Saw This In My Roman Economics Book And I Just Had To Sit There Stunned For A Moment. The Fastest Growing

There lived a certain man, a proconsul of Gaul He was lean and sharp and his head was almost bald Most people looked at him with envy and awe But to Cato, he thought himself above the law He had conquered Gaul and asked the Senate For a triumph through their town And to run for consul - he could win it But they said "Stand down."

Ra ra Julie C., Nicomedes' teenage fling There was a man who couldn't let go Ra ra Julie C., really wanted to be king It was a shame how he stole the show

He crossed the Rubicon, invaded his own home But the Pompeians had already fled from Rome With hardly any fights he captured Italy Though Spain and Greece didn't come so easily He got nearly slaughtered by Dyrrhachium And the next four years of strife But he won and had the Senate make him Dictator for life

Ra ra Julie C., Cleopatra's Roman fling There was a man who couldn't let go Ra ra Julie C., really wanted to be king It was a shame how he stole the show

But as his bogus elections and his hunger for power Became known to more and more people The conspiracy to assassinate This man became bigger and bigger

"This Caesar's gotta go," declared his enemies But a new war loomed and he'd soon go overseas No doubt this dictator was difficult to harm And within Rome's walls, they couldn't carry arms Then they thought, a meeting of the Senate Fit just right, for on the Ides He would be alone for just a minute And Caesar would die

Ra ra Julie C., every Roman woman's fling They had him cornered, took out their knives Ra ra Julie C., really wanted to be king He grabbed a pen and fought for his life Ra ra Julie C., emperor foreshadowing They didn't quit, they wanted his head Ra ra Julie C., Brutus jabbed his ding-a-ling And so they stabbed him till he was dead

Oh, those Romans…

hey you're doing a great job, just remember: a semicolon can be used to combine two sentences where you might otherwise use a period; this allows you to create longer and longer run-on sentences

I'm enjoying The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy so far, but it's rather high level, and it's been a few years since I last studied economics. So, I picked up a little refresher. And read the whole thing in a day.

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, by Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman, is very, very good.

Graphic novels are great for bringing dry subjects to life. Klein and Bauman's examples show that economics is about people making choices, and their choices affecting each other's lives:

And it helps put abstract concepts into concrete terms:

The text is funny and easy to follow, even if you hate math and know nothing about economics. I think it's a very good introduction to how capitalism is supposed to work, in theory. You can certainly criticize capitalism - I do - but these books will show you the nature of the beast that we're up against.

It's very difficult for an economics book to be politically neutral. But Klein and Bauman's work is factual, avoids strongly right-wing or left-wing slants, and they acknowledge systemic problems like colonialism, exploitation of poor communities, and climate change. They also offer a few suggestions for addressing these problems. The books are USA-centric but include examples from other countries, too.

Oh yeah, there's actually two books. One for micro-economics, and one for macro-economics.

Microeconomics looks at a single individual, business, or market. So volume one covers:

Marginal utility and cost

Supply and demand

Cost-benefit analysis

How markets self-organize and stabilize

Auctions

Risk

How interest rates work

Present vs. future value of a good

Information asymmetry

What makes a market competitive or not

Game theory, including the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons

How taxation affects markets

Price and demand elasticity

Macroeconomics looks at an entire economy, or multiple economies, and how they interact. Volume two explores:

Gross Domestic Product

How to measure quality of life

Monetary policy and fiscal policy

Unemployment

Inflation and deflation

Classical vs. Keynesian economics

Free trade vs. protectionism

Aging populations

Currency exchange

Foreign aid and exploitation

Climate change and pollution

Addressing global poverty and inequality

Strategies for mitigating economic crashes

However, these books do not cover:

Marxist and socialist views of economics

Effects of colonialism and discrimination

The role of unions

Social safety nets

Indigenous and traditional societies' economics

Behavioral economics

Personal finance

Stock markets

What causes economic bubbles and crashes

And probably more things I forgot

They're not a substitute for a real textbook or college course. But they're a great starting point, and a fun read.

anyway cicero

today!

Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version, here's a 2017 version.

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version. Here's Kenneth Brannagh's 2006 one.

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston. Here's the Ralph Fiennes 2011 one.

Cymbelline: Here's the 2014 one.

Hamlet: the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. The 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. The 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1969 Williamson-Parfitt-Hopkins one is there, and the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation, the Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 2000 Ethan Hawke one is here. 2009 Tennant's here. And have the 2018 Almeida version here. On a sidenote, here's A Midwinter's Tale, about a man trying to make Hamlet.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one. A theater Live from the late 2010's here.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here. The 1953 Orson Wells one is here.

Macbeth: Here's the 1948 one, there the 1955 Joe McBeth. Here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery, and the 1966 BBC version is here. The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here, here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. The 1988 BBC one with portugese subtitles, and here the 2001 one). Here's Scotland, PA, the 2001 modern retelling. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. Rave Macbeth for anyone interested is here. And 2017 brings you this.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here. Hugo Weaving here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie with Al Pacino. The 2001 movie is here.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version. Have the 1986 Duncan-Jennings version here. 2019 Live Theater version? Have it here!

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version. If you want a more meta approach, here's the commentary for the Tennant version. 1997 one here.

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier. The 1995 one with Ian McKellen is no longer available at the previous link but I found it HERE.

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version. Here's a stage production. 1954 brings you this. The french musical with english subtitles is here!

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1980 BBC version here and the 1988 one is here, sorry for the prior confusion. The 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here, and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. This one I'm not quite sure what it is or when it's from, it's a modern retelling.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one. Theater Live did a show of it in the late 2010's too.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, here for the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

Two Gentlemen of Verona: have the 2018 one here.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

Notes on "The Contribution of Economics" by Peter Temín, in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, ed. Walter Scheidel:

There are two main purposes of this article. First, to argue that economic theory is applicable to the classical world. Second, to introduce a few economic ideas that classicists and historians may find useful in their work.

I gotta be honest, I'm not a fan of Temín's writing style. Usually, I can overlook that, but in an essay about abstract concepts aimed at non-specialists, I think clarity and conciseness matter more. Several parts of this were hard for me to follow, and I like economics.

Temín might have some...interesting ideas elsewhere about monetary policy and the Great Depression, and in this article he's oddly accepting of the original Malthusian model. These points by themselves do not necessarily mean he is unreliable, or a crackpot, or politically motivated. It's also possible that the Wikipedia article is wrong. But economics is a controversial and politically charged field, so I try to be alert for biased sources.

In short, I don't know whether I can automatically trust Temín's claims about the classical world the way I would trust most authors in a Cambridge-published anthology. (I am also biased because I prefer Keynesian economics, which contradict the views Wiki attributed to Temín.)

So, what is Temín actually claiming?

First, he argues that the Roman world did operate according to competitive market forces, in a similar way that modern markets do. I actually think this is a very solid claim. Our written and material evidence seems to back it up.

Temín describes how supply and demand curves work, how comparative advantage could enable Rome and her colonies to both become wealthier through trade, how technological innovation improved productivity, and how incomes could rise and fall in response to plagues, peace, and wars. Most of his explanations here are normal, useful concepts explained in a rather dense way.

His explanation of Malthusian economics is...not wrong, or irrelevant, but I found it concerning that he didn't include the limitations or criticisms of the Malthusian model. It may be applicable to the Roman economy, I don't know, but I feel like you need to keep such claims very narrow and within a specific context.

He briefly mentions of Babylonian commodity prices exhibiting random walks a la modern stocks - see Temín, P. (2002) “Price behavior in ancient Babylon,” Explorations in Economic History 39: 46–60.

He also says wheat markets in the late republic exhibited competition that suggests the land was not being consolidated by large latifundia until the imperial era - see Rosenstein, N. (2008) “Aristocrats and agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic,” Journal of Roman Studies 98: 1–26.

I'm including the citations here because these are "HOLY SHIT"-level claims if you're interested in the Gracchi brothers or efficient market theory, but Temín zips past them and goes back to talking about Econ 101 material. I gotta check these out later!

On the whole, a mildly interesting article. But if you're a classics or history major who needs a crash course in economics, grab The Cartoon Introduction to Economics instead.

yes

yay it’s the weekend (time to review everything ive said and done to see if im a fundamentally good person)