Could I survive in Roman times?

Factual Questions
61

I don’t recall if it was mentioned, but in Lest Darkness Fall Padway was forced to invent paper because he built a printing press and turned out a newspaper. His first run used up all the available vellum.

As I mentioned, Padway didn’t actually know how to make paper, but he knew that it could be made, so he was able to persevere and finally re-invent. The hardest part was coming up with a sizing for the paper (without which it acts like a giant paper towel, so all your printing ends up spreading out into ink spots, rather than staying as letters). Padway used clay, but I believe that modern manufactured paper uses what is essentially a glue. If I were in his situation, I suspect this is the sort of thing I’d end up doing – re-inventing based on my knowledge of existing technology.

And, as I mentioned, it’s the lirttle, unexpected things that can have the biggest impact. I think I’d try:

– Arabic numerals
–modern bookbinding (vs. scrolls)
– use of indexes
– color coding
– introducing modern toys
– as mentioned above (and as in Farnham’s Freehold introducing modern games
–assembly-line manufacture and use of standardized parts
– electroplating and replacement chemistry
– mother-of-pearl in place of pearls
– plywood

62

Very interesting thread - some comments:

  1. Since the topic of “taking over” or at least acquiring power is up front here, I assume we are talking about setting up shop in Rome or a similar urban center. I state this only because the majority of humans didn’t life in urban centers in the time, IIRC, and rural/wilderness/desert/etc. life was very different than urban life - more physically threatening, etc. I doubt the average modern urban person would survive long in that setting.

  2. If one person is showing up trying to acquire power, the only thing that comes to mind that would be successful would be a frontal attack with modern technology - a tank or something. Showing up with material goods or new technology, and hoping to inveigle your way in just seems impossible. Remember: the Romans became “the Romans” - a dominating, historically significant empire - because they were ruthless, cunning, politically adept, class conscious and superior business people. If some modern day person dropped down in Rome and tried to “wow” them with some new technology or scarce resource, I bet the modern day person would find themselves outwitted or killed the second a Roman person of any influence saw the potential for profit or power in that the modern day person had. Think about how many superior ideas today are crushed under the wheels of power, politics and profit (or taken over by someone else) - I bet it was just the same in Rome.

  3. Now, if you want to make some money and live in luxury outside the corridors of power - that seems much more straightforward - you could just show up with your scarce resources or technology, make a profit and relax…you would simply need to pick the right thing that is desired and difficult to replicate. I like the idea of paper-making technology or better horse bridles mentioned in earlier posts - advanced for the age, but not requiring an immediate paradigm shift.

63

I am not sure how reliably one could make a killing with paper technology, or indeed any technology not requiring a paradigm shift. There is no patent enforcement, so anything you could do, others could copy. The Romans were good engineers when necessary.

Of course, if there was a pent-up demand, you could establish yourself as the top supplier very rapidly. But I think the Romans’ writing requirements were satisfied with parchment, papyrus, and those ubiqitous slates which the kids toted to school. They could certainly do with a better medium, but I don’t think they would die in a ditch to get it!

You could try to encourage greater use of paper - newsheets and advertising spring to mind, but there is a danger that the authorities would not take kindly to information dissemination - and who would be able to read it, anyway?

This raises another issue with gaining wealth by trade - who would buy it? Unless there is a large middle class with a disposable income there is no mass market. There were not many Patricians and Equestrians around - and they would typically want something the others did not have. Though there were freemen and slaves with disposable income I can not see them providing a fortune buying mass produced beads or pearls. They were all clients of a particular patron as well, and would be expected to support his business interests. Trade would have to be handled carefully, through middlemen, and it would be best to be a bit removed - a foreign merchant.

Incidentally, the bits of this thread which suggest banditry or genocide (something the Romans had no problem with) have not yet suggested poison gas or biological warfare - two techniques which would work well against small groups of undefended men clustered close together. A tank has enough trouble moving in difficult terrain and refuelling nowadays to be much use then. By the way, knives were cited earlier as a good product to bring - I am not sure about classical times but medieval sword-making was as good as, or better than, anything we have today. We understand more about the metallurgy today, and that tells us how good the old techniques were.

Another issue for modern machinery is maintenance. Selling something which broke down might cause difficulties in an era where planned obsolescence hadn’t been invented. Have you seen early Victorian steam pumping stations? They did not have large doors for moving equipment through, because the machine inside was not going to fail. I know of one machine which pumped London’s water continuously for over 100 years. We can make something that good today, but only to special order.

64

What about inventing optics? The telescope would be invaluable to the military of the day, I’m sure, as well as jump starting the field of astronomy (might get you burned for heresy, though?). There must have been a few near-sighted emperors (pun not intentional) who would appreciate 20/20 vision again.

65

There are several “low tech” things that are easy to make and easy to understand that just happen to have not been invented in classical times.

  1. Optics. The Romans had glass, they just never considered the optical properties of glass. Telescopes, microscopes, eyeglasses, prisms, burning glasses, magnifying glasses…all pretty easy to make, easy to understand, easy to sell.

  2. Electrical cells. Lead-acid batteries should be easy to make. Lead, vinegar, clay jar, copper terminals and wires=battery. Simple DC power should make all kinds of interesting electrical curiosities possible.

  3. The stirrup. Easy concept, except no one thought of it in classical times. Although perhaps this wouldn’t be such a good thing to introduce. The stirrup gave mounted troops a decided advantage over foot troops. Since horses are expensive (unless you’re a nomad), this gives the aristocracy a huge advantage over the peasant footmen. Leading to feudalism, enserfment, etc.

  4. The horse collar. Allows efficient plowing, which means more bread, which means more political stability.

  5. Gunpowder. Most of us don’t know how to make gunpowder. But the recipies are pretty simple. If you did some research so you could recognize the raw materials, and memorized a few recipies, it wouldn’t be too hard. I’m not sure I could recognize sulfur or saltpeter if they weren’t labeled, but people used to make their own gunpowder all the time back in the black powder era.

  6. Windmills and water mills. Use these to generate electricity and perhaps you could smelt aluminum. Very valuable, aluminum. I’ve always wondered what effect a ready supply of aluminum would have on an iron age society. Now we get to find out.

  7. The magnetic compass. Not hard to figure out, with some pretty dramatic consequences. Classical mariners didn’t like to get out of sight of land. The compass allows all kinds of tricks…like heading for America.

  8. If you can take back seeds, there are lots of things you can do. We have many dramatically improved old world crops after another 2000 years of selective breeding. And introducing new world crops…corn, beans, squash, potatos, tomatos, peppers, peanuts, sunflowers, amaranth, cacao, coca, tobacco…all would revolutionize agriculture.

66

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Lemur866 *
6. Windmills and water mills. Use these to generate electricity and perhaps you could smelt aluminum. Very valuable, aluminum. I’ve always wondered what effect a ready supply of aluminum would have on an iron age society. Now we get to find out.

[QUOTE]

The Romans did have wind and water mills. Not used for generating electricity, of course.

67

Yeah, but it’s not trivial to make luminum. You’ve got to find bauxite, in the first place, and I know I wouldn’t recognize it in its natural state. Then you’ve got to find the appropriate acid to dissolve it (again, I can’t even remember which acid that id). Then you need a pretty hefty charge to produce it by electrolysis, IIRC. For me, all this would be a lifetim’e worth of work. Faster to come up with gunpowder. Or Scrabble.

Another quick possibility occurs to me – you could easily make a mechanical phonograph of the Edison Cylinder kind. Your limitation would be the fine-ness of the gears for advancing the cylinder, which almost certainly wouldn’t be up to Edison’s standards (even in the 1700’s the mechanical standards were pretty wretched by modern standards – read James Burke’s Connections about the mechanics of the Newcombed Steam Engine). But it would make for a pretty neat novelty device. I bet you’d sell a lot of 'em to the upper classes.

As for Optics, there’s evidence that the Romans * did * know about them. There are scattered references to such devices, and the claim has been made that the extremely fine cames and mosaics we have found were made using magnifying glasses. But the technology seems limited and crude. It needed more popularization, as well as improvement. Now I’ve got a degree in optics and have ground and polished parts, but I’d be hard pressed to come up with the raw materials, myself. Iron oxide for polishing rouge might be obtainable in Italy – there’s a lot of volcanic deposits that are supposed to be pretty consistent in size. But the larger sizes would have to be found and separated – no easy task. And you’d have to find pitch for the pitch laps. Worst of all, you’d need good quality glass. The Romans had glass, but most of it had inclusions and bubbles in it. Evem at the beginning of the nineteenth century good optical glass was hard to come by – and that was when they were making window glass on an industrial scale.

68

Hmm,

This thread is turning into a list of ‘interesting things to bring back’, some of which might not turn out to be that interesting. For instance, magnetism and static electricity were already known, as curiosities, and did not seem to encourage anyone to develop them. Hydro-electric power is another matter, but what would it be used for? A telegraph certainly seems possible – the local artisans could easily turn out insulated copper wire.

Why use a magnetic compass when you have the North Star? The Romans already had the technology to go to America if they wanted – they just didn’t want to. What was there of any interest to them?

The stirrup is an interesting point – it was proposed in the 1960s as the primary reason for the development of feudalism, but if so, why did we not get feudalism in China when it was invented? The influence seems to have been overrated – see

http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/~tekpages/texts/strpcont.html

for some comments.

If there is a concern about introducing the stirrup, how much more of a concern should there be about introducing gunpowder? This would alter the balance decisively away from defensive city walls and in favour of aggressive attacks – another 100 Years War could result.

Improving agriculture sounds a good bet – it will probably increase the population – would that result in problems or advantages?

I can’t see that aluminium is a particularly attractive metal for classical times. It is soft, and will need complex alloying with magnesium or manganese. It has a high thermal expansion coefficient, which makes hand working difficult, and I suspect it will be difficult to weld using classical techniques – casting would be all right.

Perhaps someone is thinking about flight – Duralumin poles and Nylon would make a hang glider, and we could have heavier-than-air flight before 1849! However, we don’t need these materials – Egyptian cotton and bamboo will do very well. The Greeks are reputed to have tried wax and feathers already!

I am surprised at the assertion that gear-wheels might prove a difficulty for classical artisans – I remember a geared Greek artefact (they thought it might be an astrolabe) being discovered a few years ago. And 1700s gear wheels were easily up to the requirements of small machinery – Harrison could build clocks accurate to a second a month then. 1600s watches worked to minutes a day.

I suspect that many inventions would fail due to cultural acceptability rather than technological shortcomings. Or there being no perceived need – Hero of Alexandria built a steam turbine then and it seems to have just been a curiosity. Even the telegraph, which would be easy to construct, is only of use if enough people move about. If they don’t, there is no need to talk to anyone at a distance. Perhaps the best approach would be to kick-start an agricultural, and then industrial revolution in just the same order it really happened. So we are looking at spinning-jennys, seed drills and blast furnaces.