Adrian Buck’s Reviews > The Reach of Rome: A Journey Through the Lands of the Ancient Empire, Following a Coin > Status Update

"Because of widespread faith in the law...resorting to long-lived feuds and family vendettas, while extremely frequent in the middle ages, is unknown in Roman Society" - this is despite the one rule for the rich, another for the poor situation?

"The Greeks had managed to convince the Roman Authorities to impose discriminatory measures against the Jews...' - Racism in Europe it all starts here.

"Whether it was in the frozen north of Scotland or the torrid desert of the Sahara, Virgil had to be learned without errors." - some evidence for a comnon curriculum, but what percentage of the population participated?

"The mechanism of integration was so effective that at the end of the [2nd Century BCE] fully one-third of the members of the Seanate of Rome will be of African origin... - why did it prove impossible to integrate the Germans? Overwhelming numbers? failure to conquer them? The shift to an ethnically based Byzantine state?

"Today it is much more, and we call it philanthropy. But in Roman times it is so widespread that most of the great monuments, statues, theatres ampitheatres scattered throughout the empire are the fruit of donations made by the wealthy..." - I understand that today we would rather call it election campaigning, but today the is a division of labour between candidate and campaign financier.

"An enormous quantity of gold coins disappear beyond the frontiers of the empire to pay for all kinds of goods..." - this may actually have been an advantage to Rome; a massive influx of gold into the Spanish Empire lead to a destructive period of inflation, likewise paying for Chinese goods keeps the USD stable.

"Can you imagine a stadium used without interuption for twelve hundred years? It would be like going to see a game today in a stadium built by Charlemagne and used without interruption since then" - actually you can attend church service in Aachen Cathedral today, what we have to imagine is a culture whose largest structutres are dedicated to worship rather than sport.

"It's like putting together in the same building the life of ease of a wealthy neighbourhood and the misery of the poorest slum" - amazing, what impact did this have on disease, crime and social mobility?

"The first emporer of Rome, Augustus, responding to a dramatic demographic decline, established that in order to benefit from certain economic subsidies and tax incentives a Roman woman had to have given birth to at least three children." - sounds familiar.

"And to compensate for the low birth rate, the practice of manumitting slaves...gives new blood to Roman Society, which by nature is multiethnic (but monocultural - that is essential"