Stipendiarii
Stipendiarii (1) Persons who received a fixed pay or salary, as stipendiariae cohortes (Hirtius, Bell. Afr. 43; cf. Livy, 8.8).
(2) Those peoples in the Roman provinces were so called who had to pay a fixed money tribute, stipendium, in contradistinction to the vectigales (Cic. Ver. 4.60, 134), who paid decumae, or a fixed percentage of the produce of their lands or other income [see VECTIGALIA; PROVINCIAE]. The word stipendium was used for tribute,
because it was originally appropriated to the purpose of furnishing the Roman soldiers with pay (stipendium, Livy, 4.36, 60; Tac. Hist. 4.74). All provinces paid stipendium, except Sicily, and except, Asia between B.C. 123-48. The money was for the most part raised and paid over by each township.
Later, the lawyers of the Empire distinguished stipendium from tributum, making both mean a land-tax of fixed amount; but the former was raised in senatorial provinces, the latter in Imperial provinces (Gaius, 2.21).
(See also under VECTIGALIA No. 13.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.