DONATIVE (Donativum), a present made by any person, and called also gratuity.
The Romans made large donatives to their soldiers, and hence the soldiers in time became the masters of the Romans. Julia Pia, wife of the Emperor Severus, is called on certain medals mater castrorum, because of the care she took of the soldiery, by interposing for the augmentation of their donatives.
Donative was properly a gift made to the soldiery, as congiarium was a gift made to the people. Salmasius, in his notes to Lampridius's Life of Hellogabalus, in mentioning a donative which that emperor gave of three pieces of gold per head, observes, that this was the common and legitimate rate of a donative. Casaubon, in his notes on the Life of Pertinax by Capitolinus, observes, that Pertinax made a promise of 3000 denarii to each soldier, or upwards of £97 sterling. The same author writes, that the legal donative was 20,000 denarii; that it was not customary to give less, especially to the pretorian soldiers; and that the centurions had double, and the tribunes more in proportion.