Explanation: The Romans Legions had an extensive system of rewards and punishments to motivate soldiers. Soldiers who performed well could receive medals, bonuses, and promotions. Soldiers who performed poorly, on the other hand, could receive docked pay, adjusted rations, beatings, and even execution for serious offenses. What's more, the Romans were not exactly adverse to collective punishment - while a single man would not fuck up an entire legion's fate, camp-groups of 8-10 soldiers could be and often were punished for minor disciplinary infractions by one of their own - a serious incentive to self-police!
Reducing rations, however, also comes with the risk of reducing efficacy - a poorly-fed soldier is a poorly-performing one, after all. What was the Roman solution? Changing a soldier's allotted ration from wheat, to barley! Barley feeds a man fine, but was considered lower-quality and lower-status food, and getting one's rations changed to barley for a period of time was thus a humiliation as well as a material punishment. You're eating the ANIMAL FEED NOW, SOLDIER! Save those tears for someone who cares!
Regarding the execution part of punishments - some crimes / offences were so severe and required a lot of peoples' fault to happen, that they used to kill every tenth soldier in the legion. That's the origin of the word "decimation" - in latin it means "removal of every tenth". They drew lots and the other nine would have to kill the tenth unlucky one. Then they got their diet switched and thrown out of the the walls of the camp to fend for themselves for a while.
PugJesus could probably go into more detail, but it was a very rare and extremely serious punishment - partly or mostly because they were the ones that had to beat their own buddies to death.
Barley and normal corporal punishment were more like the everyday fare. The past was a brutal place, but in a lot of ways normal life is normal life no matter when.
