In the professional army of the Principate, the Roman state ensured that soldiers were issued with the proper equipment, which either purchased it from a series of private contractors or oversaw it's manufacture in legionary workshops. Soldiers “bought” their equipment by having it’s cost deducted from their pay. At no point would a Roman soldier have directly purchased essential arms and armor from a manufacturer. During Late Antiquity, the production of military equipment was centralized in state-run arsenals known as fabricae. It is unclear the degree to which equipment was provided freely by the state or paid for by soldiers, though it is likely the state footed most of the bill, as military salaries in Late Antiquity were probably not high enough to pay full equipment costs. A law issued by the emperor Valens states the cost of clothing and equipping a recruit at 6 solidi, a sum which would generally have far exceeded annual remuneration.

Recruits would thus not have brought equipment upon enlistment, as it would have been (physically, and in part financially) provided by the state. While it is impossible make definitive statements that hold true over geography and time, it is reasonable to conclude that most inhabitants of the Roman world would not have had access to more specialized military equipment, such as swords and armor. As most recruits were of poor, rural extraction, such manufactured equipment, if it had been available to the general population (which it was not) would have been far too expensive for such men to afford.