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Rome was still primarily a slave/servant based economy, and one based on expansion and conquest. They lacked the mathematical and scientific foundations to radi

Rome was still primarily a slave/servant based economy, and one based on expansion and conquest. They lacked the mathematical and scientific foundations to radically change metallurgy, chemistry, and the other basics of industry. This article focuses a lot on economic possibilities and social change necessary for a revolution, while largely ignoring larger issues. You cant have an industrial revolution without then revolutionary power of modern industry. Good concrete and slaves fanning fires to heat water isn’t that.

WaxProlix 9y ago
It says there's a few key technological innovations that the novel posits.
nwatson 9y ago
In the three-segment documentary "Meet the Romans: Citizens of the Empire" (by Mary Beard, historian, available in Amazon Prime Video ... see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Romans_with_Mary_Beard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Romans_with_Mary_Bear...) I was struck by: + ... how frequently the enslavement of the remnants of conquered peoples (slavery wasn't so much race-based as what "naturally" happened to loser-nations/cultures) led to large numbers of those people eventually being emancipated by their owners and becoming full-fledged Roman citizens + ... how seemingly everyone in Rome defined themselves by their industry, by their profession. Most epitaphs on graves and tombs identified occupants by name, place of origin, some brief and sometimes humorous quip about their circumstances, where applicable mentioned their former owners pre-emancipation, and then >>> mentioned what they did for a living <<< ... people defined themselves by their work While not germane to the larger arguments that probably will happen in these threads here, I was struck by social mobility beyond slavery, and what was core to people's identity. (I'm sure you've heard people complaining about modern society and industry with " ... people are human BEings not human DOings " -- Romans were all about the DOing). While the Romans may not have had the conditions for a scientific/engineering/tinkering revolution to be a force multiplier in industry, they had a hard-working mindset. EDIT: added Wikipedia link, corrections based on OP
brownbat 9y ago
Are you arguing slavery prevents industrial resolutions? Didn't they coexist in some parts of the world? Or is it the way slaves were used? Can you clarify to contrast Roman and US experiences?
- QAPereo 9y ago
  I’m saying that in Rome, slaves/servants were used the way we use machines and conveniences. A lot of their impressive “Tech” amounted to The Turk... brute force and a person working it all. They had hot baths because they had genuinely impressive concrete and because they had humans tending fires to heat them. There was no drive to move past that, there was no cotton gin, no real science to work with either.
- glibgil 9y ago
  > Are you arguing slavery prevents industrial resolutions? > Didn't they coexist in some parts of the world? The American Civil War is an example of the two coexisting in the same country
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    The free states industrialized, and the slave states did not.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      I mean... that ended with the devastation of the slave states.
amorphid 9y ago
Could such advances have been possible if fueled by an extremely wealthy family? It only takes one person w/ resources & ambition to say "I want <something>" to kickstart a movement. Say Marcus Licinius Crassus [1], Roman bajillionaire, dreams of a steam-powered engine in 73 BC, 20-ish years before his death. And instead of duking it out with Spartacus, Crassus decides to make building a steam engine his singular focus in life. In the best of cases, could he have meaningfully invested in R&D that would make meaningful progress towards building a steam engine? Was R&D even a thing in that era? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus
- empath75 9y ago
  One guy building a steam engine isn’t a revolution. One guy building a steam engine and publishing a book on steam engines and having a university to train steam engine builders is.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    More than that. It took a while for the telegraph to take hold because Morse couldn't explain why fast communication was necessary, and people thought his demonstrations were a scam.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Possibly Crassus could have gotten a toy out of it. A steam engine working enough to start an industrial revolution? I doubt it. I think (but I am not a historian) that the Roman mind-set wasn't turned toward progress in the form of machines. I think that was because they didn't have real science. And I think that was because of their gods. Oppenheimer, in his history of science, said that science couldn't have begun outside of Christianity. The Christian perspective was that, because God is there, and God is someone who uses reason, and God created the universe, therefore the universe could be understood through reason. That was the soil in which the scientific revolution started. But the Roman gods were too arbitrary and capricious to give any certainty of a reasonable universe, and so the Romans never developed real science (despite knowing many of the facts that Europeans knew by 1500).
nitwit005 9y ago
Up until quite late, metallurgy was more experimentation and experience than scientific practice. If they'd decently understood their materials, there probably wouldn't have been so many people injured or killed by exploding boilers.
jacques_chester 9y ago
> Rome was still primarily a slave/servant based economy, and one based on expansion and conquest. They lacked the mathematical and scientific foundations to radically change metallurgy, chemistry, and the other basics of industry. The book the article is inspired by[0] is an alternate history set during the reign of Augustus. It takes as its point of departure the capture of Archimedes of Syracuse -- instead of being killed, he is brought back to Rome. Note that this is the mid-Republic period, before the dynamics of conquest and slavery completely dominated the Roman economy. The book is written by Helen Dale, who set out to write a legal alt-history, not an economics alt-history per se. She's got the background for it: she's an award-winning novelist, studied classics at Oxford and Roman law at Edinburgh. My gut feeling is that any objection you have, she's thought about already. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Wicked-Book-One-Rules/dp/0994384092 https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Wicked-Book-One-Rules/dp/0994...

WaxProlix 9y ago

It says there's a few key technological innovations that the novel posits.

nwatson 9y ago

In the three-segment documentary "Meet the Romans: Citizens of the Empire" (by Mary Beard, historian, available in Amazon Prime Video ... see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Romans_with_Mary_Beard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Romans_with_Mary_Bear...) I was struck by: + ... how frequently the enslavement of the remnants of conquered peoples (slavery wasn't so much race-based as what "naturally" happened to loser-nations/cultures) led to large numbers of those people eventually being emancipated by their owners and becoming full-fledged Roman citizens + ... how seemingly everyone in Rome defined themselves by their industry, by their profession. Most epitaphs on graves and tombs identified occupants by name, place of origin, some brief and sometimes humorous quip about their circumstances, where applicable mentioned their former owners pre-emancipation, and then >>> mentioned what they did for a living <<< ... people defined themselves by their work While not germane to the larger arguments that probably will happen in these threads here, I was struck by social mobility beyond slavery, and what was core to people's identity. (I'm sure you've heard people complaining about modern society and industry with " ... people are human BEings not human DOings " -- Romans were all about the DOing). While the Romans may not have had the conditions for a scientific/engineering/tinkering revolution to be a force multiplier in industry, they had a hard-working mindset. EDIT: added Wikipedia link, corrections based on OP

brownbat 9y ago

Are you arguing slavery prevents industrial resolutions? Didn't they coexist in some parts of the world? Or is it the way slaves were used? Can you clarify to contrast Roman and US experiences?

QAPereo 9y ago
I’m saying that in Rome, slaves/servants were used the way we use machines and conveniences. A lot of their impressive “Tech” amounted to The Turk... brute force and a person working it all. They had hot baths because they had genuinely impressive concrete and because they had humans tending fires to heat them. There was no drive to move past that, there was no cotton gin, no real science to work with either.
glibgil 9y ago
> Are you arguing slavery prevents industrial resolutions? > Didn't they coexist in some parts of the world? The American Civil War is an example of the two coexisting in the same country
- WalterBright 9y ago
  The free states industrialized, and the slave states did not.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    I mean... that ended with the devastation of the slave states.

amorphid 9y ago

Could such advances have been possible if fueled by an extremely wealthy family? It only takes one person w/ resources & ambition to say "I want <something>" to kickstart a movement. Say Marcus Licinius Crassus [1], Roman bajillionaire, dreams of a steam-powered engine in 73 BC, 20-ish years before his death. And instead of duking it out with Spartacus, Crassus decides to make building a steam engine his singular focus in life. In the best of cases, could he have meaningfully invested in R&D that would make meaningful progress towards building a steam engine? Was R&D even a thing in that era? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus

empath75 9y ago
One guy building a steam engine isn’t a revolution. One guy building a steam engine and publishing a book on steam engines and having a university to train steam engine builders is.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  More than that. It took a while for the telegraph to take hold because Morse couldn't explain why fast communication was necessary, and people thought his demonstrations were a scam.
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Possibly Crassus could have gotten a toy out of it. A steam engine working enough to start an industrial revolution? I doubt it. I think (but I am not a historian) that the Roman mind-set wasn't turned toward progress in the form of machines. I think that was because they didn't have real science. And I think that was because of their gods. Oppenheimer, in his history of science, said that science couldn't have begun outside of Christianity. The Christian perspective was that, because God is there, and God is someone who uses reason, and God created the universe, therefore the universe could be understood through reason. That was the soil in which the scientific revolution started. But the Roman gods were too arbitrary and capricious to give any certainty of a reasonable universe, and so the Romans never developed real science (despite knowing many of the facts that Europeans knew by 1500).

nitwit005 9y ago

Up until quite late, metallurgy was more experimentation and experience than scientific practice. If they'd decently understood their materials, there probably wouldn't have been so many people injured or killed by exploding boilers.

jacques_chester 9y ago

> Rome was still primarily a slave/servant based economy, and one based on expansion and conquest. They lacked the mathematical and scientific foundations to radically change metallurgy, chemistry, and the other basics of industry. The book the article is inspired by[0] is an alternate history set during the reign of Augustus. It takes as its point of departure the capture of Archimedes of Syracuse -- instead of being killed, he is brought back to Rome. Note that this is the mid-Republic period, before the dynamics of conquest and slavery completely dominated the Roman economy. The book is written by Helen Dale, who set out to write a legal alt-history, not an economics alt-history per se. She's got the background for it: she's an award-winning novelist, studied classics at Oxford and Roman law at Edinburgh. My gut feeling is that any objection you have, she's thought about already. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Wicked-Book-One-Rules/dp/0994384092 https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Wicked-Book-One-Rules/dp/0994...