How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#211

Post by edmundsauto » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

tagoregrtst wrote: post #118

edmundsauto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of human history is the same at its core. Suffering, exploration, profiteering. Yet we have progressed, bit by bit. We have a ways to go, but the arc of history is bending towards less suffering.

“ but the arc of history is bending towards less suffering.” I don't see it bending towards anything but increasingly vulgar, decadent, forms of violence.

I won't disagree with the things that you see, but would encourage you to resist assuming that is representative of the world at large.

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#212

Post by f1refly » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 8:02 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #204

wongarsu wrote: post #11

> 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.

The enormous cost of clothes is why people in the bible tearing their clothes when they were extremely upset was such a big deal. It'd be like someone today throwing their smartphone in the ocean.

Smartphones are usually rather cheap. I think it would be more like setting your car on fire.

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#213

Post by meerita » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 8:19 AM UTC

Nice article. You can read also from Titus Livius, in his work *Ad Urbe Condita, that in many occassions, if not all of them, when an army won the battle they stripped all their defeated army clothing, leaving them only with a small underwear back to their own cities. That was the price of defeat.

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#214

Post by tidenly » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 8:54 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #206

wongarsu wrote: post #11

> 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.

You're only 1-4 generations removed from ancestors who only owned one set of clothing, not necessarily including shoes. Something that's stuck in my mind is how prosperity in India, not that many decades ago, meant that women could wash one Sari in the river without being naked, since they now owned two. When I see people complaining about too much "disposable" clothing, I am not impressed.

Your conclusion doesn't follow. People can be against fast fashions urge for people to constantly be cycling out their wardrobes with short-lived clothing while still supporting everything have what they need. I think that is the main argument - use what we need and no more, or at least reduce waste.

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#215

Post by rags2riches » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 12:43 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #103

soperj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to cut the trees, get them from the forest to the build site, and then make lumber out of them and dry them. Can't imagine it would be that much different.

In those times, chances are they moved the build site to the trees, and made sure the trees were close to the water (with more forest and a much smaller population, such trees could probably be found fairly easily) Also, they didn’t dry the wood. https://regia.org/research/ships/Ships1.htm : “Timber was used green – in other words, shortly after felling. This is different to more modern practice, where the timber is…

Before mechanization, logging was typically done in the winter so horse-drawn sleds could be used to transport the logs out of the forest.

https://picryl.com/media/framkorning-av-timmer-fran-skogen-m...

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#216

Post by hprotagonist » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #203

hprotagonist wrote: post #2

Something 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…

Even knitting dates back only to about 1100 AD, which somewhat staggers me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_knitting

Well, yes, but it has very similar ancestors that are a bunch older: naalbinding, for example, is (probably) at least as old as the Mesolithic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A5lebinding

I know some very … enthusiastic … knitters who are keen to tell me how old knitting “really” is, but it smells a bit like “well, obviously…!” special pleading.

I have a naalbound and then felted cap. It is absurdly warm: unwearable with regular exertion in temperatures above -9C or so.

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#217

Post by bluGill » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

shuntress wrote: post #138

mywittyname wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the OP is saying that there wasn't a need for mechanized power, just that it wasn't profitable to get that power from steam. Water wheels have no fuel costs, and very little ongoing maintenance costs. A steam engine that could be built in antiquity would be incredibly expensive in both respects. So even if the technology existed, there would be little economic incentive to use it over a water wheels, si…

Simple solution: Military industry. Some generals would likely find a mobile mill stone quite useful. When your centuria loot a conquered land they can now take raw grains in addition to processed flour without being tied down to the local stationary mills.

Depends on if it is a practical self propelled engine or not. Our modern military (for any country with a modern military) is 90% about logistics, and all of that is possible because trucks and trains can carry so much food and other equipment overland (they had good enough ships for over water) that a military can supply itself from back home. This is a massive change to how a military operates and their generals would not be blind to that advantage. Siege defense worked in large part because the enemy ran out of food and had to leave (the food from harvest was stored in the city walls so the defenders had the advantage so long as they held the walls)

Of course practical over land transportation is a massive change, and a large part of why our civilization can advance so far. (without tractors 90% of us wouldn't be born because our grandparents would have starved, and the rest would be tillers of the ground - as in physically running a shovel)

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#218

Post by bmn__ » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

Also see:

• Prices and wages in Medieval England (2014) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882389> 2022-01-10, 119 comments

• Medieval Price List https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21669787> 2019-12-01, 147 comments

• List of price of medieval items https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15680005> 2017-11-12, 48 comments

• List of prices of medieval items (2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11613093> 2016-05-03, 38 comments

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#219

Post by shuntress » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #181

shuntress wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds wrong but I don't know enough about ancient roman military rations to dispute it. Do you have any sources? I thought they primarily consumed bread (both hardtack and leavened), watered down wine/vinegar, and meat (when available.)

It was wrong. Turning up quick information makes it clear that hardtack was a core part of the military marching diet, and the soldiers could prepare their own bread, though they didn't carry flour. https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-army/food-in-roman-army/ https://www.comitatus.net/research_files/rations.pdf Those both seem like decent writeups which cite to several classical sources. The first one mentions porrid…

Thanks for the thorough reply.

> it will be done in parallel by a large number of soldiers personally grinding small amounts of grain each, not by a mill

I'd had it in my head for some reason that a mill stone was the only reasonable way to turn grain into flour. This was the main factor I wasn't considering. The weight/effort to handle a portable mill certainly wouldn't beat hand tools. Even if to just help keep soldiers busy.

EDIT: I expect that if one were to analyze an army's flour requirement as some form of equipment weight + work-hours / grain-throughput * army size there would be a point at which it made sense to haul a portable mill. But it definitely would not make sense to power it with steam engine compared to having soldiers turn it by hand. I would also expect that a force large enough to utilize that efficiency would be unheard of in roman times.

Re: How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

#220

Post by ufmace » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 8:07 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #192

estaseuropano wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The printing press is the easy part - parchment was expensive and hard or impossible to get.

Did the Romans not have paper of any sort? It seems odd that they only used animal skins for writing on. My understanding is that while parchment (vellum in particular) was used in early printing press printings, such as the Gutenberg Bible, the use of paper was more common because it was so much cheaper, if less durable.

Seems more like all this stuff is tied together in tricky ways. Why bother learning to read if the only supply of written text is people hand-writing it on fragile paper or parchment, so getting even a single page of written text is super-expensive? Why bother figuring out how to make cheap and durable paper when all text must be hand-written by the few who had time to learn how? Why bother making a way to write faster when paper is expensive and nobody knows how to read?

People need to solve all of those, and have some reason for solving each one independent of the others, before the written word can even start to proliferate widely.