(Editor’s note: This article was originally published on March 25, 2019.) A payslip belonging to a Roman auxiliary soldier, posted on Twitter back in March 2019 by archaeologist Joanne Ball ...

An auxiliary was a soldier who was not a Roman citizen. He was only paid a third of a legionary’s wage. Auxiliaries guarded forts and frontiers but also fought in battles, often in the front ...

There were two main types of Roman soldiers: legionaries and auxiliaries. The Roman army was huge. It was divided up into groups called ‘legions’. Each legion had between 4,000 and 6,000 soldiers.