Wait, What!?

[sirfiggin]

This is going to sound odd at first, but believe me I'm telling it straight.

On the paeninsula italica page, there's a thread linked to a podcast about the history of the roman empire, the narrator seems very learned and impressed me with his depth of knowledge, but then he said something during his chapter on the war with Hannibal (part a) that struck me as rather shocking, he said until the second punic war, the senate had never imposed a tax on it's citizenry to maintain the treasury, but after the defeats inflicted by hannibal it had run low on income to pay new soldiers.

But the Romans were renouned for taxes, that was part of the reason the germanic tribes rose up during the time around the battle of teutoburgwald, so what I want to ask you guys is;

1. How did rome raise cash from the early to mid republican period?

2. How did the taxation system work and evolve as the empire grew?

3.Has any of this been configured into the game, as in, will the economy system be different for each culture?

[Tankai]

I dont know about taxing, but I recal hearing that the etruscans had a lot of gold(or was it silver?) mines in italian soil, helping their inicial development.

There's a possibility that trought the inicial roman conquests of the neighbouring regions, the senate/state would take what they needed from plunder or trough a 'temporary client faction's enslavement' system. But this is an unlikely suggestion.

[Grythius Avalorius]

Plus, the early republic period saw no paid soldiery. All middle / upper class provided all thier own gear and provisions and marched to war solely on thier duty to Rome.

[Tankai]

I forgot that one. And so the state would need more money to train, equip and supply larger numbers of simple men, creating a more professional army for greater wars.

[Flyboy]

He said to maintain the treasury. Yeah Rome was known for tax grubbing, especially once it expanded beyond Italy, but during Hannibal's time money was badly needed. Hell after Cannae Rome had almost no soldiers or even centurions left to train the new ones; vast sums of money were needed to reequip, retrain and maintain relations with the allies. Before Rome taxed because it could, this allowed it to build and maintain all the splendors of Italy, but now the taxes were required or Rome would quickly run out of the necessary money to fight Hannibal.

Oh, and I know In PI they're using some kind of special combat system. Is EB gonna approach anything like this? In EB I most of the stats were dot on but there were a few that kinda weren't, so that might be a way of making things a little more dot on.

[oudysseos]

Sirfiggin- there is a difference between the Senate imposing a tax on Roman citizens and imposing one on people in conquered territories or on soi-disant Allies: I believe that it is correct that a full Roman citizen normally paid no tax at this time. Remember, Roman Citizenship was many-levelled and complex, and did not originally or automatically apply to everyone in Italy. The Social War, which was largely concerned with issues of citizenship and taxation in Italy, didn't happen until 100 years or so after Hannibal.

[Aneximanes]

As they said earlyer, the Romans didnt tax the people with roman citizenship, however in the years before the brothers Grácchus not many people had the roman citizenschip. only about 250.000 adult men. All the other citizens had a citizenship of their own city. and that city had to pay taxes to Rome. Mainly troops and goods. Also, the Romans didnt need to pay their troops as they bought their own equipment. The only, obvious, downside to that was that they did not have a big army nor an army with professional soldiers.

After the second punic wars the italic (italic being the boot below the river Po) 'allies' got the roman citizenship. This increased the number of potential legionairs and bound the provinces to Rome. In this period Rome got immensly rich from the conquests in the East and South in the aftermath of the second punic wars.

After the turbulent years of the civil wars the tax system came back and now every province had to pay for the troops that where stationed in it. Plus some other taxes that where very often non-monetary, grain for the troops etc. The taxes where also mainly spent in the province it came from. So the wealth of a province depended, well... on the wealth of the province :p (that is why the eastern provinces remained the richer ones and the Gaellic provinces never became very rich.)

There where exeptions ofcourse. Like Sicily and Egypt that exported a massive amount of grain to Rome.

cheers and excuse my english