I didn't want to junk up Graeme's game thread, so I thought I'd start a new thread that can be freely ignored after a few days...
I found MJ's use of Roman money makes a nice bit of added flavor, and it especially interested me since a couple of years ago I took up collecting Roman coins. This led me to some thoughts, offered here, not to nitpick/influence this game, but more for out-of-game consideration, and maybe even to help somebody looking to add some flavor to a currency system in some other setting.
-- I'm not sure that all of those denominations were historically in use at the same time, however, with another 1500-2000 years, I can see Romans doing just that. Normally you might expect time to streamline most cultural aspects, but I don't see that as a guaranteed outcome with Rome -- just look at their architecture. I don't think Romans/Italians have ever seen a building they wouldn't prefer to build on top of rather than replace...
-- I think you've pretty well nailed the (average) historical buying power of a Denarius (there were fluctuations in various periods), though with no accounting for inflation. Inflation did occur in the ancient period, but I don't think it's any great stretch for Rome to have a government capable of controlling prices through periods of rigid regulation alternated with the occasional forced revaluation.
-- As an aside, the value of a 2000 year old Denarius seems to be lower now than it was when issued. That is, I have to work for a shorter time to earn the money to buy one on eBay than a Roman would have worked to earn one in the first place. I bought very nice Denarii of Hadrian and his wife Sabina for $35-40 each, and those of less known/more common 3rd century emperors can be had for more like $20. Of course, Nero and Caligula will set you back a pretty penny...
-- On a non-monetary note, never underestimate the Roman capacity for tradition. To this day (well, okay, to 1993, when I was last there), city services - such as buses and manhole covers - are still marked with "SPQR" ("Of the Senate and People of Rome").
--Llarry
Thanks for that input, Llarry. You're right about the denarius--at the time period with which I am most familiar it was a day's wages, but not that much buying power. Of course, working men did not have as many bills as we do--no utility bills, for example. I'm still struggling to get the sense right here, as I don't think common laborers in the Rome I've built could survive on one denarius a day (which I've made equivalent to about twenty dollars buying power), but I don't want to move too far from historic values, either. My aureus comes to about five hundred dollars on that basis, and I'm using a pretty strict exchange rate. I agree that it's awkward in places, as the double denarius and the half aureus don't relate to each other at all evenly, but then old monetary systems were often like that and there's no pressing reason for the Roman Empire to decimalize its coinage--look at its number system!
--M. J. Young
It just occurred to me that just about the only thing the Romans actually decimalized was their Army. Guess that shows you where their priorities were...
Looking at the number system, I can see it not necessarily getting decimalized or streamlined over time, but to get to "modern" technology, they probably would have needed:
- fractions/decimals of some sort, even if it's IX/C (9/100) or VII.IV (7.4). I suppose lower case "numerals" could be used for less than 1.
- Zero. Unless they explicitly conquered and held India past about 600 AD, zero would likely still have developed by then, and could have eventually worked its way into Roman society. (For an interesting mathematical read: "Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea"
- Larger numbers than M.
--Llarry
There might have been a bunch of frustrated reformer activists like the guys who invented Esperanto and the other artificial languages, and while some of these concepts are around, no one but a dedicated few uses them.
Because societies are bell curves, y'know.
Eric
The probably would have assigned additional letters to numbers smaller than I and greater than M; they also would have adopted a zero from the Greeks, as I believe it was found in Greek mathematical systems (my recollection is that it reached Europe by way of Arabic translations of lost Greek texts, and that is why a number of mathematical concepts have "z" in them--zero and azimuth, among others, were transliterated from the Arabic versions of the old Greek mathematicians).
The also would develop a variant of scientific notation, probably something similar to resistor code in which the first three or four symbols represent a number and the last one is a reference, such M to the power of whatever that symbol indicates. Thus LXI^V would convert to 61,000,000,000,000,000. It probably needs some refining. Also, I've introduced trinary (sometimes called ternary) computers, so there's probably a separate notation system for base three, and major scientific calculations are done in septemsivigesimal, or whatever it was called (base 27), by the computer.
--M. J. Young