Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bookandsword.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 232 posts

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

#221

Post by bregma »

sandworm101 wrote: post #121
bregma wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plucking sheep. You shear sheep, not pluck them. If you're experienced you can sheer about 100 sheep per day. You can skirt and wash the fleece of those same 100 sheep on day two. How are you spending the remaining 598 days? While I'm not an expert at spinning (although my spouse may be), I would venture that 12 or 15 village women carding and spinning 10 to 12 hours a day would be able to go from sheep to sail in ab…

Plucking is the ancient form of sheering. You literally pull the hair off the sheep by hand. You aren't yanking it out by the roots, the shaft generally broke rather than the root put out of the skin, but I doubt the sheep enjoyed the process. In short: gathering wool from sheep was very different before ready acess to steel shears. https://www.chassagne.ca/index.php/the-croft-mainmenu-30/the... "Before the invention…

If you have ever encountered a sheep's fleece you would realize that it's not possible to pluck. It's a solid mat. It's not hair. Even paleolithic people had sharp knives and scrapers capable of shearing a fleece, so it's not stretch to imagine iron age people having equipment at least as good as their ancestors from 25000 years prior.

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

#222

Post by causi »

asdff wrote: post #210
causi wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how the longevity compares. Would a tunic last much longer than a modern pair of jeans?

Even a modern pair of jeans sent to ancient rome would last longer than a modern pair of genes today. All the washing and drying we do is what makes your jeans go threadbare in the knees in a few years time.

As someone who does a fair bit of physical labor, my jeans wear out in the crotch from walking, generally in less than a year.

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

#223

Post by jacobolus »

dredmorbius wrote: post #208
jacobolus wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A wax or clay tablet or flat patch of dirt and a stick, piece of bark or wood and charcoal, etc. don’t have enough advantage for anyone to bother organizing their accounting or calculation system around them. They are on the whole inferior to the existing system. Trying to introduce them to people 2000+ years ago might have a chance, but it would be a tough sell. The thing that really spread Hindu numbers around the…

Is there any evidence / record that Hindu / Arabic numerals and paper co-dispersed?

I am not an expert.

My impression is that in India “Hindu” numerals and arithmetic were developed using some kind of erasable board, but among Arabic speakers (and later Europeans) the spread of Hindu numerals went along with paper as a prerequisite technology.

This looks relevant https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.ucsc.edu/dist/f/704/file...

Here is a relevant looking book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300089554/paper-print

In e.g. Britain, the transition to Hindu numerals did not occur until 1600–1800, depending on the place.

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

#224

Post by jacobolus »

jacobolus wrote: post #223
dredmorbius wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence / record that Hindu / Arabic numerals and paper co-dispersed?

I am not an expert. My impression is that in India “Hindu” numerals and arithmetic were developed using some kind of erasable board, but among Arabic speakers (and later Europeans) the spread of Hindu numerals went along with paper as a prerequisite technology. This looks relevant https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.ucsc.edu/dist/f/704/file... Here is a relevant looking book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030008…

https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2017.59 is interesting

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

#225

Post by dredmorbius »

jacobolus wrote: post #223
dredmorbius wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence / record that Hindu / Arabic numerals and paper co-dispersed?

I am not an expert. My impression is that in India “Hindu” numerals and arithmetic were developed using some kind of erasable board, but among Arabic speakers (and later Europeans) the spread of Hindu numerals went along with paper as a prerequisite technology. This looks relevant https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.ucsc.edu/dist/f/704/file... Here is a relevant looking book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030008…

Thanks.

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

#226

Post by dredmorbius »

jacobolus wrote: post #223
dredmorbius wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence / record that Hindu / Arabic numerals and paper co-dispersed?

I am not an expert. My impression is that in India “Hindu” numerals and arithmetic were developed using some kind of erasable board, but among Arabic speakers (and later Europeans) the spread of Hindu numerals went along with paper as a prerequisite technology. This looks relevant https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.ucsc.edu/dist/f/704/file... Here is a relevant looking book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030008…

It's probably worth noting that Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli's dates are c. 1447 – 19 June 1517, shortly after Gutenberg and about 50--100 years after cheap papermaking (comparatively) first reached Europe.

It's hard to have double-entry bookkeeping without books.

I'm unsure if he used Arabic or Roman notation... Though the dedication page of Summa Mathematica in fact does include recognisable Hindu / Arabic numerals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_de_arithmetica#/media/Fi...

Wikipedia's article has several illustrations, but none of the actual bookkeeping notation itself, which is ... a curious oversight. Continued on the double-entry bookkeeping article as well FWIW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Pacioli

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

#227

Post by K0balt »

An interesting takeaway here is the wages with and without “maintenance”. From earlier reading, I take “maintained” workers to have been provided food, fuel, and housing.

Since “maintained” workers earned half of “unmaintained” workers, we can extrapolate that the pay was approximately equal to the cost of food, fuel, and housing, which would point to discretionary income at a much higher rate vs basic costs of living than contemporary laborers.

Many other factors are involved of course, including services and automation which greatly increase quality of life while reducing the need of discretionary spending, and also the comparative wage hierarchy of textile workers, but it is an interesting comparison nonetheless.

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

#228

Post by abecedarius »

bee_rider wrote: post #28
retrac wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slides rules, though. Although it'd be nontrivial to make them, and I'm not sure where the demand would come from. For some of the same practical engineering approximations they might use compass and straightedge instead.

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

#229

Post by bee_rider »

abecedarius wrote: post #228
bee_rider wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slides rules, though. Although it'd be nontrivial to make them, and I'm not sure where the demand would come from. For some of the same practical engineering approximations they might use compass and straightedge instead.

I never had the chance to use a sliderule, unfortunately.

In general (I'm sure someone's dug incredibly deep on this topic and can tell me exactly why I'm wrong), the pre-digital/electronic-computer era of engineering seems to have been really focused on doing log based calculations, which makes sense -- a good design has tolerances such that you only have to be right in the order of magnitude, right? This seems like it would much more appropriate to share with ancient civilizations. No need to waste precision when the implementation is going to be done with an hammer and chisel.

I will only be useful if you can convince ancient Greek computers to go out to E-15, haha.

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

#230

Post by abecedarius »

bee_rider wrote: post #229
abecedarius wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slides rules, though. Although it'd be nontrivial to make them, and I'm not sure where the demand would come from. For some of the same practical engineering approximations they might use compass and straightedge instead.

I never had the chance to use a sliderule, unfortunately. In general (I'm sure someone's dug incredibly deep on this topic and can tell me exactly why I'm wrong), the pre-digital/electronic-computer era of engineering seems to have been really focused on doing log based calculations, which makes sense -- a good design has tolerances such that you only have to be right in the order of magnitude, right? This seems like…

Yeah, a slide rule's supposed to be good to ~3 digits, and I was imagining maybe the crude ones you're hacking up are only good for 2. The one I picked up out of curiosity is a bit sticky in its action, alas, so I haven't been excited about getting into it.

I'd suck at "inventing" anything impressive & practical -- so it'd be hard to get heard about germs, etc., etc., which I do know.

Post reply on HN