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Life And Morals In Greece And Rome By Joseph Mccab


Viggen

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Just stumbled upon this article by Josehp McCab...

 

I thought this essay is rather interesting and should open up some discussion...

 

Some points he raises

 

First as to the economic question. The wealth of the Roman capitalists or rich men is usually very much exaggerated. For more than half a century scholars have been interested in calculating the actual wealth, in modern currency, of these Roman millionaires; it is almost enough to say that the largest fortune amongst them that is definitely known to us is that of Crassus, who left less than ten million dollars. Several people die even in England every year with larger estates than that, while in America it would be deemed a moderate fortune....

 

Next, it is quite a mistake to suppose that all the work in Greece and Rome was done by slaves. Slavery is one of the blots on the old civilizations; but we must remember that Greece and Rome were only a few centuries out of barbarism; while Christian nations had hordes of slaves not very long ago. To the Greeks and Romans it seemed that enslaving a man was a humane improvement upon the older practice of killing him when he was taken captive...

 

Talk about the vices of Rome always refers to the wealthy: to one-tenth, or less, of the population. And this talk is mainly taken from one writer, the poet Juvenal. As has been repeatedly shown, Juvenal is quite unreliable as to facts. Every Roman historian tells you that. To understand him, imagine the most fiery and most rhetorical of modern democratic writers not curbed by a libel law, and you realize how lightly he would reproduce the wildest gossip. But you have to understand, in addition, that Juvenal is not generally speaking of his own age. He wrote his famous "Satires" about the year 90 A.D.; and the sins of Messalina, which I have just quoted from him, had been perpetrated nearly half a century before that! No historian would accept such evidence

 

i know this essay is quite old and i dont really know much about this writer, however i thought it makes an interesting read...

 

Whats your opinion?

 

regards

viggen

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Right. And if you were an educated Greek slave working in administration, you probably had more wealth and power than many freemen.

 

($10 mil is indeed peanuts compared to the fortunes of many captains of American industry, such as Bill Gates or Ross perot. Many Hollywood stars get $10 mil a movie.)

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King Perseus of Macedon had a personal fortune of 120,000,000 Sestertius at out break of the Third Macedonian-Roman War.

A Roman Sestertius was one-fourth the value of a Denarius.

A Denarius was worth 16 Asses about 133 BC.

 

In US dollars an Ass cost about 500 dollars. One Denarius is worth 500 dollars.

 

By Dividing Perseus

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Segestan, an important correction to your analysis. First of all, your original premise of what an 'as' is worth is incorrect as it did not refer to the value of an animal but a copper or bronze coin.

 

Most coins were valued according to their weight and the denarius is a silver coin and was worth about 10 asses (plural of 'as) and later as the moneyers began to dilute its value by including less silver in terms of weight, 16 asses around the time you quoted (133 BC). The denarius therefore originally (as a factor of 10, the Romans favorite consolidation unit in terms of numbers) were worth in terms of weight around .3 troy oz or say 3 denarii were worth around $ 6 or $ 7 using a modern equivalent value for the silver weight.

 

Therefore, the value of one 'as' or copper coin could not be $ 500 US but more in the region of 15 cents, which would change your estimates quite a bit.

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Sorry, made an error in my calcs. The silver denarius weighed around 3.5 grams or .123 troy oz. So, an 'as' is worth even less, around 8 cents if you figure around $ 7 per troy oz based on today's silver prices. [ I have used the old 211 BC standard for this calculation and later on, if you figure the debasement of the denarius, it was worth 16 ases and then, 1 as would be more in the region of 5 cents based on its weight in bronze).

 

The plural should be actually 'ases' although I have seen 'asses', which may lead to the confusion.

 

A middle class citizen around the time of the Republic would have had roughly around 100,000 ases at the high end or $ 8,000 net worth around 211 BC and subsequently, due to the debasement, around $ 5,000.

 

So, by comparison, Crassus having $ 10M makes him enormously rich. Everything is relative.

 

At the time of the monetary reforms in 211 BC, one denarius was equivalent to 10 ases or 4 sesterces or 1 sestersius was worth 2.5 ases or 20 cents and later, during 133BC, even less at around 12.5 cents.

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It's interesting, yes.

 

$10 mil a MODERATE fortune??? ;) I want to know how this guy drew that conclusion.

 

Many slaves in Rome were actually treated quite humanely, unlike their counterparts in the more "civilized" western nations later on.

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Yes, I agree. Slaves were more like.... The working working class. No typo.

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