, I noted the fact that the study of Roman military history had
been engaging the attention of an unusually large number of scholars
in the years immediately preceding the war with the states of Central
Europe. It was also a significant thing that many of these writers in
their appraisal of the men and the events of ancient times tacitly held
to the principle that in the ultimate analysis the course of history
was determined by the use of naked force, and that the progress of the
world was furthered by the conquest of the small nation by the great
one.
6. CASES OF PATERNALISM
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