Could I survive in Roman times?

Factual Questions
1

Inspired by this thread, say I’ve built a time machine and plan to travel back to ancient Rome at it’s height (say, ~100 BC). I plan on bringing bags of rock salt to raise funds so I can retire in luxury to a villa overlooking the Mediterranean.

Do we know enough about the Romans such that I could blend in, given some amount of research and training? Is Latin as we know it today the same as the Latin spoken in ancient Rome? Could we duplicate the clothing, or at least make reasonable facsimiles? I know salt was once so valuable that soldiers were paid with salt. How much was salt worth back then exactly, and how much of it would I need to bring to sell? Anything else I’m overlooking?

2

How do you intend to guard this precious salt?

BTW IIRC while salt was “valuable” in an economic sense it was still produced and used in pretty large quantities as a commodity and I think it would take quite a bit more than a few bags to buy a villa even in ancient times. It like understanding that “oil” was quite valuable economically in the 20th century and bringing back a 100 gallons of gasoline from the future to buy a house with and retire on in 2002.

3

Salt, WTF? :slight_smile:
So you want to live large in Rome, eh?
Here is the secret, learn how to make moonshine and how to make a still. You would OWN the place in about a month.
If a month is too long, then just bring a hand gun and several thousand rounds of ammo, or if you are ambitious and you don’t care about subtlety, grab yourself an AK-47 and every bullet you can scrounge.
With those kinds of party favors you could just declare yourself a living God.
You would have ALL the babes! :slight_smile:

4

As far as practical things you could bring back, that would not be a glaring anachronism - you might do better, pound per pound, by bringing back a bag of fine 440C stainless steel knives (Buck, Gerber, etc). I imagine those would sell very well.

I think the “paid with salt” is mostly an urban legend, but I cannot find the thread from the past here that covered it (Search keeps ^%#$@ timing out on me).

5

Remember that anybody with a pan could scoop up a pot of sea water and let it dry. But I believe that pepper traded for gold on an equal weight basis. So why not a bag of pepper? Knives and guns are not a bad idea if subtlety is not your strong suit. How about a vat of penicillin? Actually, I think that the simplest may be gold. I suspect that one could live for quite a long time on an ounce of gold. A pound costs only about $5K, which you could probably raise without a sweat. Once you get established, your general knowledge would probably stand you in good stead. Suppose, for example, you started some primitive experiments with electricity. Do you know enough to build a primitive short distance wireless telegraph? I do. Imagine what the first army that had such an instrument could do.

6

Looks like Apache has read L. Sprague deCamp’s Lest Darkness Fall. It wouldn’t hurt anyone else to read it either.

In addition to penicillin, you could also bring some other neat stuff like maybe Viagra…

7

I’d take 1,000 bottle rockets, and pretend to save the city from the ‘flaming dragon turds of death’ that mysteriously begun to appear over the city at night.

I’d become a mythical hero, and would be portayed as a denim clad warrior with rubber-soled feet.

8

Actually I got that Idea from someone else, but I bet he DID read the book. :slight_smile:

I still say do the living God number.
You could give hedonism a bad name. :wink:
I would also get some 3-D holographic trading cards made up with your picture on them.
Pick a time that has a really corrupt Roman Emperor (not hard to do) and take the sucker out in some grand dramitic style infront of all Rome.
You would be both loved and feared! The best of all worlds. :slight_smile:

9

Aluminized Mylar film, on rolls. You can make better mirrors than anything the Romans have, make a solar furnace, train mirror squads to focus on enemies at hundred of yards distance. Sell small ones to the ladies for cash, design and build heat engines, when you have the capital. (Take plans with you, dummy.)

Tris

10

Good to know that what I have begotten begat something even cooler :).

Anyways, while Latin was very well-recorded, like Sanskrit, by having an enormous body of literature, I doubt you’d be able to just bone up on your declensions, hop in and find yourself in Rome, chatting up the yokels. Firstly, ‘Latin’ as we know it is a conundrum (?) of dozens of dialects compressed into one for scholarly convenience.

Secondly, don’t expect to learn street Latin by reading Ovid and Caesar - do we write deathless prose in Arkansas small-town slang, Australian strine or Standard? What about dialectical differences in pronunciation? Foreigners learning English typically have a hard time understanding the weirder dialects, because they generally learned British English, standard pronunciation and standard vocabulary, with a smattering of Americanese thrown in for flavor.

But I suppose you could go in as a foreigner with a less-than-perfect grasp of the language and get along well enough, at least until you learned. Your Latin would be a bit high-brow - you’d talk like a book, but you’d be understood. The hard part’d be you understanding them.

11

There might be some more exotic spices that would be worth even more - cinnamon and cardamom, for example.

I agree with guns, but knives are very subtle - they have an appearance and purpose that has not appreciably changed over time, even if the quality has.

If you want to go anachronism, and have the least cost, and the most possible money - how about a bag of cheap solar powered calculators? Sure, you have to teach them arabic numerals, but the calculating power available in a $0.99 solar calculator is incredible, relative to what they had.

The problem in Roman times (I’m on a Roman kick now, reading about the empire for the last year or so) is that you would need to be able to get your way into society to be able to survive. You would need to be able to be in the “in crowd”, or your life would be in danger, as unscrupulous and jealous enemies would have you killed to get your calculators. And it wouldn’t have to be something as blatant as a frontal attack, for those of you Kalishnakov-happy persons out there. Poisoned food and wine, poison gas, scorpions in the bed…eventually, they’d get you. Plus, if you had 1000 bullets, they’d send 10,000 men to get you.

You would need to get a patron at a very high level - almost certainly in the Imperial family. You might do better in the later empire, when one of the Caesars might use you as a “secret weapon” to take on the Emperor (yes, the two words are not the same). You would need a lot of wealth, and some good links in business and posibly the army - maybe you would even have the goodwill of a local garrison by giving them Holiday Presents - there is so much to do!

And I read Lest Darkness Fall as well. The alcohol idea might work, but I wonder about it. It seems to me that from my reading of the last 600 years of the Empire, that what would have saved Rome more than anything else would have been a long series of intelligent, non-criminal, sane Emperors. No technology needed - when Rome was flourishing, it did flourish. And when it sucked, it sucked.

12

So then a series of coursebooks on Psychology and a healthy dosing of Paxil, Prozac and Depakot should do it for you then. Cool.

13

What follows is a combination of half-arsed guesses and rambling, you’ve been warned.

As far as language goes if you had a very good knowledge of Latin and a working knowledge of a handful of the modern languages the evolved from it (including listening to different dialects) you might have a fighting chance of understanding spoken Latin when you get there.

As Anthracite says if you take back a stock of outlandish or expensive things you’re going to be a target. So you’re probably best of starting as a ‘foreign’ traders or whatever. Observe (and record ?) customs etc and don’t make too high a profile.

Once you’re comfortable with everything you move to stage two …

One way you could get into everyones good books is by memorising (or bringing notes on) important events, battle strategy, and other analysis of the Romans. Then set your self up as a wise-man* eccentric ‘seer’ type person by handing out advice and predicting the future.

Once your fame spread you could do a good business advising the people and give free advice and predictions to those in high places. ( Of course we’re probably changing history here but we’ll ignore that. )

Since you’ve got nothing tangible to steal you’re (slightly) less of a target. Once established branch out into outlandish inventions – steam engines maybe and go from there.

Being a good cook may also help win favour.

  • I can’t remember the standing of Roman women but I’ve got a feeling the you’re going to have a harder job if you’re female.

SD

14

Third attempt at posting a reply:

As in the thread about going to Dinosaur days, the thing that’d set you in good stead would be intellectual property rather than material goods.

Example: Someone said good steel knives would be a hot item. Yes, until you ran out of them. But how about if you produced them there on the banks of the Tiber? “We have the technology” is more a question of knowing how to do something, especially something technologically basic as metalworking.

Things that would set you in good in classical times would be the idea and implications of printing, of precision measurement, interchangeable parts, standardized weights and (especially) measures, and basic high school chemistry.

If you wanted to get along even further try adding economics 101, algebra, statistics, trigonemetry, calculus… a nice modern undergraduate degree in something other than social science or basket weaving would set you up with a level of knowledge that would put you … well, it’s true: centuries ahead of your time.

Truly revolutionary ideas that could get you crucified would be government of, by, and for the people and a religion in like wise (egalitarian vs. imperial). But if you were clever enough to get the concepts to bear fruit, the empire would probably still exist today. (Maybe the Caesars would have been supplanted by the Cecils.)

15

I actually thought about this once, just while day-dreaming, and the idea that appealed to me was bringing tea and coffee to Rome. Something to drink other than water, wine, and juice. I’m sure the Romans would have loved a beverage that could keep you awake instead of putting you to sleep (booze). Coffeehouses would fit with the whole Roman urban life and communal activity (those huge bathhouses, eating in restaurants, etc.). Tea and coffee could be prepared with existing technology and don’t require refrigeration. And I don’t think the anachronism would be too bad, since you could describe tea and coffee really vaguely as coming through traders from “the East.”

My question is whether coffee or tea could be grown in the Roman Empire. That is, is there a suitable tea or coffee growing climate somewhere in the territory that was the Empire?

16

A good start would be attempting to apprentice for a doctor or other healer. You could invent innoculation for smallpox before Jenner. Offer to vaccinate a family for free - each year no one comes down with smallpox you collect a small fee per family member.

One major risk: upsetting the status quo. Creating an assembly line, inventing interchangeable parts, etc might put you on the bad side of entrenched merchants and producers. And stay away from anything that the ruling class has a monopoly on.

I’d want to start small and stay small to stay alive.

17

I agree that you should bring back knowledge rather than material goods.

You want godhood? You want an empire at your feet?

Bring a lot of cacao seeds and memorize the process for making cocoa powder, solid chocolate and white chocolate.
As the only living human who could make the beans into Hershey bars, the world would be yours.

18

Apparently not. According to a syndicated radio show I heard today (A Word to the Wise), what we know of as Latin today is more of a medieval church Latin. Their example was that the letter “C” was always hard in ancient Latin (Kikero and Kaesar) and was softened in medieval Latin (Cicero and Caesar). It’s pretty likely that any modern Latin speaking person would sound distinctly out of place – you might be able to understand people after a while, but you’d have a funny accent that would mark you as an outsider.

19

The problem with agricultural products is the time it takes to grow to a profitable stage. Olives, coffee, tea and cacao come to mind.

We need something that would grow in one season. Maybe there’s a modern hybrid of a plant familiar to the Romans but with more of a kick to it.

Coughmarijuanacough

20

It’s doubtful that knowledge of modern Romance languages would help all that much since the languages have evolved to such a great degree over the past 2000 years and dialects differed greatly back then just as they do today. Just try understanding someone speaking an obscure and difficult modern-day dialect of English using your knowledge of standard English, and that is eliminating the time element. Of course knowing some Italian (or Sardinian which is considered at least by some Sardinians to be the closest to original Latin) wouldn’t hurt, but you’d be better off pretending to be a (prestigious) foreigner and slowly trying to figure out how the locals spoke on your own.