Why Did Roman Soldiers Compete to Be the First to Climb the Siege Ladder? | Ancient Rome

jerusalem, seventies after christ. it has been weeks that the roman army has been standing before the antonia fortress. two siege ramps have already been destroyed, the assault towers burned by the defenders. and even so, even knowing all of this, when titus asks for volunteers to climb first, a soldier stands up. the name of him is sabinus, syrian by birth. josephus, who was there, describes this man as someone of small body, thin, dark skin, the type of subject that no one would notice in a formation. but it is precisely he who looks at titus and says. and josephus records the words. i surrender myself to you, caesar. it is i who climbs first. eleven more stand up right behind. twelve men volunteering themselves for something that everyone in that camp knows what it is. probably the last thing that they will do in life. no one forced them, just no one took their names in a draw. they wanted, they disputed among themselves the right to do what any rational person would call calculated suicide. the obvious question is not if they felt fear. of course they felt. the real question is another. what type of system rome had built to make fear weigh less than the shame of staying still? because it is this that escapes to whom looks at the roman legions with two thousand years of distance. rome did not dominate the mediterranean because it had braver soldiers. it dominated because it set up a mechanism, where courage was by far the best financial decision that a man with nothing could take in the entire life. and this mechanism started with a small thing, a crown of gold.