An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania

Checking in on the timeline and it's really cool to see how far it's gotten since I last looked.

People of the past were not stupid, and they no more enjoyed living in filth surrounded by bad smells than moderns do. However they lacked the modern technology to so easily dispose of waste materials, and they also had need of those waste materials in ways moderns don’t, and so were much more limited in how they could deal with such problems. Virtually every household would have a washbasin so one could clean hands, feet, and face, but having to fill and heat by hand a bath large enough for full immersion was too laborious to be readily practical, for example.

They also lacked the etiological framework to understand the underlying cause of communicable diseases. It's really hard to express how much of a paradigm shift germ theory was, every public health initiative before that was quite literally the equivelant of a Cargo Cult praying at the idol of a DC-3. I've said this before, but an earlier germ theory could lead to some profound demographic changes.

Sodium Hypochlorite was discovered in the early 18th century OTL (and already exists ITTL since Demeterios Sideros executed someone for sugggesting it as a chemical weapon) and was used for whitening textiles, but it took until the start of the 20th century for people to actually start using it for water treatment.

I've been looking around for numbers about how much of it was being made, but water treatment requires concentrations tens of thousands of times lower than what is used for fabric bleahing, such that you'd need about 20 kg of sodium or calcium hypochlorite bleach per day to treat all of Constantinople's water assuming a per capita water usage of 20 L/day. While I have no idea where to find numbers on how much bleach was made in preindustrial times (2019 production in the US was 30,000 tons per day), given how much you need for fabric whitening I'm 99% sure that amount of production is feasible even with 17th century technology.

That's the most obvious example that comes to mind, but if I keep thinking I'm fairly sure I'l be able to come up with a LOT of stuff that COULD have been done in the 17th century if people understood the origin of diseases.
 
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Checking in on the timeline and it's really cool to see how far it's gotten since I last looked.



They also lacked the etiological framework to understand the underlying cause of communicable diseases, which seriously . It's really hard to express how much of a paradigm shift germ theory was, every public health initiative before that was quite literally the equivelant of a Cargo Cult praying at the idol of a DC-3. I've said this before, but an earlier germ theory could lead to some profound demographic changes.

Sodium Hypochlorite was discovered in the early 18th century OTL (and already exists ITTL since Demeterios Sideros executed someone for sugggesting it as a chemical weapon) and was used for whitening textiles, but it took until the start of the 20th century for people to actually start using it for water treatment.

I've been looking around for numbers about how much of it was being made, but water treatment requires concentrations tens of thousands of times lower than what is used for fabric bleahing, such that you'd need about 20 kg of sodium or calcium hypochlorite bleach per day to treat all of Constantinople's water assuming a per capita water usage of 20 L/day. While I have no idea where to find numbers on how much bleach was made in preindustrial times (2019 production in the US was 30,000 tons per day), given how much you need for fabric whitening I'm 99% sure that amount of production is feasible even with 17th century technology.

That's the most obvious example that comes to mind, but if I keep thinking I'm fairly sure I'l be able to come up with a LOT of stuff that COULD have been done in the 17th century if people understood the origin of diseases.
Recognizing the value of clean water is one thing and it was already known. Making the connection that chlorinating the water purifies it on the other hand...
 
Recognizing the value of clean water is one thing and it was already known. Making the connection that chlorinating the water purifies it on the other hand...
there was of course recognition that clean water = disease going back to prehistory, but without germ theory there's no reason to even try stuff like chlorination, nor a measure of how "clean" water actually is other than smell/taste and turbidity. With germ theory on the other hand it becomes pretty trivial to notice chlorine kills microbes even at extremely low concentrations. Even with 17th century technology bacteria could be seen with microscopes, and the first recorded observation of the antimicrobial properties of alcohol happened in the early 18th.

I found an interesting article which quotes a historian of medicine which remarked of 17th century microbiology that:

“an intellectual revolution that should have taken place failed to occur”.

with regards to the possibility of germ theory emerging in the 17th century, which he attributes to cultural factors, particularly the fact that most doctors in the period didn't know or care very much about microbiology.

The key obstacle, says Mr Wootton, was not intellectual but cultural. Doctors were conservative and regarded new, experiment-based findings as a challenge to their professional identity. While astronomers rushed to adopt telescopes, which transformed their understanding of the universe, doctors turned a blind eye to the new worlds revealed by the microscope. Lister was a notable exception: trained as a doctor and surgeon, he learned about microscopy (and micro-organisms) from his father, an amateur naturalist who devised an improved form of microscope. Lister was thus able to bridge the gap between science and medicine. And his status as a professor of surgery, not to mention surgeon to Queen Victoria, gave him the authority to put his methods into practice, despite initial mockery, and gather clear evidence of their effectiveness.


Anyone trying to do the same in the 1680s would have had to have been a doctor, a surgeon and a microscopist—separate groups at the time. They would also have needed support among the political or medical elite.

 
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there was of course recognition that clean water = disease going back to prehistory, but without germ theory there's no reason to even try stuff like chlorination, nor a measure of how "clean" water actually is other than smell/taste and turbidity. Even with 17th century technology bacteria could be seen with microscopes, and the first recorded observation of the antimicrobial properties of alcohol happened in the early 18th.

I found an interesting article which quotes a historian of medicine which remarked of 17th century microbiology that:



with regards to the possibility of germ theory emerging in the 17th century, which he attributes to cultural factors, particularly the fact that most doctors in the period didn't know or care very much about microbiology.



I think during this time period, if one is going to clean the streets it is either cultural or obsession of the administration rather than the knowledge of germ theory.

OTL Edo Japan regularly clean everything, streets, etc. to remove the smell of night soil or stink within their streets.

The medieval Japanese even know they need to separate toilets and their bamboo water pipes or make sure toilets are not beside rivers.

Urban sanitation preindustrial japan by Susan Hanley

Since the Romans were already in touch with the Japanese, they can probably see or more likely smell the difference between a Japanese city and a Roman city which may lead to adapting Japanese regular cleansing and Japanese administration on sanitation.

I have no idea though if the Byzantines or even Roman clean their streets regularly like the Japanese do in preindustrial times that they can adapt these kind of practice from East Asia. But I do know the ancient Greeks were doing Night soil collection since ancient times.
 
there was of course recognition that clean water = disease going back to prehistory, but without germ theory there's no reason to even try stuff like chlorination, nor a measure of how "clean" water actually is other than smell/taste and turbidity. With germ theory on the other hand it becomes pretty trivial to notice chlorine kills microbes even at extremely low concentrations. Even with 17th century technology bacteria could be seen with microscopes, and the first recorded observation of the antimicrobial properties of alcohol happened in the early 18th.

I found an interesting article which quotes a historian of medicine which remarked of 17th century microbiology that:



with regards to the possibility of germ theory emerging in the 17th century, which he attributes to cultural factors, particularly the fact that most doctors in the period didn't know or care very much about microbiology.



im curious no one has brought up constaninoples cisterns. there were over 200 of them throughout the city
 
I think during this time period, if one is going to clean the streets it is either cultural or obsession of the administration rather than the knowledge of germ theory.
Well, as I was elaborating, there was no fundamental reason germ theory couldn't have been discovered in the late 17th century or 18th century.

Now, the obvious problem with 18th century water chlorination would be how exactly you determine the concentration of chlorine in the water. Modern day colorimetric tests rely on synthetic reagents that obviously don't exist in this period, and anything that requires a sophisticated knowledge of chemistry principles is out. The strength of the chlorine odor and taste at the point of introduction is the most obvious litmus test, but that leaves some rather large error bars. The good news is the odor threshold for chlorine in water comes in at 0.31 ppm, which is within the WHO reccomended range for water sanitation of 0.2-2 ppm and well within the 4 ppm threshold for negative health effects based on FDA guidelines, so "just enough that a sensitive nose can smell it at the well" is an acceptable metric if you're attempting supply side chlorination, alternatively you could add it by weight at the demand side and use the chlorine scent at a measure for when more needs to be added in the case of recirculating systems like public baths.
 
This is an entirely selfish request, but after watching a fantastic video on the history of Wagon Ways in the North East of England I was doing some research to see where there were some older examples (i.e. Bohemia ... sort of) but the oldest example may have been the Diolkos at the Isthmus of Corinth. I'm curious as to whether the Romans have taken advantage of this pre-Steam Engine railway system to stretch their authority inland?
 
This is an entirely selfish request, but after watching a fantastic video on the history of Wagon Ways in the North East of England I was doing some research to see where there were some older examples (i.e. Bohemia ... sort of) but the oldest example may have been the Diolkos at the Isthmus of Corinth. I'm curious as to whether the Romans have taken advantage of this pre-Steam Engine railway system to stretch their authority inland?
I think we watched the same video! :closedeyesmile:
My question would be their cost vs benefits with anything that isn't being constantly moved like coal out of a mine. Those rails were made of wood since industrial steel I don't believe is a thing yet on sufficient scale. I believe the Lindy mentioned in that video that the tracks tended to last about five years? Maybe they'd last longer in the drier Mediterranean? Given that the Romans already have a chronic shortage of hardwoods would this be worthwhile for a road replacement?

Maybe it is something they attempt in a desperate effort to supply some of the inland Anatolian cities with grain?

I could see them being, just like OTL, extremely valuable in industrial applications, such as mines, quarries, logging, shipbuilding, cargo handling and such.
 
I think we watched the same video! :closedeyesmile:
My question would be their cost vs benefits with anything that isn't being constantly moved like coal out of a mine. Those rails were made of wood since industrial steel I don't believe is a thing yet on sufficient scale. I believe the Lindy mentioned in that video that the tracks tended to last about five years? Maybe they'd last longer in the drier Mediterranean? Given that the Romans already have a chronic shortage of hardwoods would this be worthwhile for a road replacement?

Maybe it is something they attempt in a desperate effort to supply some of the inland Anatolian cities with grain?

I could see them being, just like OTL, extremely valuable in industrial applications, such as mines, quarries, logging, shipbuilding, cargo handling and such.
You are right! Hehe

The hardwood question is a fair question though. Are there suitable hardwoods that aren't ship-quality but might work for the Romans.

I mean, the uphill aspect is hard so I'd be curious to see if the Romans could resolve it.

It would be cool to see a proto-railway project for feeding Anatolia if enough food can be imported.
 
How large is Constantinople? Last I recall was it was around 300,000 during the flowering, due to some disasters during the Time of Troubles and forced people moves.

The last population figure, in 1645, was 340,000.

Interesting stuff about negative effect of urbanization on growth.

Usual historical trope is "urbanization good and advanced, rural primitive and less sophisticated". This might also explain some things regarding "Fremen mirage" - why some more rural and less sophisticated societies sometimes triumph over urbanized empires.

I think there are two factors for that trope. The first is that ‘more urbanized’ is more like modern us, and anything more like us is obviously ‘better’.

The second is the elite-bias that is inherent in historical narrative, and which is really hard to shake. Elites wrote the historical sources, and wrote them to be read by other elites. And so we tend to identify with those elites; just note how everyone in a past life was a princess or a knight, but never a peasant. The growth of cities can and does produce amazing things, with the concentration of peoples, goods, and ideas helping the creative process immensely. But that progress is overwhelmingly experienced by the elites, and we look at history mostly from their perspective. The monumental architecture of ancient Rome survives, but not the cramped apartment blocks where most ancient Romans lived, so we tend to forget, if we ever remembered at all, the experience of those who were not elite.

What's the current Roman population?

Of the heartland as of 1645, about 17 million.

Around what time TTL will Russia start urbanising to be comparable (or the Tier below) the other major powers? Given the massive demographic advantage they're building (and will start paying dividends in the 1700s), it looks like the post little ice age period will be their time to shine.

Quite a while, because they’ve got that eastern frontier (Siberia) to settle, which would draw off much of the rural poor population that crowd into the cities in societies that don’t have a frontier or settler colonies as an alternative. There would still be towns for markets and manufacturing, but it’d be in the sense of creating more small towns and cities rather than swelling the pre-existing ones. Novgorod is likely to remain Russia’s only mega-city for a while.

I imagine that the little ice age will hit Russia very hard. The effects for them will be a lot more extreme, and they have even fewer tools to mitigate it, where the Mediterranean world can at least ship food anywhere near the coast. That said, Russia's recovery must certainly be a thing to behold, especially with their relative peace and political unity, as long as it can be maintained.

Russia IOTL got hit hard by the Little Ice Age (but then so did almost everybody), but then followed it up with Peter the Great and so on in the 1700s. I think the main factor is less how badly they get hit in the Little Ice Age itself, but how quickly they can make up the damage.

Germ theory and related: I think another way I’d put it is that people of the past weren’t stupid, but they made logical decisions based on certain principles, which then turned out to be wrong. The miasma theory of diseases (they are spread by bad smell) does make intuitive sense, especially in a world where microbes are completely unknown. And even if microbes are known, that doesn’t mean people would necessarily link ‘these little things’ to what makes them sick.

In a way it doesn’t help that the miasma theory can lead to some false positives. The idea was that bad smells spread diseases, and while removing the source of bad smells was ideal, you could counter those effects by creating good smells. And while smoking incense won’t do anything for dysentery, it will guard against malaria because the smoke drives away the mosquitoes.

Another thing to consider is that the biggest medical breakthrough soon is going to be smallpox variolation and vaccination. Smallpox variolation was already a practice in the OTL Ottoman Empire by this time and is a practice in the OTL Roman Empire. But no 17th century microscope is going to see a smallpox virus. So I imagine any early proponent of germ theory would be constantly hampered by demands to know how smallpox works in that theory.

I agree that a lot more and better could be done fighting diseases with a basic knowledge and acceptance of germ theory even with just 17th/18th century technology, but I also understand why getting such initial acceptance would be hard. It doesn’t help that the idea of ‘adding bleach to my bath’ sounds weird and sketchy if you’ve never heard of the concept of chlorination before.

Although I really could have fun with “The citizens of Constantinople riot as newspapers fan rumors of a Latin plot to poison the people by adding strange substances to the public baths…”

More seriously, a germ theory development that is still in pre-industrial times and in advance of OTL agricultural revolution developments could have interesting repercussions. Speculating now, but if people get in the practice of having fewer children because they don’t need to have 5 to ensure 2 live, but there is still a Malthusian population ceiling in effect because food production is still pre-agricultural revolution levels, seems like it would sharply curtail the demographic transition. Imagine if OTL France’s 19th century was the standard, not the outlier.

This is an entirely selfish request, but after watching a fantastic video on the history of Wagon Ways in the North East of England I was doing some research to see where there were some older examples (i.e. Bohemia ... sort of) but the oldest example may have been the Diolkos at the Isthmus of Corinth. I'm curious as to whether the Romans have taken advantage of this pre-Steam Engine railway system to stretch their authority inland?

I think we watched the same video! :closedeyesmile:
My question would be their cost vs benefits with anything that isn't being constantly moved like coal out of a mine. Those rails were made of wood since industrial steel I don't believe is a thing yet on sufficient scale. I believe the Lindy mentioned in that video that the tracks tended to last about five years? Maybe they'd last longer in the drier Mediterranean? Given that the Romans already have a chronic shortage of hardwoods would this be worthwhile for a road replacement?

Maybe it is something they attempt in a desperate effort to supply some of the inland Anatolian cities with grain?

I could see them being, just like OTL, extremely valuable in industrial applications, such as mines, quarries, logging, shipbuilding, cargo handling and such.

You are right! Hehe

The hardwood question is a fair question though. Are there suitable hardwoods that aren't ship-quality but might work for the Romans.

I mean, the uphill aspect is hard so I'd be curious to see if the Romans could resolve it.

It would be cool to see a proto-railway project for feeding Anatolia if enough food can be imported.

Railway systems like that are in use in mines and quarries to move goods around in the local area, and perhaps to a convenient wharf nearby. I figure they could also be in use in major ports where bulk goods are offloaded and then shipped to warehouses (Constantinople’s grain shipments are an obvious candidate). But that’s it. That pays in these short-distance high-intensity areas, but not otherwise. After all, for food shipments the unit hauling the food is still an animal that eats food, so you still have the case where the longer the distance, the more the food is simply lost by virtue of it being literally consumed by its mode of transportation.

Plus the vast majority of Greece and Turkey is hilly/mountainous, so you could easily get the irony of chopping down the forests to make the tracks to import food into the interior. Except now soil erosion skyrockets and messes up the fertile river valleys downstream, so now the areas that were producing the food to be imported are now turning into malarial swamps. (Which is an issue which won’t go away and be present for regular railways, but they consume less wood directly.)
 
The Contexts of Roman Society, Part 4-2: The Importance of Manure
The Contexts of Roman Society, part 4-2: The Importance of Manure

Early modern Roman cities are not necessarily centers of manufacturing, as much production is spread out across the countryside, whether as small local operations or as part of a putting-out system. However a Roman city will have at least some manufacturing, although the amount can vary wildly, and this can be another source of pollution. Tanneries, dye works, and butcheries all produce substantial amounts of waste, another trouble for city residents.

Not all pollution in cities is physical. There are many who see cities as sources of moral pollution as well. The large concentrations of population, both residents and travelers, provides the market, while the mass of urban poor provides the workforce. Constantinople and Smyrna in particular are infamous for their red-light districts (although the red lights themselves don’t exist at this time), but every Roman city has one.

Sex workers, like all aspects of Roman society, contain variety. The majority are female, but there are male workers, both boys and adults, for female clients as well as homosexual male ones. In 1649 there is a scandal in Antioch when it is discovered that a brothel there has been working with the 1st Syrian tourma garrisoned in the city, some of the soldiers, from drummer boys to some older hands working as sex workers for some extra money. What makes this truly scandalous though is that some of the officers were acting as pimps. [1]

Some sex workers are trafficked, while others do it because the alternative is starvation. And there are others who prefer this life, for a variety of reasons. Some would say it is because they are licentious and promiscuous. But the women might reply that they prefer it to other alternatives; they view it as no more degrading, or less so, than working as a domestic (where they quite possibly have to put up with sexual pressure from their master), and for a high-end, the pay can be quite substantial.

Sex workers cater to all walks of Roman life, although the richer the clientele, the better-off the sex workers typically are. Soldiers can sometimes be the workers, but they are also an extremely common customer as well. Officers sometimes encourage soldiers’ use of brothels, as they believe it a good way to avoid sodomy. Sex workers who cater to that type of clientele also have their ways to drum up business. Starting sometime and somewhere in the 1640s, but continuing to this day, they’ll say to soldiers passing by “Come you back, you Roman soldier, come you back to the aplekton!” [2][3]

The effects of pollution and the harsh living standards of the poor did not go unnoticed, and there were efforts to mitigate them, even if those were grossly inadequate by modern standards. The grain dole has already been mentioned, and charities managing soup kitchens and distributing food, old clothes, fuel, and even shelters were common. There were regulations regarding waste disposal, such as where one could empty one’s chamber pot (emphatically not in the street), and the need for regular cesspit coverage and drainage. Soap manufacturing was a massive industry by the standards of the day, with its products always in demand.

Another element was the provision of medical services. By the 1600s, the Romans had a tradition of public hospitals dating back uninterrupted to antiquity, with certain practices in use having a pedigree centuries old. Public hospitals were typically charitable foundations, whether by clerical or lay patrons, and were a common form of public largesse in urban environments. Some of these were located in the cities themselves, while others were situated in the suburbs or nearby towns to avoid unhealthy city air. Demetrios III may have founded his hospital in Athyra, outside Constantinople, as a gesture of annoyance with the people of Constantinople, but he was not making a true break with precedent there.

Doctors at the public hospitals worked six-months-on and six-months-off. During their six-months-on, their salary was only comparable to that of a regular unskilled laborer, although they were guaranteed regular employment for the period and also given rations, the main expense of a typical laborer. Thus their pay wasn’t quite as low as it would seem, but it was still decidedly on the small scale.

However working at a public hospital was the way to build up a medical reputation for oneself, and that medical reputation could be leveraged into clientele and high service fees for the doctors on their six-months-off. Then they operated a private practice, which was when they made their real money. But the opportunity required working cheap at the public hospitals.

This was an indirect way for the richer classes to subsidize medical care for the poor. The public hospitals catered primarily to the poor, while the middle and rich preferred the comfort of being treated in their own homes. Plus private care ensured regular attendance and service; the public hospitals operated on a first-come first-served basis and did not necessarily have enough space. But despite those weaknesses, the low wages of doctors when they worked directly at the public hospitals helped those institutes be able to provide cheap medical care to the poor.

The mesoi and dynatoi weren’t always absent from the public hospitals. For emergency care, certain types of surgery, post-op recovery from said surgeries, and long-term care requiring specialized services they would use the public hospitals, although they would have to pay regular rates, not the cheap rates from which the poor benefitted. Since these fees went to the hospital (possibly being split with a doctor who used hospital facilities to perform surgery on a private practice patient), this was another way the mesoi and dynatoi indirectly subsidized cheap medical care for the poorer levels of society. [4]

The importance placed on public hospitals (where practices showed distinct Hospitalier influence) is a clear illustration that Romans of the early modern period were not blind to health concerns. But they faced far more difficulties in handling them compared to modern societies. They had no knowledge of germ theory and instead believed that diseases were spread by bad air and bad smells. Aromatics that could cover up the bad smells were thus viewed as a valuable health service, with civic authorities making efforts to ensure their provision similar to their efforts to ensure availability of grain, vegetables, and mutton. And while rosewater wouldn’t do anything to guard against dysentery, smoking cannabis or tobacco was a good counter to malaria as the smoke drove away the carrying mosquitoes.

The main factor in ensuring the general unhealthiness of cities though was not resolvable by the means of the early modern period. That was the presence of huge amounts of animal and human waste. Even if the infrastructure was put into place to flush that all away had been available, the Romans could not afford to do so. That waste material was far too valuable, too essential, to be just thrown away. It needed to be kept so that it could be used.

Waste was needed for certain processes, such as tanning. Urine was used in several areas, including the cleaning of laundry (because of the ammonia content) and the production of saltpeter (the urine of wine-drinkers was said to be the best for this). But the main use for all this waste matter was as fertilizer for the fields. Basically, the smell of the cesspits was the necessary cost to pay to ensure that the markets had enough food.

Transporting foodstuffs from afield was a necessary part of provisioning cities, but even so urban centers drew intensively on their local hinterlands for sustenance. Nicaea and Antioch were especially prominent in this regard, as their inland locations made large-scale imports much more difficult, but even the great seaports of Constantinople, Thessaloniki, and Smyrna were no exception.

This was an era before artificial fertilizers. Manure was the only game in town in this regard in the early modern period. The peasant farmer would ideally fertilize his fields with manure from his farm animals, but usually the garden would be fertilized by the night soil produced by him and his family. The Roman city operated on the same model, but on a vastly bigger scale.

The fields near the great cities were the most agriculturally productive lands in the whole Empire, and that was entirely due to their receipt of far more fertilizer in the form of urban night soil and street sweepings than other lands. The costs of shipping in this fertilizer was minimal because of proximity, while the cost of shipping the many products of their productive fields to a massive market was also minimal. Thus agricultural lands near the larger cities was of extremely high value, with even small holdings able to produce surpluses and profits unimaginable in areas that depended on far more meager supplies of manure.

This resulted in an aspect of the early modern Roman city that moderns find truly bizarre. Cesspit removal was thus a big business, as landowners outside the cities were willing to pay, and pay well, for the contents of said cesspits. The Bothros family, famous now for the massive chemical company they founded that still exists today, had their start here. While the laborers who did the actual work of emptying the cesspits were viewed as some of the lowest of the low, the managers such as the Bothroi could make serious money. As the saying goes, ‘the Bothroi don’t shit gold, but they can turn shit into gold’.

This resulted in another incentive for people not to want to flush their waste away, as the Bothroi and others in the same business were literally willing to pay for night soil. They’d still make a profit from it. The sale of the contents of civic cesspits went to the city (or Imperial government in Constantinople), while communal cesspits for apartment buildings were split among the tenants on pre-determined settings, such as by suite or by number of occupants.

One aspect of this business model illustrates possibly the most disgusting example of the adage ‘you need money to make money’. Fecal matter from richer neighborhoods and households commanded higher prices than that from their poorer neighbors. This wasn’t class snobbery at work either. Given their better economic status, the producers of the more expensive fecal matter were better fed, which meant their waste contained more nutrients, and so it actually functioned better as fertilizer. Hence the higher price it would command. [5]

Early modern Roman cities were hardly unique in this aspect. Chinese cities made even more use of night soil for fertilizer, much to the disgust of Andreas Angelos, but rice paddy country didn’t allow for grazing of much livestock, so animal manure was less available as an alternative. Nor were they unique in Christendom; Valencians claimed the fertility of their suburban orchards was based on their fertilizing from the sweepings of the street offal. [6]

Modern cities would eventually resolve these issues and stop being demographic black holes. The use of motorized vehicles, replacing defecating draft animals, and the development of artificial fertilizers and improvements in agriculture, obviating the need for huge volumes of night soil, made cities much more sanitary. But those were not available to Romans in the mid-1600s. They recognized the issue and dealt with it as best they could, given their limited means and options and knowledge, but it just wasn’t enough until the rules changed in the modern era.


[1] The OTL example comes from, of all places, Victorian Britain. See Simon Heffer, The Age of Decadence: A History of Britain 1880-1914.

[2] An aplekton is a fortified army base, commonly used as a major storage facility. Given that it is used to store weapons, it has morphed into a slang term for another place to store (male) weaponry.

[3] This is adapted from OTL as well. In Burma under the Raj, Burmese sex workers would try to entice British soldiers by quoting Kipling: “Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay.” See David Gilmour, The British in India: A Social History of the Raj, pg. 290.

[4] These hospital practices are from the OTL Byzantines. See Timothy Miller, “Byzantine Hospitals” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984).

[5] This is also from OTL, although the example comes from China. See Daniel Headrick, Humans Versus Nature: A Global Environmental History.

[6] OTL. See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. 1.
 
The Cesspit family? Not unsurprisingly not a single person with that surname can be found in the Greek White page directory. :p
You will be surprised to learn that the greek translation for fossa is bothros for example ignuakos bothros(popliteal fossa) or the three cranial fossa, while that surname does not exist you can be comforted that in fact all of us have bothroi in us 😂
 

Vince

Monthly Donor
Wow. What a crappy update.

VPnfTw3.gif
 
The new update was cool. I am really excited for an update on the new world. What will be the new countries. Which of the countries that will emerge in the new world do you think will be the most important or that will remain united?
Mega Brazil will remain united and expand to the rest of south america. Or will split between Christians and Muslims. (I hope that doesn't happen). Perhaps the country will have a Muslim version of the bandeirantes. Which will be more focused on Amazonian areas. With the bandeirantes concentrating in the middle of Brazil and the gauçõs will be concentrated with the south of Brazil (Southern Brazil OTL, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina). Will mexico survive? Scandinavia canada will have a hard time with frech-english USA.
Mazil(Brazil+Angentina+Venezuela) can become a real monster if it is united and has a minimally competent government. The same can be said about the USA, especially if it conquers Canada.
I am thinking that the new world will be divided into three great powers. Brazil, Mexico, USA.Cuba may try to be neutral but I wouldn't be if that would be possible.
Another possibility is for the USA or Brazil to become the center of the empire.As was the case with the united kingdom of portugal and brazil.

I honestly don't know what to expect, which makes the subject much more exciting.
PS: I really liked the story, it's really well done and impressive.
 
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