Joshua bar-Joseph (aka Jesus) got nailed for that crap. His level used magic that wasn’t supposed to available to him causing serious concerns about cheating. His whole guild was banned until another super-player named “Paul” discovered it decades later, revived it, and took it over for one of the biggest saves in the history of gaming.
More like a few senior slaves (butler, cook, foreman, etc) would have junior slaves assigned to wait on them.
How will any of this protect you from smallpox, for example? Unless you lock yourself and your slaves in the villa and maintain strict quarantine protocols you willget exposed. And as an adult with no childhood exposure you will almost certainly get seriously ill. At best gross disfiguration. More probably death.
And if you do maintain quarantine then you won’t have anything even remotely resembling your current lifestyle. Then you have to ask how acceptable your lifestyle is when all your friends, their children and your children are dropping like flies even if you manage to somehow maintain perfect health.
Like I said, this is a silly place. However it is worth it for comments like:
Two points:
(1) In the scenario described by my OP, fine, imagine that my mind has somehow been swapped with that of a first-century Roman who was exposed to smallpox and whatever in early childhood.
(2) Nobody’s forcing you to stick around in this thread, or the board for that matter. If you find my just-for-fun question (or zombies vs the US army, for that matter) unbearably silly, please don’t let me detain you as you leave in a huff.
Judging from this, you’re going to need about a hundred every time you want to play video games. Plus two to make the sound effects.
OK. So now you have no benefits of modern medicine whatsoever. So you’ve been exposed to the ubiquitous lead poisoning, have untreated illnesses, experienced malnutrition, bad dental hygeine and so forth. IOW you will have the level of health typical of a person of that age, which was pretty damn horrible by modern standards. And, because you have never had any prophylatcic treatment all, this will get worse as you age as all those poorly set bones, early childhood illnesses and so forth come back to haunt you as arthritis, post-polio syndrome and your natural age related illnesses such as cancer and hypertension go untreated.
Your lifestyle is now even worse than in your original scenario, and your likelihood of debilitating disease even higher.
I really don’t think your getting that the benefits of modern lifestyle are as much the result of modern society as they are of technology. You or a family member been to a doctor or pharmacy in the past 5 years? Well in ancient Rome you can’t. Whatever you were treated for will either have to cure itself (which places tremendous strain on the body and leads to premature aging) or else it will kill you.
Have a look at the the population pyramids of the developing and developed world today. Ancient Rome was at best the same as the developing world, probably worse off. As many people died between the ages of 25 and 30 as died between the ages of 65 and 70. Lots of things were incurable and killed perfectly fit young people, and the fit young people were few and far between anyway because of the absence of any ability to treat so many conditions. The lame, blind and “lepers” were everywhere because they couldn’t be cured. And there was as good a chance of you becoming one as anyone else.
Health is a major factor in standard of living, and there is no conceivable way you could experience anything remotely like your current level of health in the body of an ancient Roman without utilising modern medical technology
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It’s not unbearably silly. It’s rather charming silly. Where else can I see people proclaiming that Zombie are anarchists, or that Christianity is a gaming guild.
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If I do leave it will be in minute and a huff, or possibly a taxi.
Man, you’re killing a perfectly nice thread with your germs and logic.
can’t you have fun?
I think you’ll need 10 - 15 house slaves, plus those working the fields or the mines.
You can have a couple of “music bands” on retainer, ditto for sex.
The farther north you go, say cisalpine gaul, ice is less of a problem.
By the way, if you come back, please tell us how open the vowels were.
quick random rummage found this as my books are packed up pending the remodeling of the house [and i am going into book withdrawl/// some of my favorites I do not have as an etext =( ]
What part of small pox vaccination do you not understand? Not to mention I understand HOW to create vaccinations from exposure by scratch to the liquid out of a variole of either someone active with smallpox or COWPOX a much weaker form that confers immunity to smallpox …
I do believe that most illnesses can be prevented through sanitary measures, and as I just pointed out, I understand HOW to vaccinate in the original manner. And why should I want to live the way I do now … I would love to have slaves to do the work that we currently do. I never said I would quarantine my self and my villa rustica, I simply mentioned I probably would not do much in the way of traveling, and would be happy minimizing the purchases from off the latifundia.
Actually, travel is fairly modern. Most Romans never traveled more than a few villages away from their homes unless they were doing military duty. I don’t see how being a homebody makes me ‘quarantine’ myself. I am pretty much a homebody right now and dont consider myself in quarantine. Why should I want to visit rome, or transalpine gaul, or cisapline gaul, or brittania, or greece or anatolia if I am happy at home?
What part of “I’m determined not to introduce any technological innovations, but only to use the conveniences at hand” do you not understand?
What part of “I want to reproduce my life back in early 21st century North America as closely as possible” do you not understand.:rolleyes:
That’s going to be one hell of a corpse run.
Blake, you must be fun at parties. 'Specially toward the end of the evening when everyone seems to pair up and head upstairs and you’re still lecturing the punchbowl.
If you have all the money you’ll ever need for anything. . . you wouldn’t need ANY slaves. You could hire free men to do the job. . . Or do you just want to own slaves for the fun of it?
Just watch The Flintstones and count the smart mouthed little dinosaurs. That’s about the same number of slaves you will need.
Fascinating responses from those who are taking this seriously, btw.
scratch innoculations of cowpox to fight small pox came about because dairymaids who had previously had cowpox were seen to be immune to smallpox. Earliest mention is in the Tacitum Sanitas. We will agree to disagree on that.
As to reproducing 21st century live back then, I like to read. I read avidly, Id read when asleep if I could figure out how to keep my eyes open. About the only facet you cant do back then is the internet and television. Though I think Id hire a pretty greekling with a nice voice to read to me. I dont tend to eat a lot of convenience foods, so I really wouldnt miss kraft mac n cheese or rice a roni. I have a copy of De Re Culinaria by Apicius, and the food is nummy - I make a killer isicia omentata, and pernam pork is very nummy if you happen to like pork cooked with figs.
Not really certain what I really want from here, if I have good food, wine not flavored with lead salts [though I am not going to be reproducing, if I havent popped a sprog out by the age of 48, it really isnt a good idea to anyway.] Someone to read to me, someone cooking, cleaning, making clothing for me and doing the gardening, not a problem.
Why, do you think I really need WOW or EVE online to be happy? Spending my days at the arena watching gladiatorial combat, races and animal fights? Email and twitter? What is so freaking fantastic with the 21st century that makes you think I need it. My hot tub and bathroom is replaced by a balearium. A masseur replaces my physioterrorist, a slave to read to me, and maybe a couple that can play instruments to replace my ipod and tv … it would be fantastic to have mrAru there with me, but I am sure I could buy some physical comfort if he isnt there.
WHat do you want from me, acknoledgement that I would be miserable and there would be nothing I could do back then to make me comfortable and happy? Dude, you do not know many scadian/historical recreationists, do you. I used to voluntarily spend weekends, entire weeks and several weeks at a time living primitively. If you had not previously noticed from my posts, I am one of the few people on the dope that you can give a sheep, some minor tools to with access to any reasonable set of woods/fields and I can end up with dinner and clothing. I can take the fat from the lamb, and ashes from the fire to make soap to scour the wool, I can make a drop spindle to spin the wool, a warpweighted or backstrap loom to make the fabric, and I know what local plants make what color dyes, and what I can use to mordant the dyes with to make the fabric colorfast. I can make needles out of bone splinters, I know to use oak to tan the leather for sandals or bog shoes. I know how to process a clay bank into a clay mass ready to form and fire, and I know how to fire pottery in the absence of a kiln. If the language was not a bar, you could drop me in bronze age Halstatt and I would fit in. Iron age civilized rome, with resources would be a vacation.
Apparently ***you ***don’t understand that using a Roman needle to poke somebody’s oozing sore and then sticking yourself with it isn’t a technological innovation, just a new application of existing technology. Which, you will note, is what everyone has been doing throughout this thread.
Population pyramids reflect birth rate more than death rate. There are relatively more children in Africa because more are being born per capita than in Europe. So you’re not using data that supports a position on health care.
I do understand your point about health, but I think some of these comparisons are apples and oranges. The original premise in the OP is a wealthy Roman with “as much money as I’ll ever need for anything.” The elite of that period enjoyed significantly better health and longer lifespans than the masses did; the Roman elite were not made up of crippled lepers.
Now, that’s just crazy talk. Where can I find free men to engage in gladatorial contests with bears? Pshaw, man, really.
No, the point of population pyramids is to show the relative attrition rate in each age group. If the pyramid is actually pyramidal then it shows that death rate increases with age. If it is linear, as the European pryamid is in many age classes, it shows that the chance sof death in those classes is very low.
Of course there are relatively more children being borne in Africa. The important point for this discussion is that despite this there are relatively fewer 30 year olds in Africa. That’s because more people die before reaching old age.
No, they didn’t. Or at least there is no evidence to support that and a lot to contradict it. The population structure of Ancient Rome is largely based upon memorials such as tombs and gravestones, which only the wealthy had. Based upon that data the wealthy of Rome had about the same population structure as Africa. The only discrepancy was that the death rate was lower after after ~55.
Nor was the general populace. But there is no evidence that there were more crippled and lepers amongst the general population than amongst the general populace. There probably were simply because the eilte were better nourished.
However a large percentage of the elite were crippled, disfigured or suffering chronic diseases such as leprosy. You only have to read a small sample of the Roman histories to see that pretty much every noble family contained at least one such individual.
Remember we are talking here about a society that lacked the ability to effectively set a broken long bone, so a seriously broken arm or leg, even in childhood, meant you were a lifelong cripple.
I’ll stick to something I can address factually. Let’s assume two countries with no death rate, both starting with a single set of parents.
Mini-Europe starts with two parents. They have two children. Those two children grow up and have two children. Those two children grow up to have two children. The “population pyramid” looks like this:
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Mini-Africa starts with two parents. They have four children. Those four children pair off and have four children each (eight total). Those eight pair off and have four children each (sixteen total). The “population pyramid” looks like this:
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