After Octavian killed the hotheaded Antony and Cleopatra, he not only tied their corpses to a cart and paraded them through the streets, but also transported the wealth accumulated by generations of Ptolemies from Egypt back to Rome.
The Romans had an ancient custom: victors had to give every soldier a little money. The sum was small, though it increased during civil wars. At first, the reward came from captured enemy assets; in hard times, it was provided by citizens. Even when there was no booty at all, soldiers still wanted a share.
Augustus had obtained so much wealth from Egypt that he was naturally generous with this triumph money. During the republican era, as the scale of warfare expanded, generals became more generous as well. Yet even then, soldiers received only one hundred denarii. Caesar gave his soldiers two thousand, and Antony, Octavian, Brutus, and Cassius all followed Caesar's example.
Napoleon had always been generous to officers, but he did not give them this money either. Later, before the opening ceremony for the Saint-Martin Canal, he handed out small bags containing marzipan, towels, soap, and a tiny Golden Bee. They could bathe at the bathhouses opened beside the Saint-Martin Canal. If the ceremony went smoothly that day, there would also be wine and meat for them. For those vagrants, it was a rare feast.
Soldier mutinies were generally driven by pay and treatment. Some said that under the old dynasty, military expenditures amounted to ninety million francs, half of which went to officers, while the rest was divided among soldiers ten or even a hundred times more numerous.
Serving as a soldier was so poor a profession that people looked down on it, so only those at the bottom of society became soldiers. Peasants had a strange way of