Nero can be considered prosperous but not “very rich” by his day’s standards. However, according to some strange accounting measure we will see in the next chapter, he is extremely rich on the average of lives he could have led—he takes so little risk in his trading career that there could have been very few disastrous outcomes. The fact that he did not experience John’s success was the reason he did not suffer his downfall. He would be therefore wealthy according to this unusual (and probabilistic) method of accounting for wealth. Recall that Nero protects himself from the rare event. Had
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