Economics and etymology
Just opened an email from someone I don't know with the subject line 'How much was a sesterce?' If that's spam, it horribly well tailored to me :) But no, it turns out it's a message to a UK Classics list that says the following:
I noticed that Martial (book 1) is selling his books at 6-10 sesterces
each. Likewise the daily dole from a rich man to his clients is 6
sesterces. I was wondering what the purchasing power of a sesterce
was?
That's interesting, isn't it? I'm finding the ancient economy very interesting in all sorts of ways at the moment. My particular hunch at the moment is that the presence or absence of slaves in a society must be a very significant economic factor - but can we bring that down to an assertion that +slaves gives one set of expectations and -slaves another? Is it really as simple as that? What about partial slavery? What about different kinds of slavery? What about the vocabulary of slavery? What if you have a word that you know to mean 'slave' in later times, in this case occurring in a much earlier time when you don't know the exact context - how much can you read into it then?
Yes, I know sort of where to look. But it's bugging me.
---
Anyway, sorry, this post was meant to be about adobe, in two senses...
1) Surely 'adobe' is related to the English word 'daub'? Surely? They mean terribly similar things (muddy stuff put on a wall of wattle to stiffen and insulate it; mud bricks used to build houses in e.g. north Africa) But the Online Etymology Dictionary says daub is from O.Fr. dauber (originally from L. dealbare, from de- "thoroughly" + albare "to whiten," from albus "white.") and adobe is American (coming from Arabic al-tob "the brick," from Coptic tube "brick," a word found in hieroglyphics). Hmm, now that's a weird chance similarity.
2) I was looking at the proof version of my Kadmos article, which is a PDF, and I noticed that Adobe Acrobat has this option to read out your text. It's horribly creepy, and sounds very much like Stephen Hawking (which is only to be expected!).
---
P.S. There was just a reply to the Classics list about the sesterce question:
It's a bit of a difficult question as it depends on the dates - the value
goes up and down so much, depending on whether there's a financial crisis or
not, etc. and the best comparison in terms of value would be to compare it
to military salaries for ordinary soldiers of the day.
Martial is Imperial, and patron / client relationships were mostly a
Republican phenomenon (also, not sure of your source for this info).
For a comparison, I hear a lot of people quote salaries of one drachma a day
for skilled workmen in Greece. Those figures are based on building
inscriptions for temples, do not vary between the Parthenon, Epidaurus, etc,
when we know that there was inflation ... which leads one to conclude that
they may have been a token figure for religious projects as part of one's
civic duties.
I noticed that Martial (book 1) is selling his books at 6-10 sesterces
each. Likewise the daily dole from a rich man to his clients is 6
sesterces. I was wondering what the purchasing power of a sesterce
was?
That's interesting, isn't it? I'm finding the ancient economy very interesting in all sorts of ways at the moment. My particular hunch at the moment is that the presence or absence of slaves in a society must be a very significant economic factor - but can we bring that down to an assertion that +slaves gives one set of expectations and -slaves another? Is it really as simple as that? What about partial slavery? What about different kinds of slavery? What about the vocabulary of slavery? What if you have a word that you know to mean 'slave' in later times, in this case occurring in a much earlier time when you don't know the exact context - how much can you read into it then?
Yes, I know sort of where to look. But it's bugging me.
---
Anyway, sorry, this post was meant to be about adobe, in two senses...
1) Surely 'adobe' is related to the English word 'daub'? Surely? They mean terribly similar things (muddy stuff put on a wall of wattle to stiffen and insulate it; mud bricks used to build houses in e.g. north Africa) But the Online Etymology Dictionary says daub is from O.Fr. dauber (originally from L. dealbare, from de- "thoroughly" + albare "to whiten," from albus "white.") and adobe is American (coming from Arabic al-tob "the brick," from Coptic tube "brick," a word found in hieroglyphics). Hmm, now that's a weird chance similarity.
2) I was looking at the proof version of my Kadmos article, which is a PDF, and I noticed that Adobe Acrobat has this option to read out your text. It's horribly creepy, and sounds very much like Stephen Hawking (which is only to be expected!).
---
P.S. There was just a reply to the Classics list about the sesterce question:
It's a bit of a difficult question as it depends on the dates - the value
goes up and down so much, depending on whether there's a financial crisis or
not, etc. and the best comparison in terms of value would be to compare it
to military salaries for ordinary soldiers of the day.
Martial is Imperial, and patron / client relationships were mostly a
Republican phenomenon (also, not sure of your source for this info).
For a comparison, I hear a lot of people quote salaries of one drachma a day
for skilled workmen in Greece. Those figures are based on building
inscriptions for temples, do not vary between the Parthenon, Epidaurus, etc,
when we know that there was inflation ... which leads one to conclude that
they may have been a token figure for religious projects as part of one's
civic duties.