Bret Devereaux

Hey, @BretDevereaux, can you write something about (or send a link to) historical inequality in pay between different ranks of soldiers?

Wikipedia says centurions got 10 times base pay, and primi pili 60 times; the US O-10 vs. E-4 pay gap is just 6:1. @BretDevereaux

Yes, that's from the Speidel article (full citation in the quote-tweet). Speidel is making some assumptions to fill in gaps in attested pay-rates, but they're pretty reasonable assumptions.

The assumption Speidel is making, by the by, is that the ratio was constant, and so raises in army pay over time bumped everyone by the same percentage and thus that he can use some relatively lay pay figures (c. 235-8) and then(because we know changes in regular soldier pay...

...he can back-computer centurion pay at earlier periods along a constant ratio. I generally buy the argument (and he has some good supporting evidence) but it is important to know where the guesswork lies in terms of our actual pay data.

But his numbers are that a regular soldier in the legions got 900HS per year. An auxiliary gets 5/6ths of that. There are then regular soldiers who are 1.5x and 2x pay. Lowest ranking centurion is 15x, primus ordo is 30x, primus pilus is 60x.