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Pecunia

PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 8:52 pm
by Valerius Claudius Iohanes
Salvete, Omnes -

Tiberius Iulius Draco wrote:To Valerius Claudius Iohanes,
I have just one question for your roman assessment, what's wrong with a money economy? Having a standard currency as apposed to bartering for everything was one of the most important institutions of a modern, (or ancient) cosmopolitan culture.


Quite so, and I think it was clearly an essential feature of both the Late Republic and the Empire. It allows all sorts of freedoms that older forms of economy did not.

My point would be that it was a complete change in the nature of some of these societies, going from a mixed economy of, say, barter and cattle and worked gold, to one where minted coins were the fuel of the government. Government, as we think of it, would have been a new thing, a revolution: new rulers, a new state, tax-gatherers, new rules of wealth, new opportunities, the proud thrown down, the sons of slaves elevated, etc. I think it would have been, along with the wars and their fallout, a violent change for a lot of the folk Rome came into contact with.

Valete bene, amici!

PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:29 pm
by Gaius Iulius Tabernarius
Oh I see what your saying, a good change but a drastic one. I suppose its not entirely surprising that many conservative barbarians would reject Romans and their shiny pebbles.

I mean its not like we don't have modern presidents for hardliners rejecting valuable yet new practices.

Rome and Changes

PostPosted: Wed May 28, 2008 11:17 pm
by Valerius Claudius Iohanes
Salve iterum, Gaii Iulii -

Good change for many, perhaps, but surely it wasn't so for all; probably only for a very few to begin with. Revolutions are not picnics, of course -- but as time goes on the resourceful pick out the opportunities amid the rubble.

I was reading today how nowadays -- this is off-topic -- bio-tech companies are patenting and thereby getting ownership of biological species -- grain, pigs, medicinal compounds from naturally occuring plants in the Amazon. They will soon own pieces of us; what are we to do with THAT revolution?!?

Vale.