Friday, 26 April 2013

Propheteering

One of my favourite daydreams used to be imagining how I'd manage if I were somehow catapulted back in time. My brain, on autopilot, would most often take me back to ancient Rome. The first thing that occurred to me was that I could use my knowledge of (what would have become) future events to my advantage and become a famous prognosticator. But when it comes down to it, I don't know that many exact dates, accurate to the day. There's the Ides of March in 44 BC I suppose, I could try to save Julius Caesar. But he was allegedly warned by a soothsayer, who's to say he'd have taken any notice of me? (Maybe the soothsayer was me?) I used to know the regnal dates of the first however many emperors, I could perhaps go in for laying bets on who would succeed. But the whole area of seeming to anticipate an emperor's death would be fraught with danger - it was illegal to cast an emperor's horoscope I think. And of course there's the less mystical scenario of such knowledge possibly implicating you as a conspirator. Far better to steer clear of that sort of business.

Anyway, my favoured solution to this not really very pressing problem eventually came to me, I think, after reading somewhere that the Romans had had the potential to have invented the gramophone (i.e. it didn't require the precision tooling that only came in with the industrial revolution). I wouldn't have a clue as to how to make a gramophone, but it did get me thinking, and the result was that I'd invent the printing press. They'd have gone crazy for it, I just know it.

14 comments:

  1. Or multiplication. You could have invented that, which I believe can't be done using Roman numerals.

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  2. I'm sure they must have been able to multiply, they had words for it (semel, bis etc.). And it's just such a useful skill to have if you're going to take over Europe, Asia Minor and Northern Africa. Maybe I could introduce zero, but I'm not sure I get it enough to have really sold it to them.

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  3. 'hail citizens of Rome. I am from the future and I bring you.... Zero'.
    'Zero?'
    'Yes, zero, an absence of number, a quantity of nothing'.

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  5. Tempus fugit mate, carpe diem, arte et labore et cetera

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  6. Not sure that link's working so:

    http://turner.faculty.swau.edu/mathematics/materialslibrary/roman/

    Iss? In vino veritas by any chance Davy?

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  7. I now know far more than I did before about Roman mathematics. And can see how wrong I was about multiplication.

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  8. BTW Plebs is quite funny. Like Rome x The Inbetweeners

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  9. More than anyone would ever need to know probably, my brain bailed when he said I needed to catenate something.

    I made a mental note to watch Plebs and then forgot all about it.

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  10. Hmm, just watched a couple of episodes, not quite up there with The Inbetweeners. Excellent soundtrack though, just played Ring The Alarm.

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  11. Yes, the reggae/ska soundtrack is a welcome addition. If quite random.

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