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Comment by jnurmine | Hacker News Reader

One of the books I'm currently reading is Edward J. Watts' "Mortal Republic - How Rome Fell into Tyranny" which details how Rome the republic transformed into a dictatorship. It is intriguing, parts are like the TV-series House of Cards with an abundance of dirty tricks pulled by opponents against each other.

One thing I've never quite understood from history books though: there was so much wealth, people with big palaces, large tracts of land, artwork (like statues), gold, from wealthy families, and so on. Where did all that wealth go in the end?

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What wealth would be able to go somewhere, or stay? Stashed gold is quickly dealt with by spending more than you earn. Palaces get abandoned, fall into disrepair and get divided up by squatters, in any order and concurrency. Anything marble needs a good excuse to avoid downcycling in a lime kiln.

Without something like a stock exchange, wealth means having actual productivity under your control and that has zero inherent stability. It's well possible to build and expand over generations while the productivity goes on and the system facilitating that control (e.g. a rule of law) remains undisrupted, but when either of that stops being the case nothing remains. When there's no authority that enforces whatever letters of ownership or contracts you might have, they are as immaterial as ETF shares in a paperless bank account that has just disappeared some day.

Rome's territory was sacked by "barbarians", nevermind the pilfering and stealing other "Romans" did. Consider that when emperors died, the usual course was to murder their whole family and sack their belongings, all for good measure. It was not a stable thing to be at the top in Roman society, you gained a target on your back due to your wealth and power in an inherently violent society. Combine all this with looting over the centuries, and what's left to us is a lot less than originally existed.

Sounds a little like the Communist Party of China, with its regular purges of high level rivals.

This is an outstanding question and would take more than one book to even rudimentarily answer. That is why I would like to provide just a few bits and pieces here: There are, of course, some ancient monuments that are still in use today (the Pantheon, the Mausoleum of Hadrian = Castel Sant'Angelo, several amphitheatres). Many architectural elements were reused in later buildings, especially ancient columns in church buildings. But most of reusable material was indeed recycled: Marble was burnt into chalk. Gold, silver and bronze was recast (very few ancient bronze sculptures survived). In contrast, quite a lot of engraved gems of imperial provenance have come down to us; although their whereabouts during the Dark Ages are unknown, it can be assumed that they moved from one royal or ecclesiastical treasury to the next. It is also worth noting that in the long run, much of the precious metal probably ended up in the Far East (China, Southeast Asia and India) as a medium of exchange for the luxury goods that reached Europe via the Silk Road.

A lot of it was moved to Byzantium / Constantinople / İstanbul by Constantine, who tried to pay all the Roman elite he could, especially senators to move to his 'New Rome'. The ERE would continue to be wealthier until the sack of Constantinople by crusaders due to its domination of the European silk trade (after stealing the secrets via a Christian mission to China). That is a little ironic considering the first crusade was initiated by the Emperor in the east to recapture Jerusalem and the middle east.

After the sack of Constantinople, much of that wealth, including the secret of silk-making was taken back to Italy, and the ERE would never recover from this.

For reference, the amount looted from Constantinople during its sack is meant to be around 900,000 silver marks -- enough to raise the entire Venetian navy almost 6 times over. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople#sack_of...)

Of course, a huge amount of wealth remained in the west, even after Odoacer's conquest (see this mosaic of the palace of Theodoric: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/3090/palace-of-theodoric-... which is in undeniably Roman form). That said, the ERE would continue to be the center of wealth in Europe up until at least the sack.

I think it's important to note that Odoacer, in destroying the WRE was not considered by his contemporaries to have destroyed the Roman Empire. He immediately sent the imperial regalia to the Emperor in the east and declared himself a Viceroy of the eastern Roman emperor. In this way, I think the ERE thought it kind of convenient, as they now, at least on paper had full control of the whole Roman empire. The identity of 'Roman' in the West was not broken, so I've read until the ERE decided to 'reconquer' Rome and mainland Italy for being barbarian, which, as you can imagine would throw your personal identity for a bit of a loop.

Despite still being greatly dilapidated when Constantinople was finally invaded by the Ottomans 200 years after the sack, it was still famous for silk. Mehmed The Conqueror is attested to have said, upon wandering its ruins:

  The spider is curtain-bearer in the palace of Chosroes,
  
  The owl sounds the relief in the castle of Afrasiyab.

>That is a little ironic considering the first crusade was initiated by the Emperor in the east to recapture Jerusalem and the middle east.

I don't think this is quite right. The sequence of events is roughly as follows:

1054: Great Schism, Patriarchate of Constantinople diverges from Papacy in Rome.

1071: Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk (Turkish) Empire conquers most of Anatolia

[also 1071: Norman invasion of southern Italy and Sicily, final de facto eviction of Byzantines from Italy]

1095: First Crusade, Frankish armies storm the Levant and capture Nicaea and Jerusalem -- also the only Crusade that had any real success, others at most reversed previous losses.

It seems more than a little suspicious that all of this happens so quickly. It can't just be about Jerusalem, which had fallen to the Muslim conquests four centuries prior. Rather, after the Schism, there is a "switch" from formal (but usually ignored) ERE suzerainty over European kingdoms, with European military assistance under the banner of ERE armies, to European armies fighting as "equal partners" of the ERE. This second arrangement worked well at first, but it was less stable and less successful in the long run, ultimately leading to the disastrous Fourth Crusade and the Fall of Acre.

In fact, the ERE/Byzantines had already been making gains against the Arabs in the Levant up until the Schism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Antioch_(968%E2%80%93...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Byzantine_wars#By...

Interesting, i thought that the church was a power center that was complementary if not secondary to the secular powers of western Europe. However you seem to be saying, that the formal legitimacy granted by the Eastern Roman Empire was more important to maintain some very fragile equilibrium between the church vs the state, and that this equilibrium was then lost with the church schism.

I find it somewhat hard understand, how the church managed to mobilise europe into a crusade, it is possible that the various competing establishments weren't very enthusiastic about the project, to begin with.

> In fact, the ERE/Byzantines had already been making gains against the Arabs in the Levant up until the Schism

The Patriarch in Rome had been operating effectively independently for centuries before the schism.

The Romans made gains after the collapse of the Caliphate, retaking Anatolia, Crete, Bulgaria and Antioch and even Armenia and Georgia, but then they experienced a series of setbacks when the Turks appeared.

Take a look at what actually happened at Manzikert. One of the generals walked off with half the army and didn't fight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tarchaneiotes

I'm not an expert on the motivations of medieval generals, but if you've spent your whole life fighting for "God" and suddenly the people who are supposed to be close to God don't seem to have a clue what they're doing, don't you think that might impact your willingness to fight?

The Roman Empire had always centered on Italy, Greece and Anatolia. Until 1050 the ERE had always had a toehold in Italy and most of Anatolia. By 1100 they had lost all of Italy and most of Anatolia:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Byzantin...

It's true that theological disputes accumulated gradually before the Schism and were interleaved with political disputes, but this doesn't really dispute the importance of the theological split and instead smears it over the previous two centuries (arguably beginning with the coronation of Charlemagne).

I mean, it is factually true that the Emperor in the east sent an envoy in 1095 to ask Pope Urban II for aid. I am not sure if the crusades would have happened without that.

The wealth didn't need to go anywhere! That's kind of the point.

What's confusing is that pre-decline Rome, on the face of it, seems pre-modern in many ways, but this is just a simulacrum, because there was none of the productivity increases that underpin the modern world.

Example:

19th century London: big in part because there are lots of factories there!

100 AD Rome: big because of years of taxation routing grain there!

Yes, there was trade. Yes, cities did do a lot of self rule. Yes, the early government was pretty minimal. See Rostovtzeff for some fun with this. But there wasn't really much self-sustaining about the cities.

So back to the original question, there is no "stock" of wealth. The buildings are the results of wealth, not (perhaps baring things like aqueducts) the source of wealth. Without the political control over the many agricultural laborers and their output, the wealth just dissipates.

There is a lot more 0-sum stuff going on than the modern world, where conversely the positive-sum nature of things is not well appreciated.

The land, as well as much of the art, palaces, etc are still there. But everything requires upkeep, so without the engine of the empire and economy, stuff decays, often past the point of repair (think Detroit ruin porn). A palace can't survive without the staff to maintain it.

Indeed you are right, the land is there, and palaces might be nothing more than a pile of rocks now, however: having wealth meant both getting enemies, but also having resources to get protection and arrange things; with enough money/wealth, one could, for example, get out of the hotbed of assassinations and political intrigue (=Rome) to a more secluded place, build a stronghold of some sorts, become a mini-monarch / local player, and over time grow the wealth and build a dynasty.

I'm thinking about long-lived dynasties, like the House of Yamato (1000+ years; Imperial House of Japan), or Bagrationi in Georgia, and so on.

Yet, from ancient Rome, not one of the powerful ancient families seems to have survived, and the same disappearing act happened with the rather massive wealth that was sloshing around back then. I mean that was a bit surprising to me.

I would have expected some wealthy modern "noble family" to be able to trace its roots to Rome and the wealth obtained when, say, some of their ancestors were Roman Senators, who decided to sail to a secluded location, assume control of lucrative trade routes, and so on.

> I would have expected some wealthy modern "noble family" to be able to trace its roots to Rome

Rome was never a monarchy, and even the imperial period was never as autocratic as it is sometimes painted. The Romans didn’t delineate between the republic and empire the way we do. It was still nominally the Res Publica, and still effectively in some ways a Republic. Hence, the emperor ruled with the tacit consent of, and relied on support of various factions - the army, the senate, and the plebs. Bad emperors would get overthrown and people would think nothing of it. Because the situation at the top was so fragile there weren’t really imperial dynasties that lasted more than a few generations.

Secondly, there was the ‘apocalypse’. Plague and warfare severely reduced the population of the Italian peninsula and the city of Rome (by about 95%). The countryside was overrun by various Germanic tribes who probably confiscated much of the wealth. People with money probably went elsewhere - Milan, Venice, and Constantinople for instance.

> the emperor ruled with the tacit consent of, and relied on support of various factions - the army, the senate, and the plebs. Bad emperors would get overthrown and people would think nothing of it.

That doesn't sound too different from how monarchs would rule.

According to Keynes most of the wealth was never created because the shiny brain parasite called gold was considered wealth and its liquidity preference exceeded that of physical capital.

When you think about it, gold never changes over time, so calling it wealth is obviously absurd. The moment you have dug it out, you apparently have wealth. People like living in a parallel world I guess.

Someone had to pay for all the civil wars. That isn’t cheap. One of main things Augustus was able to do was to stand down a huge amount of soldiers. This included back pay and settling veterans in various new colonies. Egypt was a very rich area in ancient times.

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