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> And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc. True, but there’s plenty of things that co
by koolba 7y ago
> And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc.
True, but there’s plenty of things that could have been bought in ancient Rome that simply aren’t for sale today.
- xeromal 7y agoI know there was a plant that acted as a birth control the the Romans used until it was extinct.
- seibelj 7y agoSilphium, a drug that induced abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
- leesec 7y agoWhat are some examples?
- ThrustVectoring 7y agoRomans were far more tolerant of official corruption for one. Appointment to government positions and influence over government officials were pretty much blatantly for-sale.
- treerunner 7y agoReally? This doesn’t sound very different to me.
- cambalache 7y agoLOL, agree, from all the examples he could give, he chose the worst one. That has not changed at all.
- soperj 7y agoFiat currency.
- eru 7y agoYou can buy fiat currency today without any problems. You'd have a harder time buying those in Roman times.
- jdminhbg 7y agoSlaves would be the most obvious.
- rayhendricks 7y agoSaudi Arabia and certain other countries would beg to differ.
- jdminhbg 7y agoYeah, but then you have to live in a desolate theocracy instead of the center of the civilized word. You can always find whatever vice you want, the question is how much you have to sacrifice to get it.
- RobLach 7y agoThat’s quite naive. “The practices of slavery and human trafficking are still prevalent in modern America with estimated 17,500 foreign nationals and 400,000 Americans being trafficked into and within the United States” miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article215154980.html
- jdminhbg 7y agoIt's not naive, it's knowing the extent of slavery in the Roman world: Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40%, and fully legal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome
- labster 7y agoAnd yet there are 40 million slaves in the world today, about the population of the whole Roman Empire. So it’s not exactly rare, either, at 0.5%, or 1 in 200 people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
- 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cortesoft 7y agoPeople
- aaron695 7y ago> plenty of things What other than slaves? Far more animals available today. A far greater selection of meat and vegetables today. Far more selection of sexual services available today. Far more medicines (plus they work).
- luckydata 7y agosexual services? I bet the Romans were not lacking anything in that department.
- imgabe 7y agoDefinitely still for sale today
- jdminhbg 7y agoIt's kind of like the difference between marijuana in California vs marijuana in Singapore. Yes, you can get weed in Singapore, but in California it's not just legal, it's an essential business in a pandemic. Similarly, you can run an Epstein-style sex trafficking operation in the 2010s West, but in ancient Rome you don't have to hide it or worry about getting "caught."
- aaron695 7y agoThere are the illegal services, yes. But then there a lots of legal ones, like sex with a sex worker without getting an STD for life. You don't have a car or plane so they will all be the same down the road in your small town aka Rome. Rome would have been very homogeneous with ethnicity (Yes it would) You have better soap and washing powder now. Today you can chose someone with good dental. The past wasn't this imaginary movie using 21st century props everyone thinks it was. It was shit. It was boring. Rome was bush weed. Today is MDMA
- cambalache 7y agoPower was more concentrated and was more absolute and that gave you way more advantages. A run-of-the-mill Roman patrician had more power and influence then than let's say Jeff Bezos today.
- grawprog 7y agoTickets to a life or death battle at the Colosseum for one.