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Elite Romans decorated their floors with garbage
- wombatmobile 5y agoNot garbage. Images of the remnants of elite food.
- AndrewKemendo 5y agoThis led me down a very interesting rabbit hole of learning about Roman "Sumptuary laws [0]" various laws passed to prevent inordinate expense in banquets, dress etc.. A few I found interesting: Orchia, proposed by the tribune C. Orchius in the third year after the censorship of Cato B.C. 181, limited the number of guests to be present at entertainments Aemilia, did not limit the expenses of entertainments, but the kind and quantity of food that was to be used senatusconsultum was passed ... for the purpose of restraining luxury, which forbade gold vases to be employed, except for sacred purposes, and which also prohibited the use of silk garments to men [0] https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Sumtuariae_Leges.html https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary...
- hamandcheese 5y agoWhat was the purpose of these laws, though?
- anigbrowl 5y agoConspicuous consumption and waste arouses the ire of the lower classes and leads to civil unrest.
- asveikau 5y agoAre you sure it's not more simple, less cynical? Perhaps morality of the time and place didn't want people to be conspicuous-consuming assholes, and saw it as the duty of the state to uphold.
- anigbrowl 5y agoThose are two sides of the same coin in my view. Though I'm no expert on Roman history I've read enough about it to see such ebbs and flows.
- cloakandswagger 5y agoAncient Rome had no shortage of outrageous decadence and constantly struggled with class warfare, slave uprisings and the political necessity of winning the hearts of the "people"
- asveikau 5y agoI'm not saying these concerns aren't anywhere in Roman history and politics (that would be naive), but I think in many cases the law can be a reflection or encoding of what a culture puts value on, without that as direct explanation. If there was a cultural outrage, and expectation that the state do something... Then why not? We spend a lot of time in society today talking about "limited government" and focusing a lot on overreach, many people thinking the state shouldn't legislate morality. I have a hunch the Romans felt less of this.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- spoonjim 5y agoThe idea that "conspicuous" consumption is worse than inconspicuous consumption is necessarily rooted in classism -- it's that you don't want the "lowers" to see what they can't have, and anyways, you're only jockeying for status among the uppers anyways, so why not consume inconspicuously in an uppers-exclusive environment?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- boomboomsubban 5y agoEntertainment was often held to buy votes or influence. The gold vase law was enacted by Emperor Tiberius, who seemed to dislike opulence in general.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law lists "regulate the balance of trade by limiting the market for expensive imported goods" as one possibly surprising - but logical - purpose (among many others).
- josh_fyi 5y agoUpper classes get annoyed when nouveau riche show off their wealth, and so impose restrictions by class.
- fsloth 5y agoTo my understanding china sucked up huge amounts of Roman wealth due to luxury imports (silk). Silk ban could have been an attempt to repair the trade imbalance.
- throwaway2048 5y agothe Romans almost certainly did not understand trade imbalances or the effects of debasement/inflation.
- Bayart 5y agoThere are speeches to the Senate that remain and address directly the problem of luxury imports draining Rome of precious metals. Monetary policies were of great import in Roman history and Roman politics. They absolutely knew what inflation _is_, although they didn't have a complete picture. But I don't think we do either.
- gumby 5y agoHerbert Hoover championed and then signed a sumptuary law regulating the number and type of pieces in a cutlery set. The rise of machine made cutlery led to an explosion of different kinds of forks, knives and such, and keeping up with the Joneses causing stress on households.
- latchkey 5y ago"As late as 1926, some patterns were still being made with as many as 146 distinct kinds of utensils. To help simplify the situation for American industry, Herbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce, recommended—and members of the Sterling Silverware Manufacturers Association adopted—a list of fifty-five items as the greatest number of separate pieces that would be in any pattern thereafter introduced." https://publicism.info/history/useful/9.html https://publicism.info/history/useful/9.html A number of comments: https://www.smpub.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002518.html https://www.smpub.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002518.html
- dtgriscom 5y agoThat's very different from "championed and signed a law." Government agencies recommend lots of things, and industry associations sometimes adopt them; calling these "laws" way overstates the government's control.
- pininja 5y agoI was curious and went reading to learn more about this. Seems to have been Hoover acting as Secretary of Commence before presidency. I wasn’t able to find a lot of additional details on this, but there’s a discussion on a silver forum I found interesting [0] > In 1925/6, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, responding to a silver shortage, ordered the Bureau of Standards to limit the number of pieces in a flatware pattern to 55. Arbiter of manners Emily Post approved of the restriction, declaring, "No rule of etiquette is of less importance than which fork we use." Elaborate silverware has been on the decline ever since. [0] https://www.smpub.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002518.html https://www.smpub.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002518.html
- charles_f 5y ago
- noduerme 5y agoThe article mentions a ban on "fattened fowl" which I would guess covers foie gras (a tradition that originated in ancient Egypt). California, and Chicago and New York all banned it in the past 15 years, although the California ban is still going through the courts. On another fowl note, eating an Ortolan is pretty much banned everywhere.
- prennert 5y agoApparently this was because luxury goods were imported and if bought in sufficient quantity lead to draining of money from Rome to the exporting economies and trade routes, essentially supporting potential enemies while weakening local producers and local economy as a whole. (I think I read this in the Silk Roads book by Peter Frankopan)
- Aerroon 5y agoThis reasoning is effectively what was behind mercantilism. It's why empires didn't extensively trade with one another. Interesting to note that even back then it was an important matter.
- dragonelite 5y agoWe are still the same peoples creating the same kind of problems and think of the same kind of solutions. It just that technology has decreased the size of the world and has increased the speed at which those problems happen.
- Aerroon 5y agoIt's not quite the same since Adam Smith though. Lifting trade restrictions has correlated with the greatest prosperity known to mankind. It turns out that if your trade balance makes your currency very cheap then investing in your country also becomes cheap. This increases your (cheaper) production and then increases your exports making your currency more expensive. Ie trade balance tends to balance itself out.
- dragonelite 5y agoEven if it wasn't in the book i would highly recommend reading The Silk roads by peter Frankopan. Its a nice view of history.
- uwagar 5y agoits always about the elite and what they like.
- riffraff 5y agoThe article mentions "figs from the middle east", but aren't figs generally available in all of southern Europe? edit: I meant, haven't they always been?
- thih9 5y agoThere are many fig varieties; random article with photos: https://treesofjoy.com/fig-varieties-of-the-middle-east/ https://treesofjoy.com/fig-varieties-of-the-middle-east/ . I assumed they were referring to a variety from the middle east.
- songzme 5y agocuz they're garbage people