a lovely little factoid is that in elizabethan england, a set of clothes could easily cost more than a house (Shakespeare paid a 60 pounds for the rather large house New Place, while a very fancy set of clothes could cost hundreds of pounds). This makes sense when you consider that the clothes could take more labor than the house!
How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
21–30 of 232 posts
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#22Well, now that would depend on who's making the tunic. Is it a Armanicus? Or was it made by the fabled three stripe master, Adidacus?
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#23Clothing remains expensive, except we don't see the true cost.
What hidden costs are accounting for the 2-3 orders of magnitude difference in clothing prices vs. minimum wages?
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#24> So a linen weaver would need to work for (500 / 2×40 to 500 / 2×20) 6 to 12 days to earn the price of the simplest linen tunic So translating to modern wages (in US/Western Europe) somewhere between $500 and $1500 for the simplest tunic, or between $7000 and $21000 for the finest quality. That certainly puts the practice of robbers to take people's clothes into perspective.
> That certainly puts the practice of robbers to take people's clothes into perspective.
Also probably the source of the "they'd take the shirt of his back" saying.
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#25Something that continually just blows my mind is how new spinning wheels are. The most plausible range of time of arrival of the wheel in European contexts is between the mid-1200s to about 1340, which means that textiles produced previously to that were made with drop spindles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_(textiles)#Hand_spindl... That includes things like clothing, but it also includes more staggering ide…
It’s curious, if you go back in time far enough with all knowledge from the present, you’d surely arrive at a point where you still need to work your entire life to bring one component of one innovation to life. Even then, the innovation would be unlikely to survive your death due to other missing parts of the supply chain. Try building a musket in Ancient Greece, you’d need to start with building the steel supply ch…
If you have woodworking skills you could make a crude but working spinning wheel in about a week with crude tools. They are simple machines once you understand them, and most of it can be made crude and still work. The idea is what is hard not the construction which is why once one was made it spread fast. I suspect (I think Bret Devereaux would agree) that if the males who were allowed to be creative had thought about women's work at all they would have made one several thousand years before. I wouldn't be surprised is some unknown woman did create something close on her own but society norms meant it didn't spread (if this happened all evidence would have burned/rotted - Luddites of the day may have destroyed it and the inventor).
As a modern educated man I'd turn much of my attention to "women's work" first - in large part because there is low hanging fruit there that would make my life better. The spinning wheel and looms would be a great changer, and something I think just having seen one in a history museum and a few weeks to watch how women work would allow me to make things work, then a few months in the woods to make a prototype.
For "men's work" things are harder because society allowed smart men to think about improvements. Maybe I could create gunpowder, but I would prefer to focus my war efforts on a good defense. I know good steel has controlled amounts of manganese and carbon in it (I'm sure more than those two), but I don't know how to control those amounts and my visits to museums and chemistry classes haven't given me enough information to think I could create those from scratch. That is before we consider the amount of labor needed to get the ore. (though if metal is available I'd make a steam engine)
Note that the above assumes I end up in or near Europe. I have no idea if any of societies on the other continents could support the above efforts.
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#26There's a great book about the progression of clothing, textiles, and fabric being scarce and expensive to commonplace and cheap. It runs through the various technological innovations (think cotton gin, but plenty more), culture, and economics. The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel. Great quote about Viking sail ships: "Viking Age sail 100 meters square took 154 kilometers (60 miles) of yarn. Working eight h…
It doesn't strike me as surprising that the sail would take longer than the boat. The skill to make a boat is impressive but the mechanics of getting it done aren't enormous. Fabrics and sewing, gathering and prepping those materials and the tedious work seems enormous.
The sewing of sail fabric is something different. You need to use heavy duty needle and force it through the fabric. It is somewhat similar I would imagine as dealing with leather.
Wood work deals with big pieces comparatively.
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#27There's a great book about the progression of clothing, textiles, and fabric being scarce and expensive to commonplace and cheap. It runs through the various technological innovations (think cotton gin, but plenty more), culture, and economics. The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel. Great quote about Viking sail ships: "Viking Age sail 100 meters square took 154 kilometers (60 miles) of yarn. Working eight h…
> 100 meters square
I think that might take a bit more than 154 km of yarn.
Presumably you meant 100 square metre. :-)
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s curious, if you go back in time far enough with all knowledge from the present, you’d surely arrive at a point where you still need to work your entire life to bring one component of one innovation to life. Even then, the innovation would be unlikely to survive your death due to other missing parts of the supply chain. Try building a musket in Ancient Greece, you’d need to start with building the steel supply ch…
Yes, you wouldn't be building a steam engine with the tools of Greek artisans in antiquity, not even the ones who built the Antikythera mechanism. But we do know some things that would seem like crazy hacks to the ancients. For example, I know a simple trick. I can multiply numbers, of arbitrary size. And I can do it in a few seconds using just a stylus and tablet. This would have blown the minds of a learned Roman o…
I bet most STEM related people could work out how to produce lot or trig tables with a little thinking. I wonder if the ancient Greeks would appreciate those.
Edit: It turns out they could produce their own for trig functions and wouldn't have been all that impressed by the log table because they didn't have logs.
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s curious, if you go back in time far enough with all knowledge from the present, you’d surely arrive at a point where you still need to work your entire life to bring one component of one innovation to life. Even then, the innovation would be unlikely to survive your death due to other missing parts of the supply chain. Try building a musket in Ancient Greece, you’d need to start with building the steel supply ch…
I am pretty sure you could build a musket from bronze. Afaik the early cannons where made of it. Sourcing of the ingredients for black powder might have been harder.
Cannons were cast however and musket barrels aren't. It's unclear you could make the barrels thick/strong enough to be useful. (At some point, you end up with something probably less useful than a refined bow design.)
In general, with these scenarios, another variable is do you just wake up in another time or do you have time to prepare, maybe have reference books/artifacts, figure out what you can do given technology and material availability, maybe learn the language, etc.
Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
#30> Robbers in Italy or debt collectors in Egypt often stripped the clothes off their victims’ backs,
With regard to debt collection, what is interesting is the Bible requires that cloaks that were taken as collateral had to be returned by sunset so the person could sleep in them.
Exodus 22:26 - If you take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in?