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Did the Romans Have a Future?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2019

Brent D. Shaw
Brent D. Shaw*
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, Princeton University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

In analysing matters as diverse as state financing, strategic planning, public benefactions and long-term credit in private business transactions, the historian is faced with an underlying problem about the perceptions of time. One aspect of this problem is the manner in which pictures of a complex future are reflected in the behaviour of agents engaged in these activities. The manner in which actions were (or were not) taken by them suggests a peculiar configuration of future time in the Roman world. It is speculatively argued that perspectives on the future had analogies with the different ways in which a sense of depth was created by artists working on a two-dimensional space and with the contextual ways in which spatial perspective was employed.

Keywords

future timestate financingborrowingamortisationpublic debtstrategic planningalimentausufructsspatial perspective
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 109 , November 2019 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

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Footnotes

An early version of this essay was presented as the Hyde Lecture at the University of Pennsylvania in March 2016; a revised version was read as the tenth Rostovzteff Lecture at Yale University in November 2017. For critical observations made on those occasions and in response to later queries, I offer thanks to Emma Dench, Yaacob Dweck, Dennis Kehoe, James Ker, Michael Koortbojian, Paul Kosmin, Susan Mattern, Andrew Riggsby, Peter Stinson, Deborah Vischak and to Carolyn Yerkes, to whom I have incurred a special debt. Above all, I owe thanks to Peter Brown for his discussion of the problem and for his constant encouragement. Finally, I express my deep gratitude to the Journal’s readers who understood the argument, offered criticism where it was due and suggested beneficial alterations. If I have not been able to meet their expectations, the fault is mine alone.

Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit1 Wagner

1

Wagner, Parsifal, Act 1, 965–6; Gurnemanz in reply to Parsifal: ‘Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit.’

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