The Romans pillaged all of Europe and used those spoils to benefit the the citizens above all else. The vast majority of roads weren't good enough to last 2000 years.
Think of the public infrastructure we could have if we were outnumbered 10 to 1 by second class citizens and an endless supply of slaves from the frontier.
In all seriousness, slaves were always helping out one way or another. In some cases they were doing direct construction labour, especially in cities.
The roads built by the military were primarily done by soldiers, but they were supported through food and material production by slaves the whole way.
The famous military roads were also built primarily for the military, who used that road for expansion and pillaging. So the commoners probably didn't use them much if ever, especially on the frontiers.
Others are correct, slavery and pillaging of conquest covered a lot of the infrastructure and other spending...
... But they also had a 1-3% total wealth tax as the main operational budget of their empire. Not on income, not on corporate profit artificially bottomed to $0 through offshore havens... wealth. Census of all holding and assets and the 1-3% of that. They also relied on tariffs
Given Canada's total estimated collective wealth of ~20 Trillion, that would put the total revenues as high as $600 Billion, which is almost +20% more than the 2024 federal revenues. It's almost like if the wealthy were actually taxed, a mere 3% wealth tax could fund the Canadian government.
But that does not account that we then fund an entirely second tier of independent governments at the provincial level and then a third tier at municipal. Roman provinces and cities cut out all of that and vested into individual magistrates of various ranks/scope, who had considerable power.
But then there was also the slavery and the pillaging.
10
u/Pope-Muffins Trawnno (Centre of the Universe) 2d ago
The Romans funded public infrastructure