A Discussion Of The Veteran Welfare Policy Of The Julio-Claudian Dynasty

Due to the continuous wars during the Roman Republic,the problems of the Roman citizen soldier became obvious.The military reform of Marius allowed many proletarians to be conscripted,what changed the time-honored citizen soldier system,whence the Late Republic witnessed civil wars raised by military quasi-dictatorial generals.Augustus,as Caesar`s legal inheritor,finished the nearly half a century lasting civil wars with flexible political methods and powerful military power.With the winner`s pose he controlled the entire empire,and began to reduce the immense army which had been formed at the beginning of the civil war,in order to appease the empire and stabilize his new rule.Meanwhile,he established a reasonable veteran welfare policy,and settled the reduced 300,000 soldiers and many garrisons,which further more prevented any dictatorial general to delude the soldiers with profits.So he addressed the need of the soldiers and prevented to haul the empire into the abyss of civil war again.His inheritors inherited and developed his veteran welfare policy.This paper will discuss the veteran welfare policy of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty in four parts.In the preface will show the significance of the chosen topic: how the Julio-Claudian Dynasty,as the successor of the Roman Republic and the pioneer of an Empire,controlled the army which was just like the sharp sword,and how they put it away.Meanwhile,the thesis introduced the Roman historical studying materials in classical time and analyzed the relevant materials of the Roman military history,especially the six military honorific diplomas of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty which provide the inscriptive historical materials and therefore could verify the historicity of the classical literature.The first part deals with the beginning of the veteran welfare policy: Servius Tullius,the sixth king of the Roman kingdom,divided the citizens into five classes by the amount of their property,with the exception of the five classes that were military servants;all the other four were grouped into the centurions.The senate distributed a salary to the soldiers with the development of the Republic external war,but after the reform of Marius the proletarians began to serve as soldiers,thus the dictatorial generals established military colonies to settle veterans and distributed the spoils ofthe wars to their former soldiers during Late Republic.The second part discusses the veteran welfare policy of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty,mainly from the aspects of the distribution of farmland,the fixed salary,the Roman citizenship,and marriage.Thus it illustrates how the Julio-Claudian Dynasty inherited the Republican tradition and reshaped it during the opened the empire.The third part evaluates to what extent the veteran policy of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty affected the contemporary and the late imperial times.The veteran welfare policy of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty was neither speeded-up nor unchanging,it was formed from its base by the emperors of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty,it also took the experiences of the Republic citizen soldier system,and learned from the Late Republic dictatorial generals.Nevertheless with the developing of the empire,the veteran welfare policy was adjusted according to realistic circumstances.The Julio-Claudian Dynasty,as the burier of the Republic and the first imperial dynasty,had both traditional and creative elements.