[v01dlight]

"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”

[qzw]

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.

[doikor]

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.

[Palomides]

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

[rsynnott]

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.

[maxander]

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.)