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Kosmo

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Posts posted by Kosmo

  1. The study is made about unskilled males and it is very possible that the social position of this category will be different in widely different societies especially because in the case of romans existed a massive group below them, the slaves, that probably pushed the price for unskilled labor very low. I also doubt that unskilled wage earning laborers were a numerically significant group in roman society so their fate does not tell us much about the economic level of the empire.

     

    Certainly, unskilled workers constitute the bulk of the working population of any pre-industrial society. So their wages would provide information regarding overall productivity. Slavery didn't reduce the wages of unskilled workers directly, they would only do that if the existence of slavery inflated the supply of unskilled labor relative to skilled labor, if slavery didn't exist (i.e. if many slaves wouldn't become unskilled laborers), but that's improbable as the vast majority of workers were unskilled workers.

     

    The bulk of the population was rural (maybe 80% or more) and I don't believe peasants can be called unskilled workers especially because they were rarely wage workers in preindustrial societies. They can more easily be described as tenants, small landowners, people with rights on community lands, long term skilled employees and a myriad other relations that created a very complicated rural system of land and labor relations before capitalism. Probably the only unskilled workers employed in farming were those used for occasional, larger projects or for seasonal work like harvest when the usual resources of labor were insufficient.

    The study exemplifies unskilled workers as " i.e. farm labourers, camel and mule drivers, water carriers, and sewer cleaners". With the exception of the farm laborers I mentioned above the other categories don't look large enough to have an impact.

    Slavery can reduce the price of labor because removes choice (for example many freeman could refuse to do a work like sewer cleaning pushing the wage up but a slave can be forced to do it) and because they can be kept at a subsistence minimum. Of course this must be correlated with the price of slaves and the ability to control them.

    The article you posted is a very good narrative overview of roman economy, but with not enough data to prove the statements made.

  2. Kosmo,

     

    I have just tried and in the Vacatio forum you have to click the option at the bottom of the page to use 'the full editor' and that should bring up the image browse function you are looking for.

     

    However this doesn't seem to happen on all of the fora - this forum (Consilium Comitiorum) is one where even if you click 'the full editor' option the browse function doesn't open. :blink:

     

    Maybe Viggen or Primus Pilus can advise if it is deliberate or another of the 'undocumented features' of the last upgrade. :unsure:

     

    I have the attachments/browse option on this very reply (does not need the Full Editor) but it seems to appear randomly. I checked on most Active Content threads and it appears in the Full Editor for most topics but not for all.

  3. The Roman theatre at Plovdiv Bulgaria.

     

    Are there any rules to this game I should know about? I've just discovered it and I don't want to go through all 71 pages(!) to try to discover them.

     

    Not many rules. You post a photo of a roman ruin and if there is no good guess you can give us clues.

  4. When I uploaded a picture in the Guess The Ancient City thread there was a box that allowed me to browse my computer for an image to upload. I don't see anymore that box in new posts (I see it only if I want to edit those 2 posts in that thread and I noticed that it says browse in romanian so I think it's connected with my Internet browser) What am I doing wrong? How do I open that box?

  5. I read mostly books related with social sciences and some young adult fiction as well, I listen to gothic metal and other genres of rock and I play computer games. I don't have a TV but I still watch some science fiction or fantasy series. I'm an aging adolescent.

    And I enjoy drinks and junk food but I'm trying to quit both (again) since 2 days ago. I hate exercise and vegetables but I should lose some weight.

  6. The biggest problem for a slave owner was control. The state could afford to send convicts to mines in the mountains and keep them under the guard of soldiers but this was not possible for a private person, especially for those not very wealthy (I don't consider convicts really slaves because they were not freed or sold).

    The city of Rome was too big and too cosmopolitan to be effectively policed for runaway slaves that blended in the general populations (unlike blacks in Americas) so the owners were forced to treat better their slaves. In Rome only the super wealthy had houses, the rest lived in rented apartment buildings where space was limited and expensive, so an owner was more likely to house his slaves in cheap top-floor housing rather then in his own first-floor rooms.

    Some slaves worked directly for their master as servants and was shameful not to have at least one personal slave. Others worked together with the master and his family in farms, shops etc., while others just payed a regular amount of money and lived largely independent lives.

    Often slaves and freedman of powerful people became rich and powerful themselves. Sometimes slaves were trusted to manage businesses and properties (including slaves) or were sent with tasks in a different corner of the empire.

    The emperors did not had a civil service in the beginning (especially because the fiction of the Republic was still maintained) so a lot of the administration of the empire was done by the slaves of the imperial household.

    The percentage of slaves is unknown and varied greatly across regions and periods.

  7. Interesting! The conclusions are not really surprising, in a static economy population increases push the lowest strata to the minimum level of survivability (and below).

    The author notes that the biggest problem of the study is how real the wages and prices in the Edict of Diocletian are and I think that they are not very realistic.

    Other problem is that the comparison with wages in modern periods is made also for silver and is very likely that silver was more expensive for romans (especially in the Late Empire that has lost Dacia and access to Armenia while Spain and Greece were partially depleted) then for early modern people (after Peru and Mexico started mass production but also had the Fugger mines in Austria and other areas in Central Europe)

    The study is made about unskilled males and it is very possible that the social position of this category will be different in widely different societies especially because in the case of romans existed a massive group below them, the slaves, that probably pushed the price for unskilled labor very low. I also doubt that unskilled wage earning laborers were a numerically significant group in roman society so their fate does not tell us much about the economic level of the empire.

  8. Historical comparisons can be useful if you compare similar things and you have a good knowledge of the subject. One example is Moore's Law about the trend in computing hardware. The industrial revolution (or the Enlightenment or the birth of the First Modernity etc) created a rapid change (still continuing) of all aspects of society that makes impossible comparisons of things before and after it. For example a comparison of Soviet and NATO counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan is useful while comparing either with the campaign in the same area by Alexander the Great is nonsensical.

  9. As you can see this not exactly in a city so you can guess either the specific name of the place or the name of the nearby city.

    post-1266-046175500 1296569705_thumb.jpg

    A better quality pic.

    PS I love how much easier is to upload a picture.

  10. And Kosmo knows his cosmos as he has found the right place ! I especially choose a picture I had not taken, but it seems it was not enough to fool you :) (and thanks for the comment, it's my pleasure to share my travels with other, I'm currently thinking about going to Bulgary this year, and maybe Albania too if the political situation in the country allows it, else it might be Romania or Hungary. But I'm not sure yet due to the fact that those countries don't use Euro, I might go to Germany instead (but closer to France than my previous trip, or going directly for Berlin, it will depend on how much time and money I will have availlable)

     

    I don't see why the use of euro would be a problem, in Romania at least there are banks and exchanges at every corner and most shops, hotels etc take international credit cards. When you decide about your plans please let me know maybe I can help with suggestions (I've been several times in Bulgaria) and we could meet if you come to Bucharest.

     

    post-1266-094859200 1296568814_thumb.jpg

  11. I just finished reading about Tunisia and I'm cooking couscous, so it makes sense for the picture to be from North Africa, if lower on the ocean then it is Morocco. Looking (again) into your (amazing) picasa gallery I try Lixus.

  12. I actually like GotA more because B&S used an historic character, Spartacus, and was moving towards historical events and that made me more critical of historical inaccuracies while providing no suspense, after all we all know that he survived his gladiatorial fights and rebelled.

    This new series I'm able to enjoy without this problems and I feel that the creators know by now what made the series successful including fights and nudity but also intrigue in the lanista business and drama among the people in the house, and so far handle them better without excessive gore and with less "300" imagery.

    The fact is that even in B&S the lanista, his wife and other characters had stolen the lime light from Spartacus, who was just a typical film hero. This other characters are more life-like, more multidimensional and, for me, better played so they deserve a show for themselves. I never mustered the curiosity to watch the final episodes of B&S, but I can't wait to see the third episode of GotA.

  13. I don't think there are many fans of Hawass or of returning artifacts on this forum. Dali was catalan not basque and the museum he built in his home town is at the french border, widely exposed to the hordes of marauding tourists that pillage Catalonia every summer.

     

    Egypt was a police state that struggled to maintain safe access for tourists to important historical sites and collections despite ferocious attacks on tourists like the massacre in Luxor or the bombings in Sharm. Largely the same situation was in Tunisia. If instability and anti-western attitudes are given a boost not only artifacts are in danger but our access to them. The days of Egypt and Tunisia as tourist destinations are maybe over.

  14. Was the North justified in forcefully bringing the secessionist states back in line, to prevent a hostile power, possibly aligned with France and and the UK, arising on its southern border? I can see a geopolitical argument for it. On the whole though, I think if the Southerners wanted to leave the Union, they should have been left to do so.

     

    The last two articles in Disunion show that significant numbers of Southerners did not want to secede especially in the Upper South and the mountains of Georgia. Most rabid seccesionist was South Carolina but even there one can ask about how legitimate was the decision of the majority of voters when the black majority was not allowed to vote.

    The Deep South and the UK had close economic ties but the UK started and promoted abolitionism and would have been displeased by the Confederate plans of Caribbean expansion. After all they could get their cotton from elsewhere, preferably from within their huge colonial empire. France had imperial dreams but was on path to a rude awakening from Bismarck.

    Secession would have been a very complicated process and Lincoln was not conciliating towards the South (and he was a moderate Republican) so the war was very likely.

  15. "One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/"

     

    This series is by far the best historical series that I ever seen in a newspaper combining very good information, in-depth commentary and quality writing. I'm interested by this topic, especially by the chain of events that led to this unnecessary war.

  16. The article is available on pay-per-view basis.

     

    Try again, Kosmo. I got at it without the need to pay.

     

    They would not dare ask money from the Lord of Clayton Towers :P but they tell me "The content you requested is not included in your personal subscription" after I joined the site for the free content.

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