Aerarium

[9] In addition to the common treasury, supported by the general taxes and charged with the ordinary expenditure, there was a special reserve fund, also in the Temple of Saturn, the aerarium sanctum (or sanctius).

[2] This continued until 49 BC when Julius Caesar, after seizing the city of Rome during the civil war looted this special fund.

[4][10] Besides creating the fiscus, Augustus also established in AD 6 a military treasury (aerarium militare) as a fund for veterans' retirement benefits.

They are supposed by some to be identical with the curatores tribuum, and to have been the officials who, under the Servian organization, levied the war-tax (tributum) in the tribes and the poll-tax on the aerarii.

By the lex Aurelia (70 BC) the list of judices was composed, in addition to senators and equites, of tribuni aerarii.

According to Madvig, the original tribuni aerarii were not officials at all, but private individuals of considerable means, quite distinct from the curatores tribuum, who undertook certain financial work connected with their own tribes.

Then, as in the case of the equites, the term was subsequently extended to include all those who possessed the property qualification that would have entitled them to serve as tribuni aerarii.

On a number of occasions it is recorded that various patricians incurred the anger of the plebs by paying the spoils from war into the publicum rather than the aerarium, for example Quintus Fabius Vibulanus in 485 BC following a victory over the Volsci and Aequi.

The Aerarium Saturni (top) and its ruins (bottom); drawing by Jan Goeree, before 1704
Denarius minted by Gnaeus Nerius, who was urban quaestor in 49 BC. The obverse depicts Saturn, in whose temple the aerarium and the standards of the legions were kept. The reverse shows an aquila between two standards, inscribed H for Hastati and P for Principes , and the names of the consuls. [ 3 ]