The way you manage to inject a hint of melancholy into every subject, even the story of the spoilt rich who banqueted as the world collapsed around them, is a testament to your talent as a story teller. That it's all thoroughly researched historical analysis is just the icing on the cake!
"Rich must be bad and spoiled" Thats your motto? Well I must say, that most of them are and probably were incredible humble people. And they wanted just pass their wealth to next generation as people nowadays. Because why earn and make money when you still die? To leave your estate to state officials like Liz Truss or Rishi?
The Chinese have a saying, "After 3 generations the money is gone." It's down to a) spending money is easy, making it is a rare talent, b) spoiled children who think the money will never stop coming, c) division of wealth from parents to generation 2 (4 children + 4 spouses), generation 3 (32 children + 32 spouses), d) inflation. It takes ferocious estate management, ruthless inheritance and luck to keep a dynasty going.
my next door neighbours have held their 1000 acre estate for over 1200 years. all you need for generational wealth is political stability and primogeniture inheritance.
Idk if its a saying but I always think of this line: the 1st generation builds the wealth, the 2nd generation has seen the hard work and appreciates it thus wont lose it. The 3rd generation hasnt build the wealth nor has it seen the amount of effort it took to build it. Thus the 3rd generation often loses it. Sometimes the 3rd generation is a bonus generation and has learns from the 2nd generation what effort it took, and will appreciate it more. But the 4th generation has no real connection with it and loses it all
*62 years after the Battle of Carrhae* Augustus: "...And that was the story of how we lost a great amount of soldiers in Parthia" Germanicus: "Woah, grandfather. That Crassus man really messed up with the enemy, doesn't he?" Augustus: "Yeah, boy. Glad things have changed since then and our men are now much more efficent than..." Slave: "Excuse me, Caesar. But a soldier from Varus' division in Germany has brought you news. They're about something that happened in Teutoburg..."
@engineer gaming That would be insane if true and awsome. If Caesar was an ancestor to the Habsburgs that means that after that last Roman emperor (after Constantine XI) gave Isabella and Ferdinand the title of Roman emperor in his will, their grandson, Charles V, a Habsburg, inherited that title becoming Roman Emperor. So in a very complicated and convoluted way, Caesar's proginey did eventually become rulers of Rome.
I can’t believe you’re not the most viewed RU-vidr of this niche. You present very interesting questions that you answer with detail and subtle humor that help me paint a more whole picture of antiquity. Seriously, I’m baffled
Very interesting topic. I have always been curious as to what happened to Roman family names and how and at what time did they morph into Italian names. I would be interested in seeing a video explaining what we know about that process.
@@toldinstone Anecdote barely remembered from an old Reader's Digest. At an upper-crust gathering in Rome (in the 60s/70s of 20th century AD), an American lady asked an Italian nobleman named Massimi whether it was true that he was a descendant of the Roman family Maximii. He answered, "I don't know for sure. It's just something that has been told in the family for the last 1500 years." Oh, the Reader's Digest. Just found the anecdote correctly described at the Wikipedia article Massimo family. The characters in the original story were Napoleon and Prince Massimo while negotiating the Treaty of Tolentino. Awesome. Lol.
I always wonder where rich Romans kept their cash since banks did not exist back then. They probably had rooms with chests full of cash guarded by guards 24/7.
Banks did exist back then, but banks primary function is NOT warehousing money. Their primary function is extending credit. Even today, banks don't just hold your money. The money you deposit to them is technically a loan you give to them. They get to use your money while it's in their care. Typically it was gold and silver smith's who would hold people's wealth for them because they already had vaults and gaurds. But the elites themselves were the ones extending credit. They were the bankers. They had their own vaults.
@@heijimikata7181 Land value always goes up, gold value slowly goes down. You can also accumulate slaves and labd faster and more consistently than you can accumulate gold. Land and slaves produce things that allow you to purchase more land and slaves. Gold doesn't produce anything unless you use it as reserves so you can extend credit. Both were done. Much of romans wealth was not gold, or slaves, or even land, but credit, just like the cash we use today which is technically valueless bank credit.
There were banks, at least in Greece. I'm not sure to what extent those had spread to Rome. Roman financial customs were a bit more usurious in that regard, from what I gather.
Ultimately, the wealth of the Roman aristocracy was the land and the people who worked it. That land is all still there today, the only thing that changed is the immaterial concept of "ownership".
I've always been interested in this topic, how did so many roman families survive from the earliest republic (heck even from the time of the monarchy) only to fade away so quickly in late republic. The obvious answer is that many old families were proscribed to extinction by Marius, Sulla, and the second triumvirate, in addition to those who naturally died out, were killed a bit more honorably in the civil wars, or who had n'eredowell children who squandered their fortunes as is natural. The factor I would suggest is less obvious is the enfranchisement of Italians after the Social War. Prior to the Social War, the patrician families had many legal advantages over the Italian allies in gaining and keeping wealth, not the least of which was use of the public lands that the Gracchi fought so hard to abolish. After the social war, though it wasn't immediately apparent, the empire was not run by Romans for Romans. it was run by Italians for Italians, and especially in the early imperial era, when Augustus struggled so hard to find enough competent magistrates, it was simple for an italian minor aristocrat who had great merit to get ahead in Roman society, which would have been unthinkable before the Social War. In short, being an aristocrat became more competitive as more people entered into the arena. Without a monopoly of government and magistracies, the Roman aristocrats were forced to compete with Italians more and more on their merits and the emperors more and more chose correctly, especially with military high commands and the path to wealth and power that entails. So yeah, I think the socio-economic fallout from the Social War is not to be underestimated. Way off topic, but this ofcourse happens again after Caracalla grants universal citizenship and opens the pool to even more men to compete for wealth and power. Not surprising that the 3rd and 4th century was dominated by Emperors born outside of Italy who may never have set foot in Italy as a result.
Yes, those are important points. Many elite Roman families failed to reproduce themselves - but just as many failed to succeed socially / politically generation after generation.
So you started by mentioning you were interested in the topic that the video covered then went on a very long irrelevant ramble trying to show off your subpar knowledge 😂someone is a raging narcissist who always has to be right 😮way to go !
@@sherlockgnomes8971 He only showed his knowledge about the topic, which is great and must be supported. Anyone who spreads knowledge and factual inform people should be rewarded, no matter the circumtances.
I find this tremendously comforting. Rich or poor, we are all transient and the wealth that people spend lifetimes accumulating and hoarding turns to dust in just a few generations. I just wish that wealth did not bestow such unhealthy power over the rest of us, especially in the modern age.
The wealth of today's banking families comes from centuries of accumulation and is still growing, so the notion that wealth doesn't last long is only valid for the average millionaire.
@@sarahsarah2534 Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos, the Apple guy and many more are all first generation billionaires. Yes, some banking families have accumulated wealth and power, but some of the richest people on the planet have attained (and watching Musk) lost their fortunes in a single lifetime.
@@Martial-Mat Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and the other new rich are small business compared to the Rothschild, Morgan, Rockefeller, etc. Much of the wealth is concealed through an inextricable net of fictitious legal entities.
This was how it was for the ancient romans. It doesn't apply to modern times, so there is absolutely no comfort to be taken from this video, only despair.
Crassus was one of the wealthiest people in the history of the ancient world. Most of his wealth was invested in land and businesses all over the Roman Empire. However, it’s not clear where all of his wealth ended up after his death. Some historians believe that it was divided among his heirs and others believe that it was lost or spent by the Roman Empire. However, there is a common theory that a portion of Crassus’s wealth ended up buried with him in a pyramid-like tomb made entirely out of gold. This is just an old legend, but it makes for a good story!
Anyone who played nice with the Visigoths and later the Lombards. But the campaigns of Justinian kinda neutered Italy for centuries to come so I suspect after Belisarius rekt the place what major wealth remained began to quickly dwindle.
I think Toldinstone videos are very nicely free of bloat. I'd imagine Dr. Ryan could take us on an infinite number of tangents but is that really what you'd want? I feel a ten minute video is really rather elegant, and wonder if a rambling lecture would make anyone especially happy or be easy to produce. It is an interesting statement. I thought of trying to answer it, but I'm not really sure what the time frame is. The 5th to 10th centuries? Maybe the Crescentii or Papian's? The Colonna claimed decent from the Julii?
@@kaanerdem2822 The Medici family were first mentioned in a document of 1230, long after the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476. Further to this the Medici were originally of Tuscan peasant origin - not a wealthy background - from the village of Cafaggiolo in the Mugello, the valley of the Sieve, north of Florence.
When you hear about the wealth of the Roman elites, you really start to understand Spartacus and his slave army rampaging and killing trough the estates of those elites during the third servile war.
@@jaredsmith112 No? not really? You really don't understand why people who are forced to live their lives without any agency of their own, their labour being exploited to the maximum (because they don't get payed) and having to die on the sands of the amphitheatre or in the mines would maybe get a little fucking mad at the people who orchestrate and benefit so ostentatiously from their slavery? I suppose the slaves should have engaged in civil debate with their masters in stead of using violence. Maybe propose better living conditions for themselves in the market place of ideas, right? Or maybe the slaves should have worked harder, have the right grindset in stead of complaining about their lot in life?
"600 of us were crucified as a warning to any slave dreaming of rising against Rome, but the Romans never found Spartacus' body. I like to think he's still out there. Of one thing I am sure. When the centuries pass, few will remember the name of Marcus Licinius Crassus...but Spartacus' will live on forever. Because he showed us something we never knew before: that a slave didn't have to just take it. He could be free..." *Oenomaus*
Crassus had 200,000x the average annual income, compared to the GDP per capita of modern America, that would be 10 billion USD, an insane fortune to be sure, but I've heard he was possibly the wealthiest person ever, obviously the conversion isn't accurate, but interesting to compare.
The dude could fund a whole Roman army privately, which is a world class power projection at that time. Think of having enough money to finance the US marines, which costs about 50 billion per year. Crassus both financed private armies in two wars.
It’s interesting how he got his wealth. It was mostly through Sulla enemy of Marius. When a fire started Crassus would buy up the property at low prices. Probably Crassus got wealth from all the rich people killed by Sulla also. But Crassus was ultimately unlucky when he arrogantly invaded Parthia… 😊
Hey Dr. Ryan! Love the new intro with the stone carving sounds! Also I’m almost done with Naked Statues! I’ve gotten lots of questions about it from my university peers/professors
Interesting that even the rich children had high mortality rates, I wonder why this happened, as with poor children one might expect poor hygene and disease, but rich children should have had good living standards.
good living standards in the year 0 were WAY below the healthcare of homeless people in the year 2020. you don't realize how much science has improved our conditions in the past 200 years
I went to Rome two years ago and we had a tour guide certified by the vatican and assume majored in history as well. I asked about the plazas and building and was shocked to learn some of those families from the middle ages / renaissance still owned plazas and buildings 😮 i honestly thought the govt wouldve seized it all.
@@Chadius_Thundercock Lol if the Australian government tried confiscating property from the renaissance I am afraid they wouldn't end up with much to show for it. The first major building in Australia was built in 1788, long after the renaissance and middle ages.
A little depressing to hear that a family's wealth is short-lived, but it's also good to know that wealth and resources are recycled into society or allowed to return to a natural state in the case of land that goes untended.
You’re assuming a zero sum state of economic production. Wealthy people create value while they get rich. Their children failing to get wealthier indicates a net decrease in value being produced. Everyone gets poorer when production goes down.
@@MrWolfstar8 That's true, but while the empire was rich as a whole, it meant that people who were better at producing value became rich, at the expense of those who spent lavishly or invested foolishly. This shows some meritocracy in the economic system and allowed social mobility. Rich people becoming poor by being outcompeted is a great thing. Obviously, when the empire became poorer as a whole, this no longer applied.
@@MrWolfstar8 I'm not sure why concentration of wealth should be associated with creation of value. Wealthy people do not create value by getting rich. They simply concentrate wealth. Value is created when people do the work that creates the material objects that people place value on. If you make a hundred sandwiches and I take them all, is that somehow more sandwich value than if 100 people got 1sandwich each?
@@plateoshrimp9685 you are making the basic marxist mistake of viewing value as a zero sum game where value can only be transferred and not created. The labor theory of value was shown to be utterly incorrect by Mao’s Great Leap Forward which resulted in millions deaths in China. To get wealthy when one isn’t a member of the political class who simply steal their wealth from the public requires creating new sources of value. For example Elon Musk became very wealthy by creating high performance electric cars and rocket ships that are reusable. Those cheaper to operate Rocket ships resulted in a decline in launch costs which in turned enabling cheap high speed satellite internet. That’s newly created value increasing overall wealth pie.
@@plateoshrimp9685 being able to effectively manage wealth by choosing what to invest in does add value to society. It's more effective than far removed central planners who don't have a stake in the effectiveness of their decisions, like the ones who drove the Soviet union into the ground
does anyone know what painting that is at 5:12? the one captioned "Gladiatorial contest at a banquet"? i tried googling that phrase as the most obvious thing (and then adding "painting") but i got nothing. it's gorgeous
never mind, some tweaking of my wording and further persistence found it. "Gladiator Fight during a Meal at Pompeii," 1880, Francesco Netti, in case anyone else was wondering.
8:27 Domitian: "A woman who carries no less than 10 living romans in her womb deserves nothing less than pure respect. The Gods must be very proud of you!" Woman: "Yes, Caesar. My prayers to Vesta were not in vain!" 😊 Domitian: "OH, COME ON!!!"
Even in the most oppressive cases of patriarchy, women will still find ways to embarrass the shit out of men. A tale as old as time, and it is still funny as all hell every time.
This is an interesting subject, as are most of your subjects! As someone descended from an American "brahmin" family, the Depression was their economic downfall, that and the fact they had few children, late in life. My father had no siblings and no first cousins. As for the Romans, the child mortality was awful and remained that way in most places until around 1900. Maybe if they had allowed girls to inherit things might have been different. Heaven forbid.
The reason so many fortunes fail is because people got too extravagant, spent money foolishly, and just assumed there would always be more to spend, not taking into account things that could go wrong. If I were an heiress (hopefully in a future lifetime), I'd divide the money; if it was 20 million, I'd save 5 (whichever way would earn the most interest), invest 5 in real estate, stocks, bonds, etc., donate 5 to worthy causes (a nice thing to do and also tax deductible) and with the other 5, have a whole lot of fun! I'd also remind myself never to go overboard or take anything for granted. And now, I'll shut up!
Rich people who are more prudent with their wealth don't get famous. When you live an ordinary life in private with a vast fortune in the bank, there's no stories to tell about you.
Cool but you only get rich by amassing money. Spending in many extravagancies such as jewelery, can be considered investment. Your home at the time was the best place to held your fortune.
@@Yora21 This manages to reflect some differences between what we call old money and new money. Much of contemporary, lasting generational wealth is often out of the spotlight compared to more recently acquired fortunes.
If it were just the diseases, that prevented families from lasting, the romans would die out, as lower-class families had even more of a problem with these. I think that it is caused by the wealth itself. Like in the modern world, as people reach a certain standard of living for an extended period of time their birthrates nosedive. This, combined with the problems mentioned in the video above, caused most families to end within a couple of generations.
In a history documentary I watched years ago, on lead poisoning in the elite of Rome. You touched on lead piping. In the doc they pointed out the that richer you were the more elaborate was the dishes and serving ware and so forth for food - most of it coated in Lead paint, that leeched heavily. Is this a possible good explanation for the very low birth rates and high mortality rate? Where did the wealth of such families ceasing go, to the Emperor or the Senate or elsewhere?
So much for the "Generational Wealth" that social activists talk about today. As for the rich guy who traveled to North Africa to sample the shrimp, he didn't like the shrimp.
Wait, are you saying only two or three family fortunes from a very limited area surviving the last 2000 years is somewhat indicative of generational wealth not being a thing in modern times?
@@HungryLoki The occurrences of generational wealth being passed down through many generations are few and far between in this world of about 8 billion people.
Based on how the busts of ancient Romans looked I would say that they were not the same ethnicity as modern Italians today. I believe they are an extinct ethnic group. The only thing that remains of them today is off shoots of their Latin languages such as French and Spanish. Nobody uses the old Latin language except the Catholic Church and paleontologists when they come up with names of dinosaurs.
The sheer amount of discreet sarcasm, melancholy and humor is unmatched! Got your book and plowed through it, nicely written although the font was a bit ... not enticing me to read a lot. My brother is a pro in the same field as you, though not a professor, but he really likes your videos for his teaching on ancient science and religion. So much positive feedback!
Anyone even remotely interrested in masterworks be warned they are really shady about their statistics and they take like 20% of whatever you can make with their paintings. They are pretty much a scam.
You do not mention this, but I believe that the practice of boiling the fruit juice before fermenting it into wine - in lead containers - might have contributed as well. Remember that at the same time, the Danish barbarian tribes exploded in population growth. They drank mead, not wine. And of course, the lead water pipes contributed too, but the wine was thought to be the most important.
one should also note that the vast majority of cities didnt have positive natural growth until modern times. they grew via immigration from the countryside. this was mostly due to the higher risk of disease.
Three generations! Huh. I read Hugo Nutini's *Wages of Conquest*, which is about the mexican aristocracy, and he came to the same conclusion on how long do family riches last.
As they say "the last shirt has no pockets". He couldn't take it with him and if he had tried to turn his mausoleum into a money vault he'd just have guaranteed it to be plundered in short time.
Well it's also a factor that even on the cursus honorium you need to be very lucky or very ruthless to make it to a point where you can INCREASE the family fortune with things like the spoils of war or plundering a very successful province on the height of productivity... if you in any way showed less talent than your ancestor that brought you into a situation where you could try, that would fire back and destroy so much wealth that you were out of the Game of thrones for good. Which family does seriously produce three fabulous generals or politicians in direct sequence? Even most royal houses have maybe one extra competent ruler in 4 or 5 generations, interspersed with carefully trained and supported mediocrity.
TLDR: Crassus' son Doug spent it all at the ancient casino in Luxor, Egyptian Las Vegas. Egypt had casinos, right? I feel like Egypt would have casinos. They had magic temples. One, at least with no extensive knowledge of Egyptian culture would think they'd have some form of mass gambling especially into the Ptolemaic. What else are Egyptians going to do with all the weird greeks that are literally everywhere for some reason? Joking aside, I do wonder what the gambling capital of the ancient world was... I also wonder if there was ever like a massive international Game of Ur tournament but Irving Finkel won't return my calls :P Oh damn this video was about Crassus
This was interesting,. From the title I was expecting something more specifically about Crassus's wealth, but you probably covered all that needed to be said in a couple lines.
of the physical wealth that had remained to the Medieval, I think during Christianization, a lot of it would become the wealth of the church, as influential and visible figures would bequeath great sums for the creation of Cathedrals, both, as a symbol of their piousness which gave them social capital/protection, and, out of genuine religious fervor/fear, as an investment into a better position in the world to come... whilst, these are not the cathedrals we see today, the investment of wealth in the church is what brought about the Truros, Canterburies and Notre-Dames we see today... indeed, one can say that when looking at the great catholic masterpieces we see the wealth of Rome and it's magnates.
Maybe this is the position Putin has found himself in? The wealth of Crassus, the power of a Caesar, but no heirs to pass it along to - the dawning panic that you can't take it with you; the late middle age stark realisation of mortality. Wish he'd just concentrate his efforts building a mausoleum like the sovereigns of antiquity and leave the rest of us the f alone but I digress. Massively enjoying your book btw sir, don't want it to end - ty!
It would be amazing if a modest Roman middle class savings account somehow survived unclaimed with annualized compound interest for two centuries. Or if a direct line could be traced from Roman family wealth to American elite wealth. Maybe the Roman senate is to be blamed for lobbying and influence on the US congress?
I am now a Patreon supporter. Could someone kindly point me to the Patreon-only content? Does anyone know if Patreon is available for the iPhone? Thanks.
Did you know how Crassus make his fortune? He sales "fire insurances" in Rome, and you better pay him because bad things happen to the people that didn't pay. Don't know why though... bad luck I suppose...
