A Republican bank and printing press

I have been thinking about a pod involving the late roman republic.
How would it develop if we introduced:
- A proper bank and stock system
- A printing press and linen paper

Firstly Rome did have a banking system, but generating money did not confer dignitas, money was seen as something one needed for politics, but the owner ship of land was the proper way.
They also have all the tech for a printing press and linen paper, yes Rome hade high level of literacy (1 in 8 of the Marian legion could read), but parchment is expensive to produce and limits the amount of written material.
Rome dose in my mind have the necessary level to put more advanced monetary institution into place but there are several problems:
- Its not very easy to calculate interests whit Rome numerals
- Rome’s idea that production of wealth did not gain dignitas
- Rome’s preference on cash

But does anybody have any input/ideas?
 
We should not overestimate the technological prowess of Rome. However, paper would be an excellent invention, and it would certainly be conceivable. Printing is hit-or-miss, I suspect you'd first need paper to create the demand that a calligraphy machine can meet.

The idea that modern banking is the only true way is not going to hold up here, though: Rome will have to do things its own way. I don't think the idea of dignitas has much to do with it. This applies to the highest levels of society, an intensely competitive and exclusive bunch that liked stopping people from using short-cts and keeping out unwanted hungry up-and-comers. Outside of the rarefied air of the Senate, making money was eminently respectable. If you were a Roman knight (who was allowed to bank and trade) in the provinces, it didn't even matter that you weren't a senator. Equites bossed around kings and city councillors. From Augustusonwards (providing we don't butterfly him), they could even make their own administrative career.

The reason that people preferred to invest in lands (ourtside the Senate, where it was made compulsory) was that land was safe in a way money was not. A Roman knight with ten million invested in loans and trade goods could be ruined overnight by the bankruptcy of his debtors or a sudden storm or fire. The same investment in real estate would - outside of civil war - always generate a return. Even a natural disaster rarely destroyed its value completely. Anyone who views the Roman love of land and agriculture as a romantic attachment to thepast should read Cato's 'On Agriculture'. Land was business. That attitude persisted into modernity and only changed when land became less safe and an alternative came in - government bonds. Rome didn't really have those - only a madman would trust the Emperor to owe him serious money. Political loans inb Rome were always politics, never business, and you don't politic with the Augustus.

But a banking system that is placed on a slightly more permanent foundation is not impossible. A change to corporate law might help - allow the existence (by tradition and practice, not through some piewce of legislation) of corpora independent of their members. THen permit the sale or transfer of these memberships. Interest and Roman numerals are a bit of a red herring. they had abaci. Roman numerals get in the way when you try to do really complicated maths, but thatlevel of mathematics did not enter the business world until the 20th century. It's more an impediment to science.

Another thing that I think would help is the statistical method, even at a very basic level. Roman business and government were always city institutions writ large. Theidea of encompassing the world in numbers and extrapolating possibilities might give them ideas for business ventures on a different scale.

Faeelin- alav ha-shalom - worked on this topic a lot. You may want to see if you can find his writings. I don't think there was a single thread or timeline.
 
Yes, I agree that a roman financial system would be different.
But the general idea of Banking, insurance, some form of public bonds ( would the senate be willing to put security for loans on the ager publicus?)could come into play.
Rome has several of the tings that allowed the late medieval boom.
Large urban centres (nobody still agrees on how large Rome really was, we know the size of the city, and that the MALE citizens wear roughly a quarter million, but that leaves children, women, slaves non citizens and they have children women and slaves as well)
A good road system, the collegia with is often translated into English as guild.
Still something needs to be done as of math, the zero would help off course.

The point of dignitas is based on the idea that I would love a, vir sestertius
Good point of paper first then press.
 
So in Xenophon’s treaty on how to improve the revenue of the Athenians stat it was held that the surest return was from money lent at interest.

For in the multiplied division of Greece into small republics with very narrow territories, the produce of land was continually liable to be carried off or destroyed by an invading enemy, but a moneyed fortune, according to Xenophon's observation, was safe within the city walls. And because the profits of trade will always be high, and thus numbers would be induced to borrow, even at a high interest.

So how doe we get a sistuation in Rome that could make this idea look good?

Romeans would borrow from greec if they found annything worthwille.

Now if the scoii wars or on of the earlier slave revolts did much more damage to Italian farmland, could this be used as a incentive to focus the Argentarii, Men-sarii, Numularii, and Collybistce into a more permeate collegia?

Im also thinking that Sulla might institute a “public” Roman bank as part of his reforms, after all he did it with courts.
But to doe this banks needs to be in a position before his take over.

The bank could the be founded with the confiscated properties of those Sulla proscribed.
The banks or collegia metritis ( I am bit wobbly on the Latin her) could the as a permanent organisation be give the Commercium (the right of trade)

Anny views or input?
 
Look at the tech-tree. That is the prequesit for Democracy. I predict a swift revolution unless a Wonder of the World is near completion. I suggest bouidning Great Lighthouse allowing them to cross the Atlantic.:p
 
That attitude persisted into modernity and only changed when land became less safe and an alternative came in - government bonds. Rome didn't really have those - only a madman would trust the Emperor to owe him serious money.
I have heard that Roman Republic did have public debts. And took time paying them off after the Second Punic War.
Roman business and government were always city institutions writ large. Theidea of encompassing the world in numbers and extrapolating possibilities might give them ideas for business ventures on a different scale.
While England and France were country-states, Venice and Florence were, like Rome, city-states ruling a lot of other city-states. And United Provinces was a union of peer city-states, i. e. the provinces like Holland were dominated by cities.
 
Look at the tech-tree. That is the prequesit for Democracy. I predict a swift revolution unless a Wonder of the World is near completion. I suggest bouidning Great Lighthouse allowing them to cross the Atlantic.:p

Pffa village spam FTW.
 
I have heard that Roman Republic did have public debts. And took time paying them off after the Second Punic War.

But not in the way a monte or a modern public debt was managed. The state required its members to hand over their moveable wealth and returned it after the emergency was over. The idea of turning a public debt into an investment opportunity IIRC was a medieval development.

While England and France were country-states, Venice and Florence were, like Rome, city-states ruling a lot of other city-states. And United Provinces was a union of peer city-states, i. e. the provinces like Holland were dominated by cities.

Actually, most of the institutions we are looking to see develop here were invented in the cities of medieval and Renaissance Europe and the Middle East. There's no good reason the Romans couldn't. But if statistics were around, I think it would motivate them to take a different view of things.
 
But a banking system that is placed on a slightly more permanent foundation is not impossible. A change to corporate law might help - allow the existence (by tradition and practice, not through some piewce of legislation) of corpora independent of their members. THen permit the sale or transfer of these memberships.

The Romans actually had business corporations, though not in the republican period. Augustus used his invention of artificial legal personality to put certain firms on a solid grounding in order to solidify imperial control. Major, non-imperial business associations were broken up and folded into the large imperial corporations.

The problem is large corporate business is not necessarily conducive to the kind of financial innovativeness that y'all are looking for. Most financial advances in the ancient world actually came out of pre-Roman Egypt, based in the necessity of calculating grain economies. Ptolemaic Egypt is, IIRC, where the draftable check was invented, as well as the futures contract.
 
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