Book 2 Chapter IV: Flute players on the streets of Rome

“As if celebrating in honor of Yosef’s victory, some flute players on the street entertained the crowd, and the sounds of music filled him with joy.”

Was it possible? I mean, flute players on a street? Yes. Specifically, on the Quinquatrus Minusculae (June 12-14, three days around Ides of June) flute players in masks played throughout the city streets.

How often gladiators died on arena

Just yesterday, I found a very interesting article, which among other things had the following statement: "Roman scholar Georges Ville recently conducted a study of ancient writings which recorded arena deaths during a short period of the 1st Century AD. He discovered that, of the 200 gladiators involved in the documented fights, only 19 of them died."

Impressive, is it? We are accustomed to think about gladiators as a sort of Japanese komikadze, while instead it was definitely a high risk occupation, but hardly a higher risk than a soldier, probably not even close to that! Only 10%, 90% of gladiators successfully lived to the old years, probably already as free Roman citizens.

Slaves prices in Greece and Rome

Found an interesting information.

Prices on slaves in Greece in around 400-350 BC.

Uneducated slave	~ 2 mins (1.5-2.5 mins)
Skilled slave	3-4 mins
Slave overseeer, "manager"	5-6 mins
Slave with special skills and knoledge	10-15 mins
Buatiful girls and dancers	20-30 mins

Greek money:

6 obols	=	1 drahma
100 drahms	=	1 min
60 mins	=	1 talant

Now, Rome.
In Republic and eraly Empire uneducated slae was 400-500 denarii.
Late Empire (with almost no conquest and chep source of slaves) 600-700 denarii
(the second price seems questionable, considering inflation)

Comparing with the Greek prices, we get:

Uneducated slave	400-500 denarii
Skilled slave	800-1000 denarii
Slave overseeer, "manager"	1000-1500 denarii
Slave with special skills and knowledge	2000-3000 denarii
Beautiful girls and dancers	4000-6000 denarii

The price of slaves in Rome

Found such information for the time of Cato, but don't know how reliable it is...

• The price of a slave is about a two-year wage of a free man of similar skills.
• A free field worker had between 2/3 to 5/6 of a denarius per day, that is about 500-600 in two years.
• An unskilled, 20 year old male slave was about 500 denarius.
• Related: expected return of 6% (25 denarii per year) and writing off the salve in 20 years.
• Keeping a slave was about 1/3 of the wage of a free worker, about 128 denarii per year for an unskilled field worker.
• Cost of living at the time for a freeman laborer and his wife was about 300 denarii/year.

Census data for Rome

Just found an excellent table of Roman Census data published by John Paul Adams from CSUN here.

According to it, population of Rome during King Servius Tullius was aboput 80 thousand people, while in AD 47 it became close to 6-7 millions.

I find very ineteresting a jump in population during the change from the Republic to the Empire:

70/69 B.C. 910,000 / 900,000
28 B.C. (Augustus) 4,063,000

Caveat: data are not 100% reliable, because it's hard to tell who exactly was counted (e.g., slaves apparently were not), if it was a full census, if the numbers were properly copied from manuscript to manuscript, etc. Many believe that numbers prior to 340 BC are not real.

Eestor - battery for electromobils from Texas

Eestor – Business 2.0, October 2006, p.82

Not exactly about Rome or Egypt, but closely related to getting rid of oil-dependency, which I consider relеvant to this blog and the book. Seems like not only oil-thirsty politicians are coming from Texas. Here is one very positive example that this state may be truly proud of.

A company called EEStor from Texas seems to develop accumulator batteries capable of charging in 5 minutes to store the energy enough for 500 miles of drive with the engine (battery + the motor) cost of only $5200 (the article states that similar gasoline engine is $3000-$5000, but if you ever faced a need to replace one, you know that it’s much more). Considering current electricity prices, this engine will provide an equivalent by mileage of about 45 cents per gallon or $9 to travel 500 miles (compared to $60 on average gasoline car with $3/gallon price)

Sounds really good, unless this technology will also disappear just like the technology of producing light oil from any organic waste (including city sewage) at $17 per barrel, described by Discover back in 2003 (Anything into Oil by Brad Lenley – Discover, Vol 24., No 5, May 2003.)

The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina

The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina by Frank Rich - ISBN 159420098X, 352 pages, 2006.

Funny, I am not alone in drawing Ancient analogies. The title of the book obviously exploits a similarity to another book "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" considering genesis of the Christiantiy.

Also, amazingly, this book holds #2 sales rank on Amazon!

Ancient Egypt by David P. Silverman – Oxford University Press

Ancient Egypt by David P. Silverman (Editor) – Oxford University Press and Dunkan Baird Publishers Ltd., 2003 (copyright 1997), ISBN 0-19-521952-X

Another excellent choice by Oxford University Press. Apparently the book was created and prepared by Dunkan Baird Publishers Ltd., and then picked up by Oxford University Press. Well, seems like that how publishing industry will work in the near future – small companies taking the risk and large companies providing large distribution for winners. But anyway, that one was a great choice by OUP editors.

Where was Legio X Fretensis and Centurion Furious in AD 65-66?

From Wikipedia:

"In 66, the X Fretensis and V Macedonica went to Alexandria for an invasion of Ethiopia planned by Nero. However, the two legions were needed in Iudaea to suppress a revolt."

It means that in 65 (Book II) it was in Judea, and it was sent to Alexadnria soon before the revolt, where it was under direct command of Vespasian.

Roman Triremes

When working on chapters VI-VII, I thought about sending Judean priests home from Rome by a military trireme. Of course, it’s not a passenger ship, but if the emperor decides they would take anything onboard, and that would bring the priests home quickly. Seems, it was not such a great idea as I cannot find any logical reason why Nero or Tigellinus would bother to do so. I still may send Nil and his company this way. Meanwhile, here is a lot of links to materials about triremes that I found trying to understand how such a travel would look like:

[1] Trireme (From Wikipedia)
[2] The Athenian fighting ship: the trieres
[3] How was a trireme built? by E.J. de Meester
[4] Ships of the Ancient Greeks
[5] The Trireme Trust
[6] Roman Trireme
[7] Athen's Triere -- Greek style triere (broken deck, no cabin)
[8] Ancient Generals: Themistocles: Master of Deception -- Speaks about Greeks, but shows a picture of a Roman trireme (not Greek triere)
[9] The Picture Gallery of Ships -- Just few more pictures of triremes and trieres
[10] X Legio v.1.5 -- Roman trireme (the page is in Russian, but contains a good picture with captain's cabin)

Doctor Noot – did Egyptians really knew dentistry?

I probably already wrote about that, but let’s do that again.

Yes, they did.

See [1], page 53 for a photo of the first known “false” teeth in the history of the humankind. It’s about 4,500 years old (~2,500 BC). And yes, sometimes Egyptians used metals. These ancient teeth were held together by a gold wire. They also knew how to fill cavities and fight a dental infection. The first known dentist, probably, was Hesi Re, the “Chief of Toothers and Physicians”, who lived about 2,600 BC (~4,600 years ago).

[1] Science in Ancient Egypt by Geraldine Woods – Franklin Watts, 1998, ISBN 0-531-15915-9

Book I of September Ides is coming!

Official day of publication is Feruary 25! The printed copies are coming. See more at the Galiel.Net - the publisher's site.

Ancient Mathematics in Egypt

According to [1], about 3,500 years ago (around 1,500 BC), Ahmes the Moonborn wrote a book called How to Obtain Information About All Things Mysterious and Dark. The things “mysterious and dark” was mathematics. It already covered fractions, multiplication and division (including of fractions), calculating the area of a circle (remember? pi=3.1415…), square or triangle (not just a triangle with one right angle, any triangle), volume of some shapes. See [1], page 31.

About a millennium later, some of this knowledge was popularized by a Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras. We still associate some of this knowledge with his name. By the way, did you know that Pythagoras served as an Egyptian priest for many years in the Upper Egypt?

[1] Science in Ancient Egypt by Geraldine Woods – Franklin Watts, 1998, ISBN 0-531-15915-9

Science in Ancient Egypt by Geraldine Woods

Science in Ancient Egypt by Geraldine Woods – Franklin Watts, 1998, ISBN 0-531-15915-9

A wonderful book for children, and a funny one for adults. While I would not recommend this book as a serious reference – it’s really targeted to children – I would definitely recommend it to young people for school reading, especially if you have a school project on the science in Ancient Egypt.

As any American popular book on Egypt, it has a lot of illustrations, but most of them are relevant, which is a great advantage over similar books. Also, the set of facts to describe is done very intelligently. Apparently, 64 pages book could not really go into details and cover everything, but what to cover and what to leave is picked up well.

Here are a few things mentioned in the book: using triangulation for measuring land, Egyptian ships, building pyramids (sure, how you can miss this one…), using levels, and more. By the way, did you know that Egyptians employed binary base system for multiplication and division (like we use in computers now). By the way, they also put the foundation to the modern decimal system, while alternative civilization of Mesopotamia used 64-base system instead (some traces of it we can see today in a 16-base system popular in the software development).

Also, pay attention to bibliography and links, especially, Egyptology Resources: http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/egypt/

If you fancy Latin or Greek...

...but never had a time to really learn these languages, here is a good start. :-)

Who were the priests retained by Nero in Rome?

Joseph Flavius tells that he was on the mission to Rome somewhere in 62/63-65 to release Judean priests who were held as hostages by Nero. In the book, he will have to meet them, so who were they?

Here is a quote from another Joseph Flavius book, Antiquities of the Jews ([1]):

11. About the same time king Agrippa built himself a very large dining-room in the royal palace at Jerusalem, near to the portico. Now this palace had been erected of old by the children of Asamoneus. and was situate upon an elevation, and afforded a most delightful prospect to those that had a mind to take a view of the city, which prospect was desired by the king; and there he could lie down, and eat, and thence observe what was done in the temple; which thing, when the chief men of Jerusalem saw they were very much displeased at it; for it was not agreeable to the institutions of our country or law that what was done in the temple should be viewed by others, especially what belonged to the sacrifices. They therefore erected a wall upon the uppermost building which belonged to the inner court of the temple towards the west, which wall when it was built, did not only intercept the prospect of the dining-room in the palace, but also of the western cloisters that belonged to the outer court of the temple also, where it was that the Romans kept guards for the temple at the festivals. At these doings both king Agrippa, and principally Festus the procurator, were much displeased; and Festus ordered them to pull the wall down again: but the Jews petitioned him to give them leave to send an embassage about this matter to Nero; for they said they could not endure to live if any part of the temple should be demolished; and when Festus had given them leave so to do, they sent ten of their principal men to Nero, as also Ismael the high priest, and Helcias, the keeper of the sacred treasure. And when Nero had heard what they had to say, he not only forgave (22) them what they had already done, but also gave them leave to let the wall they had built stand. This was granted them in order to gratify Poppea, Nero's wife, who was a religious woman, and had requested these favors of Nero, and who gave order to the ten ambassadors to go their way home; but retained Helcias and Ismael as hostages with herself. As soon as the king heard this news, he gave the high priesthood to Joseph, who was called Cabi, the
son of Simon, formerly high priest.

[1] Antiquities of the Jews - Book XX, From Fadus The Procurator To Florus, Chapter 8 - http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-20.htm