drethelin comments on How would you take over Rome? - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Yvain 14 March 2012 04:24PM

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Comment author: shokwave 14 March 2012 04:37:43PM 8 points [-]

You know all human knowledge as of 2012.

My existence obviously invalidates some of my knowledge of how the history of Rome played out, but the broad political strokes remain similar. After fifteen years of backing the winning side in nearly every conflict I should have a phenomenal powerbase; a coup is almost a formality at this point.

Comment author: drethelin 14 March 2012 04:46:31PM 1 point [-]

Agreed. Political power is much less interesting than building an army but I think it's a much safer path to ruling rome than trying to take over either through rome's military or through your own. You can use your patrician wealth and knowledge of the future to jumpstart a fortune that can dwarf any other roman's and become the foremost citizen in rome, and from there it's not a long path to being emperor.

Comment author: gwern 14 March 2012 05:20:23PM 4 points [-]

You can use your patrician wealth and knowledge of the future to jumpstart a fortune that can dwarf any other roman's and become the foremost citizen in rome, and from there it's not a long path to being emperor.

You actually don't even need knowledge - you just need a low discount rate. I read a little bit about Roman banking once, and they were charging 10+% interest in periods of essentially no inflation, with apparently fairly low bad loan rate.

And as I pointed out on XiXiDu's post, knowledge of black powder alone is valuable and very feasible in an Italian setting. Even if we generously assumed that our omnicompetent individual couldn't develop gunpowder suitable for small arms (or the metallurgy necessary), crude gunpowder is fantastic for siege warfare, which the Romans engaged in plenty of and had well developed and expensive siege weapons. Sell it to the military and profit.

Comment author: James_Miller 14 March 2012 05:57:13PM *  10 points [-]

Augustus would quickly capture you if you produced black powder. Tiberius would torture you for the formula and then kill you and nearly everyone who he suspected you might have given the formula to.

See:

In the reign of the emperor Tiberius (14-37 AD) a Roman glassmaker demonstrated a remarkable new glass at the imperial court. Unlike ordinary glass, it did not break: it must have seemed almost supernatural. The event was recorded by contemporary writers Pliny and Petronius. They called his glass vitrum flexile (flexible glass). The craftsman displayed a beautiful transparent vase to the emperor and then dashed it to the ground. According to the story, it dented but did not break. Tiberius asked if the glassmaker had told the secret of unbreakable glass to anyone else. When the answer was in the negative, the emperor had the unknown genius put to death and his workshop destroyed fearing that the new material would reduce the value of his imperial gold and silver.

Comment author: gwern 14 March 2012 07:00:00PM 7 points [-]

Yes, that's a cool story, but it's not like innovation stopped in the Roman empire.

Comment author: Alex_Altair 14 March 2012 09:46:17PM 3 points [-]

Is this story considered likely true? Did he invent plastic?

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 14 March 2012 11:10:56PM 5 points [-]

Apparently, Pliny himself was skeptical.

Pliny (NH 36, 66) makes it pretty clear that he does not believe in vitrum flexile. He starts his short account by stating “They say” or “There is a story.” The only thing he says about the glass is that it was flexible. He then says that the glassmaker’s entire workshop was destroyed so that the value of copper, silver, and gold wouldn’t suffer [because people acquired flexible glass instead]. Pliny comments that the story is more frequently told than it is reliable.

...

Not surprisingly, no example of Roman vitrum flexile is known to exist.

Comment author: James_Miller 14 March 2012 09:48:30PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure.

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