# Roman Empire Question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 30, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165 "2011-09-30T15:31:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/101 "2011-10-11T04:06:24Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Sugar was very rare for most of ancient history; in fact, they only used honey. But honey was not uncommon in finer ROman dishes. Sure, a legionairre wouldn’t be eating a lot of it, but there was a whole world of the question to answer. > [@](#): > > And high cholerstol is from eating a lot of fat plus a sedentary lifestyle. Roman legionnaires didn’t sit around, they fought or practiced. That’s what I said. > [@](#): > > You make it sound as if they scrounged the countryside for what to eat. Rather, it was regulated how much food a soldier received per day They did. Sure, during peacetime it was different. But Roman legions quite commonly lived off the land during campaigns, and they downed any supplies they captured quickly. It wasn’t their own meat they usually ate. Aside from which, meet-on-the-hoof is much more portable calorie per calorie, and was commonly brought along campaign. > [@](#): > > Why single out pneumonia? There are any number of diseases you can die of in old age, esp. with not-modern medicine. It’s a huge killer in any vulnerable population, and can set it from many different diseases. Some would say it’s the number 1 lethal symptom in pre-modern societies, since there was essentially no treatment available and few techniques of prevention. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/102 "2011-10-11T07:22:52Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > But honey was not uncommon in finer Roman dishes. Sure, a legionaire wouldn’t be eating a lot of it, but there was a whole world of the question to answer. First, the OP asked specifically not about the rich Romans, but about the ordinary guy. Second, using honey as seasoning or glaze for rich Romans is a very far cry from the effects that tons of sugar (mostly hidden - 30% of ketchup is sugar today!) have on our diet and body and health today. The recommendation today is 10 tablespoons of sugar per day max - which you reach with one big glass of coca-cola; in Roman times, it would be impossible to eat 10 tablespoons of honey each day even for rich Romans because there wasn’t enough available. > [@](#): > > That’s what I said. ?? To me it sounded as if you wanted to claim that because legionaries occasionally ate fat, they were also in danger of high cholesterol. Was that not what you meant? To clarify my position: Eating occasionally fat while still moving doesn’t harm your cholesterol. Therefore, even with a piece of lard or similar in their stew, the overall diet and exercise of Roman legionaries was healthy (the fighting was unhealthy, but that’s another question). Similar for normal citizens who would work manually and eat a healthy, cheap stew. > [@](#): > > They did. Sure, during peacetime it was different. But Roman legions quite commonly lived off the land during campaigns, and they downed any supplies they captured quickly. It wasn’t their own meat they usually ate. If we are looking at life expectancy and living conditions, then we don’t look to exceptional circumstances once in a while, we look to everyday conditions over years. Most of the times, legionaries and citizens ate stew from beans and similar, and wheat bread/ porridge along with clean water (from aqueducts) in Rome, or watered-down wine if in the field. That they occasionally got some meat due to foraging didn’t impact that. Compare to what the average westerner today eats: meat once a day, lots of fat, lots of sugar, most of the time. > [@](#): > > Aside from which, meet-on-the-hoof is much more portable calorie per calorie, and was commonly brought along campaign. Which animal are your referring to here? Horses were brought along as cavalry, not for eating. Pigs were not taken along, neither were sheep or oxen. Or I would like to see a cite. The Roman legionaries were famed for their forced marches on foot (partly because of their well-kept roads), well over 100 miles a day if an emergency. This allowed them to be deployed quickly to wherever trouble was. Taking any animals for food would’ve slowed them down too much and was therefore forbidden. Even horses were secondary, cavalry was just a small part of the main force. Now, if you were thinking of soldiers in established forts on the border, they might have kept animals, although even there I doubt it - if they wanted to, they could buy a pig from the local people nearby, which was far easier than raising their own animal during garrison life. > [@](#): > > It’s a huge killer in any vulnerable population, and can set it from many different diseases. Some would say it’s the number 1 lethal symptom in pre-modern societies, since there was essentially no treatment available and few techniques of prevention. That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Could some medical Doper clear it up? (Paging Quadgop and others!) Because I have heard of several diseases that affected pre-industralisation people, but not pneumonia along them. Were you thinking of TB? Also, you have to prove first that a hard-working, good-eating population (free food!) with clean water and sewage system was vulnerable in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/103 "2011-10-11T07:49:46Z")
I didn’t think pneumonia was a disease _per se_ . . ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/104 "2011-10-11T08:15:52Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Sugar was very rare for most of ancient history; in fact, they only used honey. It took years of specific breeding to get the [sugar beet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet#History)to make enough sugar worthwhile. That’s why cane sugar is one of the five plants that changed history. > > And high cholerstol is from eating a lot of fat plus a sedentary lifestyle. Roman legionnaires didn’t sit around, they fought or practiced. And honey contains sugar, and both sugar and cholesterol are essential nutrients: if we took all the cholesterol from a living body, it would turn into so much goop. Like so many things, they’re bad in excess, but not per se. Plus there’s growing evidence that genetics play a much greater role in having high cholesterol than doctors wanted to believe. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/105 "2011-10-11T09:16:38Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > If you were in the Roman Empire, you probably were poor or a slave, so saying, “Assuming you were poor or a member of the slave class”, you’re disqualifying most Romans. Slavery and poverty have sucked for the bulk of human history, so this is kind of a meaningless point. > [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > In most ways, Rome of the 2nd century AD was superior to any city built in the world until the late 19th century in terms of public health and order. Order? Sure. Public health? The Muslim world practiced palliative medicine for most of its history; the western world based its medicine on the Four Bodily Humours (i.e. leeches, bloodletting and unnecessary amputations) until around the time of the American Civil War, when this approach to medicine was replaced by cell pathology. So yeah, Cairo and Baghdad likely had an edge on 2nd Century Rome between the 8th and 13th Centuries. Alexandria, too. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/106 "2011-10-11T13:09:31Z")
> [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > _Rome_ the HBO series is a great show… but it still had a lot of inaccuracies, and it never really did the complex Roman court systems justice. The irony, it burns! ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/107 "2011-10-11T14:10:25Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > Slavery and poverty have sucked for the bulk of human history, so this is kind of a meaningless point. > > Order? Sure. Public health? The Muslim world practiced palliative medicine for most of its history; the western world based its medicine on the Four Bodily Humours (i.e. leeches, bloodletting and unnecessary amputations) until around the time of the American Civil War, when this approach to medicine was replaced by cell pathology. So yeah, Cairo and Baghdad likely had an edge on 2nd Century Rome between the 8th and 13th Centuries. Alexandria, too. From what I’ve read the physicians of Baghdad and Cairo were still stuck with the theories of Hippocrates and Galen. The results were probably better than contemporaneous European cities, but I haven’t found any evidence that that the life expectancy in Baghdad was better than 2nd century Rome. The important things were, sewer systems, a supply of clean fresh water and a good food supply. Medical care was a crap shoot until the 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/108 "2011-10-11T14:48:06Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I know what you were referring to; the problem is that you didn’t understand it. There are two issues: high count and high standards of living are historically quite aberrant and that archaeological evidence is insufficient to conclude that welfare was all that high. The first issue isn’t fatal, but since the claim is out of pattern with what we know about ancient societies, it would require very good evidence to substantiate. The problem is that we just don’t have very good evidence. What do we actually know about ancient societies that isn’t archeological evidence? The literary sources are spotty and rarely address the issue. Frankly the studies of the increase of bone size over time in Roman graves seems like pretty strong data to me. I also wasn’t very impressed by the people who reject the actual the actual census data, because it would disagree with their theories. There is a lot of uncertainty in the census data, since they only count citizens, but still that is pretty raw. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/109 "2011-10-11T15:25:52Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > First, the OP asked specifically not about the rich Romans, but about the ordinary guy. I was addressing the assumption by that poster that the Roman diet itself was healthy. There are two seperate parts here: ghis beliefs about the ROman diet, and how that affected the Legions. > [@](#): > > ?? To me it sounded as if you wanted to claim that because legionaries occasionally ate fat, they were also in danger of high cholesterol. Was that not what you meant? > [@ME!](#): > > Aside from which, cholesterol and transfats wouldn’t have killing legionaires even if they knew what those were. Fat legionaires were a rarity even in the least military days of the empire. I could have gone on at length, but I thoguht this sufficed, grammar error and all. > [@](#): > > To clarify my position: Eating occasionally fat… You position does not need clarifying. It’s obvious what you mean; the issue is that either you did not pay attention to what I wrote or I did not drone on at nearly enough length to extinguish all confusion. > [@](#): > > If we are looking at life expectancy and living conditions, then we don’t look to exceptional circumstances once in a while, we look to everyday conditions over years. But being on campaign was hardly unusual circumstances for the legionairre, nor was capturing an enemy camp and plundering it for all they could eat (and drink. And wench.). To be fair, I should have pointed out that near-starvation was also a common issue. > [@](#): > > Which animal are your referring to here? Horses were brought along as cavalry, not for eating. [snip] The Roman legionaries were famed for their forced marches on foot (partly because of their well-kept roads), well over 100 miles a day if an emergency. This allowed them to be deployed quickly to wherever trouble was. Taking any animals for food would’ve slowed them down too much and was therefore forbidden. They often did bring them along for part of the campaign as available and convenient. It was a heck of alot easier to have some meat move itself than to carry grain - in fact, it was a technique of most armies until modern times. All part of the plunder-and-conquer strategy. Julius Ceasar implies this and more extensively in his Gallic Wars. > [@](#): > > That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Could some medical Doper clear it up? (Paging Quadgop and others!) Because I have heard of several diseases that affected pre-industralisation people, but not pneumonia along them. Were you thinking of TB? … No, I was not thinking of consumption. Pneumonia is a _symptom_, not a _disease_. It can set in because of a any number of primary causes, including consumption, bad colds, the flu - the works. As such, it was one fo the prime killers, because anyone in a weakened condition, including old age, would become very vulnerable. > [@](#): > > Also, you have to prove first that a hard-working, good-eating population (free food!) with clean water and sewage system was vulnerable in the first place. Anyone is potentially vulnerable to pneumonia. You can’t not be at risk. It’s rpetty much a part of having lungs, and there were enough potential causes that no amount of clean water and good diet could protect you. From wikipedia: “Although pneumonia was regarded by William Osler in the 19th century as “the captain of the men of death”, the advent of antibiotic therapy and vaccines in the 20th century have seen radical improvements in survival outcomes. **Nevertheless, in the third world, and among the very old, the very young and the chronically ill, pneumonia remains a leading cause of death.** ” > **[Pneumonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonia)** > > Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity of the condition is variable. > Pneumonia is usually caused by infection with viruses or bacteria, and less commonly by other microorganisms.\[a\] Identifying the responsible pathogen can be difficult. Diagnosis is often based on symptoms and physical examinat... ---
**Author:** ![Grossbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba8739/32.png) [@Grossbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grossbottom)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165/110 "2011-10-12T00:04:57Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > The Roman legionaries were famed for their forced marches on foot (partly because of their well-kept roads), well over 100 miles a day if an emergency. No, that’s way too high. Forced march was like 30 miles a day. > [@constanze](#): > > This allowed them to be deployed quickly to wherever trouble was. Taking any animals for food would’ve slowed them down too much and was therefore forbidden. First of all, legions had baggage trains that represented a mobile logistical hub from which the men operated. Baggage trains form a veritably central element in classical maneuvers, they were most often the target of a dispositive attack. Second, Republican baggage trains tended towards the utterly ridiculous. The free Roman’s willingness to submit himself to complete military discipline did **not** extend to the baggage train. Men brought their own equipment so there was nothing stopping a well-heeled triarius farmer from showing up with an ox-drawn cart, a couple of slaves to rub his feet, extra blankies and every other darn thing he felt like bringing along. In fact, the key element of the Marian reforms involved changing this tradition and thereby granting the baggage train greatly increased mobility, and increased independence for the fighting men. That’s why the men were called Marius’ Mules, because now they were carrying stuff on their backs that they used to throw into either their own cart, or rented space on someone else’s. But even Principate baggae trains could be unwieldly, miles-long processions comprised of oxen, mules, carts, wagons, drivers, whores, artillery pieces, medics, provisions, wounded, clerks, beggars, blacksmiths, thieves, priests and everything else that could possibly be justified or not driven off. It would actually be surprising _not_ to see some pigs in the parade. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-empire-question/598165.md?page=5)