VĬĀTĬCUM

is, properly speaking, everything nece ary for a person setting out on a journey, and thus comprehends money, provisions, dre es, ve els, . When a Roman magistrate, praetor, proconsul, or quaestor went to his province, the state provided him with all that was nece ary for his journey. But as the state in this, as in most other cases of expenditure, preferred paying a sum at once to having any part in the actual busine , it engaged contractors ( red empt ores ), who for a stipulated sum had to provide the magistrates with the viaticum, the principal parts of which appear to have been beasts of burden and tents ( muli et tabernacula ). August us introduced some modification of this system, as he once for all fixed a certain sum to be given to the proconsuls (probably to other provincial magistrates also) on setting out for their provinces, so that the red empt ores had no more to do with it.