guidoLaMoto

An amazing compilation......What do you do in your spare time? What are your reference sources?

It's been said that all computer models are wrong, but some are useful. They show us what, if the modeler is close to being right, to expect. They can serve as a basis for forming hypotheses that can then be tested. That's their biggest value. JD Murray https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-08542-4 has done some amazing modeling to reproduce animal coat patterns, for instance, just by varying the values of the constants in the model. I'm just pointing out that it's absurd for the authors of that paper to assert single digit per cent differences between Roman and Han economics when their data is probably not more accurate than a 50% level at best...Eg- did a Roman laborer earn 1 or did he earn 2 sisterci a day?...and how many days did he work each year?....and what was the total value of all money in circulation? ...How do they know?

Computer modeling is art, not science. The model only tells you what you told it to tell you. Anyone visiting this site, for instance, probably is already well aware that the Roman elite were filthy rich and the plebs were just getting by. Any attempt at quantitating that with any more precision is just an exercise in imagination..... Not only do we have only very rough indications of average wages, but we don't even know what the population numbers really were.

I haven't read the article yet, but at first glance at the graphs presented here, I'm highly suspicious that they can discern three significant figure accuracy in collecting such remote data from such incomplete sources. ...I bet the only thing they are justified to conclude is that the ancient 10th decile group was relatively richer than the other 9 deciles compared to the modern USA.

You're absolutely right about being most likely to find things concentrated at the narrow points of a funnel shaped field. This is why prospectors pan for gold in the streams rather than sifting thru random shovels full of dust on the mountainside. My original comment was tongue in cheek....An order-of-magnitude estimate-- Suppose a village consisted of 200 people, half whom had amulets of which only 0.1% were lost each year over a 500 year existence of the village-- That's 50 amulets for archeologists to find today at that one site....and how many sites are there? It adds up fast.

You're right about the generally secondary role of women in Roman society, but the Vestals and Sacerdotes Cerealis were notable exceptions, as mentioned in the article.... ...I'm not sure if those are laurel branches she's holding. Laurel leaves are flat. Those look more like a sheaf of grain-- a more likely symbol for the goddess of grain.

Probabilities are still the major factor involved in finding artifacts- from the effect of any object's durability to survive the years to the numbers of any particular object that existed....Future archeologists will find more Chevies than Ferraris and more Ferraris than Tiffany chandeliers....Biological specimens present particular problems. To become fossilized, the object must be buried rapidly to be separated from oxygen-- but the chances of eventually finding one still depends on the original population numbers- common species are found more often than uncommon ones.

...which means for us to find them so frequently, they must have been amazingly careless with their possessions. Surely only a small fraction of those items would survive to be found thousands of yrs later.....Maybe they lost so much because they hadn't yet invented the pocket for their togas? We often blame the dryer for losing all those socks....Have we considered that maybe it was really the washer's fault? I'm currently trying to invent a plastic detector so archeologists of the distant future will have a chance to find our lost artifacts.

Amazing what the computer can do. Apparently the programmer assumed that BVDs hadn't been invented yet in the 4th century BC. Impressively realistic art work compared to murals at Pompeii even 400 yrs later.

You're right that the particular bugs involved in the fermentation process influence the final product. We must deduce, therefore, that the feet of certain Italian & French contadine are contaminated with the best dirt. The civilized Romans diluted ther wine with water and ridiculed the provincials who didn't. Pliny wrote that a dilution of 2:3, IIRC, is optimum. Hollywood would have us believe the wild orgies were commonplace, but Romans actually looked down upon drunkedness, and to this day alcoholism is faily rare in Italy as opposed to France. The traditional wisdom is that drinking fermented beverages helped reduce water borne illness, but that's probably not true. Even highly concentrated alcohol requires a prolonged exposure time to kill bacteria....I think they drank wine simply because water was relatively hard to get at in the arid Mediterranean areas.

Further confirmation that everyone drank wine. To this day, it's not unusual for Italian mothers to give their young kids diluted wine..... Both Livy and Dion--of Halic-- claim that one possible reason why Brennus and the Gauls moved south to capture Rome in 390BC was because they had been introduced to wine by Etruscan merchants and they wanted to gain good wine growing land. Dion-- wrote that before that, they only drank a foul tasting concoction made from rotting grain....Maybe de gustibus non disputandum est, but I gotta agree-- beer is foul.

Was Caesar driven by altruism or ambition & greed?....and don't forget that he was suspiciously supportive of Cataline in the Senate deliberations in 63.

https://www.digitalaugustanrome.org/records/porticus-forum-holitorium. You may also find this site useful for details of the layout of Rome and it's structures, with details often annotated by quotes & descriptions from the ancients themselves.

Studying Latin in school-- the myths and legends of the early history. It fascinated me that we were reading the very words written by men who walked the earth more than 2000 yrs ago. Speaking of church, my cigar chomping, truck driver uncle who quit school after the eighth grade was quite irate when Vatican II did away with the Latin Mass-- "That's crazy. We should be hearing the words the way The Lord really said them.' (??)

Keeping in mind that a conservative is one who wants to save/preserve the constitution/traditional ways, while a liberal is one who feels free to stretch or change the constitution/traditional ways, Caesar was a liberal-- having stretched the traditional limits of authority as proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul by invading Translpine Gaul, he wanted to again stretch things to run for consul again in absentia (a) so he could avoid Senatorial prosecution if he returned to Rome with office expired and (b) not return until re-elected to consular office and thus be immune from prosecution (sound familiar to more recent American history?)...and again, he did accept a 10 yrs dictatorship- way more liberal than tradition.....None of that is in keeping with conservatism and trying to return to the Republican constitution.