Senators and Senatorial Wealth at Pompeii:Reconstructing the Local Wealth Distribution

This chapter argues that wealth was probably not the primary barrier for Pompeiians to enter the Roman senate. One oddity about the historical record of Pompeii is that it reveals not a single certain senator in the imperial period. A previous reconstruction of the local distribution of income offers a possible explanation: it predicts that there were no Pompeian households with a senatorial income, suggesting that a lack of wealth kept the Pompeiians outside the senate. However, a new reconstruction of the top part of the Pompeian wealth distribution suggests the opposite. This reconstruction is based on combining the archaeological remains of the intramural housing stock with an econometric model which assumes that the distribution of elite wealth follows a distinct mathematical function – a power law. Even though this type of cliometric modelling is pervaded by uncertainties, with the help of probabilistic calculations it is possible to conclude that at least several Pompeian households held enough wealth to satisfy the senatorial census qualification, implying that wealth may not have been the primary barrier preventing Pompeiians from embarking on a senatorial career

Influence of reactor and condensation system design on tyre pyrolysis products yields

This study investigates the effect the pyrolysis reactor and the condensing system type have on the tyre derived oil (TDO) and DL-limonene yield, as well as benzothiazole concentration in the TDO. All the experiments were performed at 475 °C and three technologies were investigated, fixed bed reactor (FBR), bubbling fluidised bed reactor (BFBR) and conical spouted bed reactor (CSBR), with the latter being the reactor that provided the highest TDO yield (58.2 wt.%). Furthermore, the CSBR enhances DL-limonene production due to its excellent features (low residence time of volatiles and high heat and mass transfer rates), which minimize secondary cracking reactions. Moreover, in order to maximize the TDO retention efficiency and selectively reduce the concentration of certain heteroaromatic species, two types of condensation systems were evaluated: tube-andshell condenser (indirect contact) and quenching condenser (direct contact). The quenching condenser not only promoted the condensation efficiency for DL-limonene, but also reduced the concentration of benzothiazole in the collected TDO. Indeed, the direct contact between water (fed into the quencher) and the hot volatile stream favours the dissolution of some polar heteroaromatic species, thus reducing the nitrogen and sulphur content in the TDO and increasing the applicability of TDO as fuel.This research was supported by the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) and the National Research Foundation (NRF). It was also financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CTQ2016-75535-R) and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish Government (RTI2018-101678-B-I00), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Commission (HORIZON H2020-MSCA RISE- 2018. Contract No. 823745), the Basque Government (IT1218-19) and the University of the Basque Country (UFI 11/39). The authors acknowledge that any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are the authors' own, and the sponsorscannot accept any liability whatsoever in this regard

Celeritas Caesariana : reputation, representation and reality

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2017.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Julius Caesar had a demonstrable reputation for celeritas, to the extent that Cicero in one of his letters added the epithet Caesariana to celeritas when describing another general’s swiftness. This reputation can be further traced in various other ancient sources, such as Suetonius’ biography on Caesar and Velleius Paterculus’ history of Rome. Two potential bases for a Roman general’s reputation to possess a particular virtue can be identified, i.e. representation and reality. In this study, these two bases are examined in detail for Caesar’s reputation for celeritas. The first part of this study focusses on the representation aspect and constitutes a statistical frequency study of words that explicitly indicate swiftness of military movements. For the second part, in which the reality component is assessed, legionary marching speeds are reconstructed (using Monte Carlo calculations) based on information supplied in the ancient sources. The results are assessed both intratextually (comparing Romans and their enemies within texts) and intertextually (comparing various Roman generals described in different texts). For data on Caesar the focus is on the first seven books of the De Bello Gallico, while for the data on the other Roman generals Sallustius’ Iugurtha and a corpus of Cicero’s letters on his Cilician campaign are included. The representation study shows that Caesar in the De Bello Gallico significantly more frequently refers to his own celeritas, both as compared to his enemies and as compared to the generals described by the other authors. Moreover, from a methodological point of view, it is concluded that a statistical frequency study should be based on the contextual meanings of words and not just on word forms. The results of the reality study point less unequivocally to Caesar being demonstrably more swift as compared to the other generals; the reconstructed marching speeds for all generals cover more or less similar ranges. However, the estimated probabilities for the marching speeds suggest that their values are considerably lower as compared to the widely applied values Vegetius mentions in his Epitoma de rei militari. Considering the results of the two parts together, the hypothesis that Caesar’s reputation for celeritas was for a considerable part based on the emphasis on his own celeritas in the De Bello Gallico, can thus be validated.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Julius Caesar het ’n bewysbare reputasie vir celeritas gehad, tot so ’n mate dat Cicero in een van sy briewe die epiteton Caesariana by celeritas gevoeg het om ’n ander generaal se snelheid te beskryf. Hierdie reputasie kan verder in verskeie ander antieke bronne nagespeur word, soos in Suetonius se biografie oor Caesar en Velleius Paterculus se geskiedenis van Rome. Daar kan twee potensiële grondslae geïdentifiseer word vir ’n Romeinse generaal se reputasie dat hy ’n sekere deug besit, naamlik uitbeelding en realiteit. Die twee grondslae word in hierdie studie volledig ondersoek met die oog op Caesar se reputasie vir celeritas. ’n Eerste onderafdeling van die studie fokus op die uitbeelding-aspek en berus op ’n statistiese frekwensiestudie van woorde wat eksplisiet die snelheid van militêre bewegings aandui. In ’n tweede onderafdeling, wat die realiteit-komponent evalueer, word die marsjeersnelheid van die legioene gerekonstrueer (deur middel van Monte Carlo-berekeninge) gebaseer op inligting uit die antieke bronne. Die resultate word sowel intratekstueel (deur die Romeine en hulle vyande binne dieselfde tekste te vergelyk) as intertekstueel (deur verskeie Romeinse generaals wat in verskillende tekste beskryf word, te vergelyk) ontleed. Vir data oor Caesar is die fokus op die eerste sewe boeke van die De Bello Gallico, terwyl data oor die ander Romeinse generaals uit Sallustius se Iugurtha en ’n korpus van Cicero se briewe oor sy Silisiese veldtog verkry word. Die uitbeeldingstudie wys dat Caesar in die De Bello Gallico beduidend meer gereeld verwys na sy eie celeritas, sowel in vergelyking met sy vyande as in vergelyking met die ander generaals soos beskryf deur ander skrywers. Verder kan daar vanuit ’n metodologiese oogpunt afgelei word dat ’n statistiese frekwensiestudie gebaseer moet word op die kontekstuele betekenis van woorde en nie net op woordvorme nie. Die resultate van die realiteitstudie dui minder onmiskenbaar daarop dat Caesar bewysbaar vinniger as die ander generaals is; die gerekonstrueerde marsjeersnelhede van die onderskeie generaals het min of meer dieselfde omvang. Die geskatte waarskynlikhede vir die marsjeersnelhede dui daarop dat hulle waardes aansienlik laer is as die wyd toegepaste waardes wat Vegetius in sy Epitoma de rei militari noem. As die resultate van die twee onderafdelings saam oorweeg word, kan die hipotese bevestig word dat Caesar se reputasie vir celeritas tot ’n groot mate gebaseer is op die beklemtoning van sy eie celeritas in die De Bello Gallico

Wealth, rank and officeholding in Roman Italy : a quantitative study

This thesis challenges the conventional understanding of the relationship between wealth, officeholding and socio-political rank in early-imperial Italy. Many previous approaches to the Roman economy employ rank as a proxy for wealth. This study shows the need to distinguish the two. The core of the analysis involves an assessment of the overlap between the members of the three orders (a socio-political category) and the households with sufficient wealth for these ranks (an economic category). I use an econometric model to reconstruct the Italian wealth distribution to estimate the number of these households. Since the heterogeneity of the Italian civitates precludes a straightforward extrapolation from the scarce and biased evidence, I create a tessellated model which consists of the amalgamation of the reconstructed wealth distributions for all the Italian civitates individually. The results imply that the households whose wealth surpassed the requirements to enter the socio-political orders were significantly more numerous than the actual members of these orders. This conclusion has wide ramifications for our understanding of the social demography and political economy of Roman Italy. For example, previous models employing socio-political rank to estimate the number of domestic slaves held by the Italian elite underestimated their number significantly. Furthermore, the number of households with the requisite wealth for political office was considerably higher than the number of actual officeholders. This surplus of households satisfying the census qualifications implies that competition for these offices might have been fierce. Moreover, the surplus constituted the resilience of the timocratic system enabling it to absorb the reverses in the Italian economy during the Early Empire. Accordingly, differences in the size of the surplus at the curial, equestrian and senatorial level reflect the evidence for the shortages of candidates, i.e. the failure of the timocratic system, at these levels. Finally, the surplus at the curial level was not distributed evenly over the Italian communities. In combination with the predominantly localised nature of the economic reverses, this implies that the ‘third-century curial crisis’ must be understood as a drawn-out complex of local failures rather than a sudden universal collapse."This work was supported through an Ewan and Christine Brown Postgraduate Studentship in the Arts and Humanities; by the University of St Andrews (School of Classics); and by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds."--Fundin

Afterword

This short chapter recapitulates the substantive advances made by the individual chapters in this volume before closing remarks on the difference between using probability to represent epistemic uncertainty and modelling variability, two exercises that are easily confused, and on the use of models to answer historical questions