How many slaves would I need?

Say that I’m transported back to the Roman Empire (say the time of Augustus) and have somehow landed in the lap of luxury. I have my own villa and as much money as I’ll ever need for anything.

But I’m experiencing a bit of culture shock and I want to reproduce my life back in early 21st century North America as closely as possible. For whatever reason, I’m determined not to introduce any technological innovations, but only to use the conveniences at hand to achieve this. Conveniences, of course, meaning slaves.

I was thinking about this last night as I was trying to sleep on a hot humid night directly underneath a fan. As I was drifting off to sleep, it occurred to me that in Roman times I would need to buy at least one slave, probably two, to have a constant breeze blowing on me all night as I slept. (Two to tag team. I’m not a cruel taskmaster, and anyway it doesn’t do me much good if his arm gets all cramped up after eight hours of fan waving the first night.)

So there’s two. How many more would I need to buy?

It wouldn’t take very many if any as long as you had the money. The Romans had good infrastructure so you might be able to have running water anyway as well as access to bath houses. Clothing can just be bought. You obviously could not have any electronics or a car. You might need a slave or two to take care of your horses and keep your carriage well maintained and having a slave driver might be handy as well as someone to take care of the cleaning and washing but that isn’t strictly necessary.

Figure another 7 or 8 to constantly tend the fires and boil water to provided water that won’t kill you, and another couple of hundred of fetch firewood.

About 2, 000 to constantly cart ice from the nearest mountain to replicate your fridge. Or about 100 to work and provide the money needed to buy it from a dealer.

About a million to constantly scour the world and bring back new information to produce a very poor replica of a 50c newpaper or net connection.

Another couple of million, all well armed and trained in tactics so that you can compel the entire world to be vaccinated against smallpox, which, assuming you are under 50, you have no immunity to and will die of or be disfigured by within 6 months of your arrival.

The entire population of the world so that you can compel them to wash their hands, bury their faeces and generally behave so that you don’t die of nasty infections.

Sorry, but this is a very silly question. You simply can not reproduce even the most basic conveniences of 20th century life using muscle power. Doesn’t matter how hard you try.

Of course replacing your home entertainment system with slaves would worth considering. An orchestra and various performers.

Sure. I figure I see/hear about 500 different performers every week (that includes actors, singers, musicians, scriptwriters, puppeteers/SA people). Probably About 200, 000 a year. That’s a lot of slaves.

I come from a very long line of slave owners and they can be more trouble than they are worth. You have to feed them and give them shelter. Ask my great-great-great grandfather who got chopped to pieces by one of his. That is why I don’t have any now.

As opposed to Zombies VS the US Army?

You can provide a pretty good air-con system using water and/or a small breeze. It is likely that you would need no slaves to perform punkah wallah duties.

I’ve read that the Greeks were pretty technologically advanced, but regarded technology as something that produced ‘toys’, which were not necessary as they had slaves.

If the Greeks knew enough to make a simple steam turbine, then they probably knew enough to build a simple ice maker.

OK, I’ll rephrase.

This is a very silly place.

Except that “I’m determined not to introduce any technological innovations”

So basically the same number as such a man has today

A little cleverness could use the existing technology to simplify or automate some what you want. For example, Romans could make gears. With the right gear system, you could hook a fan up to either a water wheel or a domesticated animal - even a goat could provide enough power, I suspect.

Blake mentioned the difficulty of getting ice for a refrigerator, but if you’re a rich Roman, you could more easily have your slave shop for dinner every day, making refrigeration unnecessary and probably improving the overall freshness of your food.

The real problem in answering the question is that you don’t really specify what you consider the necessary conveniences. For me, the Internet is a can’t-do-without necessity, but the Roman tubes and pipes were inadequate.

Let’s not go there.

You’re gonna need a whole bunch to replace the concept of Twitter.

The *real *question is, how are you going to cram all of them into that tiny box?

I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have any great-great-great grandfathers now, regardless–they tend to die of old age after the first 100 years or so if nothing else manages to knock them off first.

I’m not sure you appreciate how warm the Mediterranean is in summer, or that beer is not naturally cold.

You would need ice for cold beer, that’s for sure. (Although, parts of Italy get cool river water from mountain sources, and you could always try evaporative cooling).

As for food safety… if your servants butcher a cow right outside the kitchen and throw the steak on the grill, refrigeration is a non-issue. Likewise, if they go pick your vegetables, milk the cows and gather the eggs on their way from the farm to the kitchen, you’ll have fresher ingredients than you can get in the modern megamart.

Let the slaves have the leftovers - no one cares if they get food poisoning! :slight_smile:

Cook, scullery maid, two or three housemaids…just start adding up the staff in the classic British turn of the last century household and then multiply by two, for day and night shifts. Toss in a few entertainers, a butler or two…I’d say twenty.

Well, lets see. Im good against bubonic plague, yellow fever, small pox and whatever else is in the overseas package and the recruit package for the navy. I understand germ theory and can mandate assorted sanitation issues [and I know how to make soap from fat and lye …] so I dont worry about getting ill too much.

Figure I would like a small villa rustica in the southern area of Italy, on about 100 pr so acres. That would give me enough land for the villa itself, a small set of out buildings for slave housing, animal barns, storage barns. I would actually make a decent balnea so everybody could keep clean so that would take a woodcutter and a couple of boys to feed the furnaces, and a masseur and a strigilist inside for the nonslaves.

Hm, Id buy a good cook, and about 10 assorted sculleries. A really good major domo to run the house, 4 or 5 footmen to guard the house, at least 5 or 6 good maids and a secretary. I would need a good foreman for the farm crew, call it another 20 or so of both sexes to manage the plant farming and a small flock of chickens and geese, a small flock of sheep, a boar and several sows and a good bull and 3 or 4 cows. I would definitely want to plant olives, and grapes, and enough corn and pulses with assorted vegetables and at least 2 almond trees, and fruit trees. I would try for some rare limes from Judea, and some oranges from hispania. A blacksmith to make sure we had good tools, and making assorted other items we needed. A carpenter for making wooden items, casks and furniture. 3 good spinners and a good weaver, and someone with a good hand at dying. A dairy maid for the milking, and cheesemaking.

I think I would prefer not to travel, but a cart and oxen to pull it and the plow would be good enough. I dont think I would have much excess to sell, and I can keep the rare spices and unguents to a minimum. Salt, pepper, cinnamon are the real big three that I would spend the most on. Silphium was more or less extinct, but lovage was a substitute, and can be grown locally. I could press my own olives and grapes for oil and wine, and I know how to make garum, but there were a number of latifundia that produced garum very reasonably. I am not really into fish, so I wouldn’t really bother with fish other than dried for feeding the slaves.

So call it about 60 slaves, or so. Some of them would of course own their own slaves, and I would end up with children eventually expanding the number of slaves because I wouldn’t sell them off but keep them to replace the ones that got ill and died, or died of old age.

Assuming one slave can perform one calculation in one second, you’d need about 100 million of them to play Super Mario Brothers.

Oh the other hand, you could play World of Warcraft quite cheaply IRL.

Slaves were entitled to own other slaves in Roman times? If so, I. did. not. know. that.