Just Roman Around

~I lost Internet access for a few days (the tubes must have been clogged), hence the lack of recent posts. But now I'm back!

Lately I've been watching a lot of the HBO series "ROME" on DVD, a historical drama set in the late Roman Republic and featuring Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, and other famous movers and shakers of the time. Today, I ran across this interesting page, which gives a rough view of how much workers earned in Ancient Rome and how much goods and services cost. Of course, like all large economies, the Roman Republic (and later Empire) was subject the inflation, price gouging, massive price fluctuations, and so forth, much like today. Still, it's interesting to compare how much laborers and soldiers earned when compared to the price of food and clothing.

Most striking is the price of food, which often consumed over 50% of the average worker's pay. Many citizens would not have been able to survive without food subsidies from the government, such as free grain. In the latest episode of ROME that I watched, Caesar arrived in Egypt to settle a civil war between Cleopatra and her brother, which threatened to disrupt grain shipments from Egypt (the breadbasket of the ancient Mediterranean world) to Rome. Without these shipments, the common people back in Rome would have likely revolted and removed Caesar from power.

After nearly a year of fighting, Caesar was able to settle the dispute and place his lover Cleopatra on the Egyptian throne, stabilize the Egyptian economy, and return to Rome in triumph. Well, at least for a while. Et tu, Brutus?