Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

Tulip: Jun 3, 2008; yeah thats pretty good

Jazerus posted:

you don't need a strong grasp of inflation's relationship to money supply to know that debasement will lead to inflation, something which the Romans and most other pre-modern coiners were in fact well aware of. there is an inflationary mechanism built into debasement that has nothing to do with the money supply as an abstract concept: people discovering the debasement. unlike fiat money, only part of the perceived value of a pre-modern coin comes from the legitimate backing of a state, and that part of the value wasn't necessarily anything that they would have had much understanding of. the other part of the value, and the part that is obvious, is from its precious metal content.

if too much of the money is perceived as heavily debased, prices will rise simply because merchants and shop owners don't think the coins are as valuable as they were previously. if it gets really bad, there can be a reversion to pre-coinage value methods entirely - continuing to use coins, but only for their precious metal content rather than their face value. the money supply effects are also occurring invisibly, but nobody needed to be aware of them to draw the connection between inflation and debasement in a society where value rested in the metal rather than the symbol

cheetah7071 posted:

My understanding is that yeah, the relationship between debasing and inflation was well-understood. Spanish inflation in the early modern period came as a surprise because it was driven by the quantity of silver in the economy, not the amount per coin

I'm going to push back here again because economists, today, are able to marshal contradictory evidence to basically every going theory of inflation. There's a raging, completely unresolved debate between "does inflation happen because of push or pull," or in this case did inflation go up in Rome because the coins were debased, or did people start debasing coins because inflation was going up already? And even if debasement increases inflation, is a 10% debasement going to lead to 10% inflation, or 20%, or 1%? In the case of hyperinflation the evidence that inflation hits hundreds and thousands of percents and then the government has to increase issuing in order to catch up with the already existing hyperinflation seems pretty compelling to me (just based on like, accounts of government workers in Zimbabwe and Venezuela). The strongest relationship I've ever seen in anybody's understanding of inflation is that anybody who says that inflation is "well-understood" is about to very confidently step on a rake.

Going back in history, money-as-trust is older than money-as-metal. This creates complexity here, and my inclination is that the debasement-inflation connection is not just a matter of 'how much silver' is in the coins but in 'does debasement decrease trust in the monetary system.' It's possible that Romans were just all TobleroneTriangular hardcore metallists and just didn't believe in Juno Moneta or the Roman system of debts or their neighbors in general, but I'd really want to see some strong arguments.

I think there's a simple but difficult to execute test here: what is the quantitative relationship between debasement and inflation rates? If there's a linear relationship between debasement (as a percentage of coin-silver-weight) and inflation, then we can at least suppose that Romans could have hypothetically understood the relationship; if the relationship is nonlinear then I think it's unreasonable to expect Roman leaders to understand the consequences of debasement. This is simple but really loving hard because measuring inflation is intrinsically political and an utter pain in the rear end even with good data collection, something we can't count on for Roman sources.

# ? Feb 25, 2024 21:34

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# ? May 25, 2024 14:51

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

The mere act of creating new currency is inflationary, regardless of whether or not the composition of the currency is pure or not. You're plopping more currency out into the world that exists. I think most famously the Spanish Empire wound up suffering inflation from the fact they were pumping out large amounts of coins from all the real gold and silver that they were harvesting from the New World.

The use of monetary policy by governments to crank out new currency is a prudent way for the government to get more money to do things with without necessarily having to raise taxes, and usually inflation is more of a slow burning thing in the background. It's even good for the economy to have just a little bit of inflation, because if you get something like deflation where all prices are going down, that can prompt people to wait to spend their money in the hopes that prices will drop lower. The reason why not all production of currency leads to big booms of inflation is that if the overall economy is growing, often the inflation will be offset by the real value of the inputs going into the things being sold going down with economies of scale and more plentiful resources. When the economy is doing very badly or even shrinking while you add to the money supply, you are more likely to run into people losing faith in the currency and demanding more for their goods and services.

But there's another dimension with the history of coinage specifically where sometimes just do want the raw metal composing the coins. I'm not really sure whether domestic jewelers would normally just melt down coins when they wanted some gold or silver, it may be cheaper to get unprocessed raw metal? But there's also the matter of foreign commerce, because while a domestic government would guarantee the value of its own currency, once a coin goes beyond the borders, unless you hand that coin off to somebody planning to go right back to use it for more trade (which can be fairly common), then somebody with a bunch of coins belonging to a country they've never seen may just melt it down for the metals instead of trusting the far away government.

Despite this, there are many cases throughout history of some currency earning prestige beyond its national borders, either from having wide trade relations so there will always be people ready to exchange it, or from just being highly regarded for its purity in its own right. Roman coins travelled pretty far. The Venetian ducat and Florentine florin became pretty widely accepted in their day. The Spanish peso went pretty much everywhere in the world and people even had big opinions on different kinds of pesos, like the ones minted in Mexico were more highly valued for their purity. This is also relevant from the fact that if you have a bunch of currency in high demand outside of the country, that can provide a deflationary effect from people taking the currency out of the country and removing it from circulation (meaning that the government can issue that amount of currency with no inflation). That's been especially relevant on the modern day for the US dollar and people in foreign countries stockpiling US dollars to hedge against fluctuations in their local currency.

I think there's also a lot of extra psychological aspects that went into how people thought about currency when it was still just physical coins, but I don't know all that much about that. Some bankers used to use physical weighing devices to help process their money, which debasing could screw up. Counterfeiting was also out there.

# ? Feb 25, 2024 22:00

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

Tulip posted:

I'm going to push back here again because economists, today, are able to marshal contradictory evidence to basically every going theory of inflation. There's a raging, completely unresolved debate between "does inflation happen because of push or pull," or in this case did inflation go up in Rome because the coins were debased, or did people start debasing coins because inflation was going up already? And even if debasement increases inflation, is a 10% debasement going to lead to 10% inflation, or 20%, or 1%? In the case of hyperinflation the evidence that inflation hits hundreds and thousands of percents and then the government has to increase issuing in order to catch up with the already existing hyperinflation seems pretty compelling to me (just based on like, accounts of government workers in Zimbabwe and Venezuela). The strongest relationship I've ever seen in anybody's understanding of inflation is that anybody who says that inflation is "well-understood" is about to very confidently step on a rake.

Going back in history, money-as-trust is older than money-as-metal. This creates complexity here, and my inclination is that the debasement-inflation connection is not just a matter of 'how much silver' is in the coins but in 'does debasement decrease trust in the monetary system.' It's possible that Romans were just all TobleroneTriangular hardcore metallists and just didn't believe in Juno Moneta or the Roman system of debts or their neighbors in general, but I'd really want to see some strong arguments.

I think there's a simple but difficult to execute test here: what is the quantitative relationship between debasement and inflation rates? If there's a linear relationship between debasement (as a percentage of coin-silver-weight) and inflation, then we can at least suppose that Romans could have hypothetically understood the relationship; if the relationship is nonlinear then I think it's unreasonable to expect Roman leaders to understand the consequences of debasement. This is simple but really loving hard because measuring inflation is intrinsically political and an utter pain in the rear end even with good data collection, something we can't count on for Roman sources.

"people" don't debase coins, the state does. debased coinage decreases trust in the coins - this is something we know not from speculation but from people writing "caracalla debased the currency which was bad because it made the coins worth less" and so on over and over about every documented instance of significant debasement. does that mean the debasement was in fact the primary driver of the inflation? not necessarily! but it means that they perceived it that way, which is what is relevant when someone asks "why does debasing happen? what are the pros and cons?".

roman coins may well have hung in there at a reasonable value longer than they "should have" because of the solid legitimacy of the empire and the debt system and so on, but eventually the perceived value of most of their coins became so low that the state issued new types of coins. the premise of releasing a new type of coin to fill the same niche - as if the US government released the "new quarter" because the quarter's purchasing power had declined - is that people do not trust the current coinage due to debasement and a new coin that is distinctively different can be trusted to have enough precious metal content to make it reasonable to trust the face value again. and it worked! people started using the new coins at reasonable prices because they perceived them as non-debased.

so yeah the pros and cons of debasement as perceived by the people making the decision to debase were quite simple - more money now, but difficulty with inflation and loss of trust later. whether this is a true relationship is something worth debating but also not something i'm particularly qualified to argue one way or the other about

# ? Feb 25, 2024 23:44

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

So I kinda had a random thought.

Someone once told me Alexander and Napoleon's greatest flaws wasthey didn't know when tos top. Had they stopped at certain key points, they could have lived long lives and savored their empires. I dunno if this is accurate or not, you can tell me if it is, but the main point is this is quintessentially a Tragic (in the dramatic) character but in real life. Their ambition propelled them on to great success, yet it was also their undoing. It makes for a greater story than if they had both conquered, went home, and lived out a life of ease.

It made me think - s this why Julius Caesar seems to be more famous than Augustus to the average person? I think Augustus is more important to history than Caesar, but it seems to me like Caesar is far more well known among people. Like Alexander and Napoleon, he is a Tragic character in real life and so the retelling of his life is far more interesting than Augustus' success.

And of course Shakespeare writing an actual Tragedy about him helped a lot. But there's a reason Shakespeare wrote about him in the first place, I assume.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 03:13

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

It would've helped both those other guys if they'd written a hit book about how great they were.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 03:17

Gaius Marius: Oct 9, 2012

Arglebargle III posted:

It would've helped both those other guys if they'd written a hit book about how great they were.

Napoleon's reputation was probably saved by him choosing not to continue pursuing the literary arts.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 03:28

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Julius' career is almost custom designed to make for a good narrative. Augustus on the other hand makes way less sense without the context of Julius, plus he has decades of boring old imperial administration following the classically "exciting" bits with Antonius and Cleopatra, very few people care about that.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 03:32

Mr. Nice!: Oct 13, 2005; bone shaking.
soul baking.

Augustus was also overshadowed in coolness by Agrippa.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 03:47

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Yeah Augustus has the lasting legacy in actually accomplishing stuff, but Caesar's story is a far more dramatic tale of adventure. Augustus was a stupendously talented political schemer and administrator. Different kind of interesting.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:09

Gaius Marius: Oct 9, 2012

The start of Augustus's career is as crazy as Julius's, and then he wins 2 seasons in and you end with a dexter level of diminishing returns during the next 6 seasons. Julius had a tight 3 with a good lead up to the sequel series.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:13

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Getting assassinated at the height of your power is also a pretty good way to be interesting. How much would people think about JFK if Bernie Sanders hadn't pulled off that shot?

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:15

WoodrowSkillson: Feb 24, 2005; *Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

PittTheElder posted:

Julius' career is almost custom designed to make for a good narrative. Augustus on the other hand makes way less sense without the context of Julius, plus he has decades of boring old imperial administration following the classically "exciting" bits with Antonius and Cleopatra, very few people care about that.

Also Agrippa is nearly integral to his success, the bro of all time.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:19

Tulip: Jun 3, 2008; yeah thats pretty good

Jazerus posted:

"people" don't debase coins, the state does. debased coinage decreases trust in the coins - this is something we know not from speculation but from people writing "caracalla debased the currency which was bad because it made the coins worth less" and so on over and over about every documented instance of significant debasement. does that mean the debasement was in fact the primary driver of the inflation? not necessarily! but it means that they perceived it that way, which is what is relevant when someone asks "why does debasing happen? what are the pros and cons?".

roman coins may well have hung in there at a reasonable value longer than they "should have" because of the solid legitimacy of the empire and the debt system and so on, but eventually the perceived value of most of their coins became so low that the state issued new types of coins. the premise of releasing a new type of coin to fill the same niche - as if the US government released the "new quarter" because the quarter's purchasing power had declined - is that people do not trust the current coinage due to debasement and a new coin that is distinctively different can be trusted to have enough precious metal content to make it reasonable to trust the face value again. and it worked! people started using the new coins at reasonable prices because they perceived them as non-debased.

so yeah the pros and cons of debasement as perceived by the people making the decision to debase were quite simple - more money now, but difficulty with inflation and loss of trust later. whether this is a true relationship is something worth debating but also not something i'm particularly qualified to argue one way or the other about

Basically yea this is where I'm at.

Grand Fromage posted:

Getting assassinated at the height of your power is also a pretty good way to be interesting. How much would people think about JFK if Bernie Sanders hadn't pulled off that shot?

Alt history where the assassination doesn't work and Caesar fumbles the next 30 years and goes down in history as kind of an embarrassing schlub.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:28

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

If your ruling class peers decide they're going to stab you to death personally with knives I feel like you're in a position where you're probably going to end up dead anyway, or the results are going to be a giga clusterfuck. It's a very different situation than most political assassinations where you got a lone nut with some plausible deniability, or even just stochastic acts. That said, I'm not too up on what happens to Caesar's assassins aside from vaguely remembering the latter half of the Shakespeare play. (I'm guessing it didn't end well for them!)

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:46

The Lone Badger: Sep 24, 2007

Ghost Leviathan posted:

If your ruling class peers decide they're going to stab you to death personally with knives I feel like you're in a position where you're probably going to end up dead anyway, or the results are going to be a giga clusterfuck. It's a very different situation than most political assassinations where you got a lone nut with some plausible deniability, or even just stochastic acts. That said, I'm not too up on what happens to Caesar's assassins aside from vaguely remembering the latter half of the Shakespeare play. (I'm guessing it didn't end well for them!)

Nothing ever ends well for anyone.
The middle is sometimes sorta okay, but that�s the most you�ll get.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:49

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

As far as we know Augustus hunted them all down. We don't have records of all of them, but the ones we do know were either killed in battle during the civil war or found and assassinated by Augustus' agents.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 04:50

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Yeah, that sounds about right. The way one of the Godfather movies ended.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 06:14

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Grand Fromage posted:

As far as we know Augustus hunted them all down. We don't have records of all of them, but the ones we do know were either killed in battle during the civil war or found and assassinated by Augustus' agents.

and one of them made commemorative coins

# ? Feb 26, 2024 07:12

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Grand Fromage posted:

Getting assassinated at the height of your power is also a pretty good way to be interesting. How much would people think about JFK if Bernie Sanders hadn't pulled off that shot?

Now this is a conspiracy theory I need to hear more about.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 07:45

Glah: Jun 21, 2005

Alexander's greatest flaw was that he didn't know when to stop drinking.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 09:06

Azza Bamboo: Apr 7, 2018; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021

Augustus may have lived and ruled long, but it's clear that the intrigue in his case is over the succession rather than his own life. His reign can be summed up as repeated attempts to name anyone other than Tiberius, only to see them swatted down one by one.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 10:17

GoutPatrol: Oct 17, 2009; *Stupid Babby*

PittTheElder posted:

Now this is a conspiracy theory I need to hear more about.

the better one is Ted Cruz's dad

# ? Feb 26, 2024 12:02

Groda: Mar 17, 2005; Hair Elf

GoutPatrol posted:

the better one is Ted Cruz's dad

https://youtu.be/0-Lvv1f5Qu4

# ? Feb 26, 2024 13:06

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Grand Fromage posted:

As far as we know Augustus hunted them all down. We don't have records of all of them, but the ones we do know were either killed in battle during the civil war or found and assassinated by Augustus' agents.

This was a joint project with Antonius and Lepidus. Augustus acts like it was all him in the Res Gestae but at the earliest stage, his role was just that of the hype man who bullies other politicians into acting because they�ll lose their following to a teenager if they don�t. the first man to actually start a war was Antonius (against Decimus Brutus), which provided the opportunity for Caesar Jr to steal the armies of the fortuitously dead consuls and make himself a force in the state. The need to get rid of the �liberators� is the ostensible justification for the triumvirate and the proscriptions. Even then, it takes a decade plus for him to get out from under Antony�s thumb.

skasion fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Feb 26, 2024

# ? Feb 26, 2024 13:38

Squizzle: Apr 24, 2008

GoutPatrol posted:

the better one is Ted Cruz's dad

bernie sanders is his dad

# ? Feb 26, 2024 14:04

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Poor Lepidus. I got a loving degree in this and forget he existed most of the time.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 19:02

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Grand Fromage posted:

Poor Lepidus. I got a loving degree in this and forget he existed most of the time.

Augustus would be gratified

# ? Feb 26, 2024 19:05

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

He was allowed to retire to obscurity and died in his sleep, which was a better ending than most of the (non-Augustus) people who played high-level politics during that age got.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 19:09

EricBauman: Nov 30, 2005; DOLF IS RECHTVAARDIG

Who could kill mister Nice?

Literally his name.

Imagine getting some freedman assassin in and telling him who the target is.
"Mr Nice? Are you loving serious? You want me to strangle that guy?"

# ? Feb 26, 2024 19:18

Mr. Nice!: Oct 13, 2005; bone shaking.
soul baking.

EricBauman posted:

Who could kill mister Nice?

Literally his name.

Imagine getting some freedman assassin in and telling him who the target is.
"Mr Nice? Are you loving serious? You want me to strangle that guy?"

Thank you.

# ? Feb 26, 2024 19:28

King of False Promises: Jul 31, 2000

CrypticFox posted:

There is a mountain of material out there on this topic, but the best place to start with the Assyrian Empire is Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire, by Eckhart Frahm.

I'm reading this right now and it is very, very good.

# ? Feb 27, 2024 00:38

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

I wonder if that's a bit of a pun from Linnaeus there. Butterflies are lepidoptera, "scale-wings," but it's so close to being "nice and lovely wings" if you don't mind mixing greek and latin.

# ? Feb 27, 2024 01:29

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

I was looking up the etymology of chickpeas the other day (since my 3yo asked), and apparently it goes back to Latin cicer, roughly meaning miserly. And I wondered how that relates to Cicero.

# ? Feb 27, 2024 10:09

Hippocrass: Aug 18, 2015; That third panel of the first comic just makes it. It's still funny if you remove it, but that panel included just makes it top tier.

Lead out in cuffs posted:

I was looking up the etymology of chickpeas the other day (since my 3yo asked), and apparently it goes back to Latin cicer, roughly meaning miserly. And I wondered how that relates to Cicero.

He had a crooked nose that resembled a chick pea.

# ? Feb 27, 2024 11:47

Groda: Mar 17, 2005; Hair Elf

Lead out in cuffs posted:

I was looking up the etymology of chickpeas the other day (since my 3yo asked), and apparently it goes back to Latin cicer, roughly meaning miserly. And I wondered how that relates to Cicero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Vespers#The_uprising

# ? Feb 27, 2024 12:05

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Hippocrass posted:

He had a crooked nose that resembled a chick pea.

I believe it was an inherited cognomen from his grandpa or something like that

# ? Feb 27, 2024 21:41

FreudianSlippers: Apr 12, 2010; Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Imagine your grandpa having a weird nose and you still being insulted for it.

# ? Feb 27, 2024 21:50

AAAAA! Real Muenster: Jul 12, 2008; My QB is also named Bort

CrypticFox posted:

For an actual answer, the changes probably were mostly cultural. This is a really hard question to answer and there is a truly enormous body of scholarly literature on this topic, much of which disagrees with each other. But what is generally agreed upon is that the key changes were not technological. The Bronze Age vs Iron Age model we have inherited from 19th century scholars assumes that technological change was the most important shift in dividing these two periods. But that's not really true. Iron was used in the "Bronze" Age already, although it did increase in use significantly in the "Iron" Age, but bronze continued to be of important importance in the "Iron" Age. Widespread iron use was certainly important, but it was not a total paradigm shift like our periodization scheme would suggest. Much more so than Iron, the widespread use of the horse was quite important in making longer distance communication easier -- but this again is something that started well before the end of the "Bronze Age."

The key place to look for these changes is the Neo-Assyrian Empire. There are a number of important administrative and ideological developments that occur for the first time in Assyria, and then become the model for future empires in the region, and beyond. On the ideological side, the Assyrians developed the concept of a universal empire for the first time. Previous kings had made hyperbolic claims of universal sovereignty, but under the Assyrians, a more rigorously thought through ideology of universal empire emerged for the first time. This was tied closely with the Assyrian god Assur, who claimed universal rule over the world (but not to the exclusion of other gods, the Assyrians were still very much polytheistic). Assyrian kings frequently boast in inscriptions about claiming new land for Assur. The idea of the "Land of Assur" was an important one for Assyrians, and the key innovation here is that the Land of Assur was thought of as something that can and should expand. This is stands in stark contrast to Bronze Age Near Eastern kingdoms/empires that did not have any ideological structure like this.

There were also a number of important administrative innovations, particularly in the later Assyrian empire (late 8th and 7th centuries BCE). Many of these sound pretty basic, but that's because they were widely adopted elsewhere after they were invented in Assyria. One of the major innovations of Assyrian kings in late 9th century BCE that set the stage for a lot of other administrative practices was the creation of a separate, imperial elite, that owed their position to the king, and who did not possess independent family ties to other sources of power. Many of these men were eunuchs. This was a class of courtiers and bureaucrats who staffed the senior ranks of the imperial administration, and the size of this group was unprecedented. The provincial system was a major administrative system developed in Assyria. There are some bronze age parallels to this, but they were not nearly as regularized as the system Assyria put into place. Assyrian provinces had a defined territory, overseen by a governor, who was a royal official sent from the capital to the province to govern it. Assyrian governors were often eunuchs, and even when they were not, a key part of the system is that governors were not hereditary and were not allowed to develop family ties to their province.

This is a major contrast from earlier bronze age systems that had relied on hereditary vassals. Assyrian governors were responsible for levying troops from their province to serve in military campaigns, and governors also doubled as military officers who led units from their province. This allowed the king to regularly gather his governors while on campaign. Just as critically, governors were responsible for organizing supplies to be gathered at state run storehouses for the army as it moved through their provinces, which is of huge importance for the ability of an army to move at high speed, and to operate year-round. These storehouses were also used to move other goods through the empire as well. To maintain the administration of the province, while governors were on campaign with the king, each province also had a deputy, that stayed in the province full time. Deputies were also appointed by the king, and reported to the king independently of the governor of their province. This meant that deputies also served as an independent check for the king on the loyalty of his governors.

The Assyrians did also employ vassal kings, like earlier states had, but the gradually phased out vassal kings in favor of provinces over time. When they did employ vassal kings, they appointed a royal official to monitor the court of the vassal king. This official wrote reports to the Assyrian king about the vassal king. The Assyrians also sought to integrate local elites into the bureaucratic structure of the empire overall. Local elites were recruited into the imperial administration. The evidence for this is fairly limited, but there are references in royal inscriptions to kings offering people the chance to "become counted among the Assyrians," which is presented as a great honor.

As one might guess from the many references to sending letters, transportation and correspondence networks were a key part of the ability of the Assyrian empire to rule an empire of unprecedented size. Long distance correspondence was certainly a feature of the Bronze Age, the Amarna letters are a famous example of it. But the Assyrian Empire made unprecedented investments in transportation and communication infrastructure. This included massive amounts road construction, as well as the creation and maintenance of rest stations for messengers and their horses at regular intervals along the roads. (This is something that was copied by nearly all major empires in the Middle East and Mediterranean subsequently). In Bronze Age long distance letters, its clear that this kind of system of rest stations alongside roads maintained by the central government did not exist.

There are a ton of other administrative ideas that were either invented by the Assyrians, or that were dramatically expanded upon by the Assyrians, that became standard practice in later empires. (Mass deportation is another big one that I didn't touch on, that was also practiced by the Babylonians, Persians, and others). Certainly we can't credit everything to the Assyrians, but if you want to understand how empires in this part of the world came to dramatically increase in size, you have to start by studying Assyria.

This was a great read and I appreciate the effortpost. Definitely going to hope that my local library has Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire so I can read it.

# ? Feb 27, 2024 21:53

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

FreudianSlippers posted:

Imagine your grandpa having a weird nose and you still being insulted for it.

A LOT about the Romans makes sense when you picture them like Mafiosos with the nicknames.

# ? Feb 28, 2024 06:18

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# ? May 25, 2024 14:51

bob dobbs is dead: Oct 8, 2017; I love peeps; Nap Ghost

They had actual organized crime lords (clodius, milo, etc) and close links between the state and those crime lords. It's kind of a mindfuck that basically no depiction of the Romans gives them the Italian accent they deserve

# ? Feb 28, 2024 06:22

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