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Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)

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There's probably a some small-scale local betting, hidden within traditions so that money is not obviously changing hands. Loser of the swimming race buys everyone a cup of wine and some bread and fish, that sort of thing. The winner of the dove race gets to keep and eat or sell the two slowest birds. That sort of thing.

But actual full-scale gambling operations tended to be really extractative, and have consequences of the keecap-removal variety. Sailors would gamble away a month or two's wages in an evening. Riots between horse-racing teams once nearly burned down Constantinople. There are pretty good reasons to want to heavily restrict that, especially in somewhere as small as Eretria.
 
Also, players explicitly chose a more austere lawbringer who sought to maintain austere public behavior. Although some of these laws (such as the infamous law against laughing in the assembly) were revoked very quickly, the law against gambling has been maintained for good reason.
 
Cetashwayo said:
The city isn't that big, and citizens who become officials have sworn an oath to defend the laws of the city, meaning they are also often the ones most motivated to prevent gambling and other illegal activities in the city.
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Ahhh... well, that's nice! I just saw the Godfather recently and well, Sicily being so close, my mind just went on trying to make more revenues from exploiting organized crime.
 
Cetashwayo said:
Also, players explicitly chose a more austere lawbringer who sought to maintain austere public behavior. Although some of these laws (such as the infamous law against laughing in the assembly) were revoked very quickly, the law against gambling has been maintained for good reason.
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I feel it is worth pointing out that our alternatives back then were one of the (then) much hated aristoi, who was going to create biased laws, and Leontios :drevil:
 
Admiral Skippy said:
One thing to keep in mind here though is that pretty much everyone makes their own clothing in this period, or will have clothing made by their servants/female family members, or may possibly see a professional clothing maker if they're exceptionally wealthy and want the finest and most ostentatious clothes - I don't know if this is a thing in Eretria. There isn't an economic advantage in shipping clothes right now; Too much bulk for high shipping costs, for a product that is either literally personally tailiored for the elites, making shipping pre-made clothes pointless, or far too expensive for the overwhelming number of people to want to buy considering they can make their own.
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Yeah. Cloth is a potential trade good; clothes as such are not- and the kind of cloth that's worth trading in is luxury fabrics like silk, not just homespun.

Another more general point to keep in mind with all these kind of "what if we did X" ideas is that our people aren't just sitting around waiting for something to do right now. There is a lot of labour that goes into running a primarily agricultural society of tenant farms, and all the basic supporting industries. So any new thing we do, to a certain extent, has to be traded off against the other things our people are doing, which means it needs to boost net productivity or be very valuable. We have a bigger reserve labour pool than most, but it is far from infinite.
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True.

The first wave of productivity increase from the Industrial Revolution, when I think about it, had less to do with what we normally think of as 'industry' (machinery making goods) and more to do with just how much more labor was available to make things with increases in agricultural efficiency meaning it was less like 4 in every 5 people who had to be doing the farming, and more like 1 or 2 out of 5.
 
Cetashwayo said:
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Not that I know of, and I'm not sure why Eretria would emerge as a center of arms production.

With what capital? Most cities will have levies of a few hundred men and armor that is their family property, if they even have armor. Most armor doesn't even have metal, and spearheads are not a metal-intensive resource. A small polis also has small needs and poorer citizens.

Further, it seems much simpler to export ingots than arms and armor. You're thinking far too much about mass production here.

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It isn't as much mass-production as production in the first place that I think is key here. Because as you say most smaller poleis probably have relatively little need for a constant supply of such goods which I would however argue leads more or less directly to the fact that it seems likely truly don't have the capacity to do so in the first place. I am far from an expert but producing a good breastplate, sword etc. is a specialised skill and not necessarily something your average village blacksmith, who as you say doesn't really have a big local market, is skilled at. I therefore maintain that it seems entirely reasonable that a lot of the smaller poles would therefore buy such specialised goods from larger city states. After all a city like Athens has a much larger internal demand for such goods that would allow a smith specialized in weapons to make a living and from that is doesn't seem far to sell surplus abroad.
(And speaking of Athens I am pretty sure it actually had actually workshops with hundreds of workers/slaves that produced stuff like shields)

And for why we should develop such an industry, well it seems to me that with our fast growing citizenship/people wealthy enough to be a hoplite we would also have larger than normal demand such goods that should theoretically lead to a strong local industry. Plus if I remember the early parts of the quest correctly we should have an an relatively easy access to the necessary resources.
 
Erandil said:
It isn't as much mass-production as production in the first place that I think is key here. Because as you say most smaller poleis probably have relatively little need for a constant supply of such goods which I would however argue leads more or less directly to the fact that it seems likely truly don't have the capacity to do so in the first place. I am far from an expert but producing a good breastplate, sword etc. is a specialised skill and not necessarily something your average village blacksmith, who as you say doesn't really have a big local market, is skilled at. I therefore maintain that it seems entirely reasonable that a lot of the smaller poles would therefore buy such specialised goods from larger city states. After all a city like Athens has a much larger internal demand for such goods that would allow a smith specialized in weapons to make a living and from that is doesn't seem far to sell surplus abroad.
(And speaking of Athens I am pretty sure it actually had actually workshops with hundreds of workers/slaves that produced stuff like shields)

And for why we should develop such an industry, well it seems to me that with our fast growing citizenship/people wealthy enough to be a hoplite we would also have larger than normal demand such goods that should theoretically lead to a strong local industry. Plus if I remember the early parts of the quest correctly we should have an an relatively easy access to the necessary resources.
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Hmm, okay. Provide me sources from the period and I'll think on it.
 
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In general I'd ask that if people want to keep proposing x thing or y thing that they come to me in the thread with sources from the period that talk about the use of x thing or y thing. Many interesting parts of the quest were added by players with good ideas, like @Ironanvil1 suggesting Sea Silk as a resource Eretria could cultivate, but at this point the research to answer people's random questions about if they can exploit x resource is actively taking away from my work on the quest itself.
 
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Restricting gambling is also good in that people who have addictive personalities arent going to sell all their worldly possessions to win it big, and that means we wont have to intervene to stop the occasional hoplite from impoverishing themselves. This stuff is destructive.
 
Erandil said:
It isn't as much mass-production as production in the first place that I think is key here. Because as you say most smaller poleis probably have relatively little need for a constant supply of such goods which I would however argue leads more or less directly to the fact that it seems likely truly don't have the capacity to do so in the first place. I am far from an expert but producing a good breastplate, sword etc. is a specialised skill and not necessarily something your average village blacksmith, who as you say doesn't really have a big local market, is skilled at. I therefore maintain that it seems entirely reasonable that a lot of the smaller poles would therefore buy such specialised goods from larger city states. After all a city like Athens has a much larger internal demand for such goods that would allow a smith specialized in weapons to make a living and from that is doesn't seem far to sell surplus abroad.
(And speaking of Athens I am pretty sure it actually had actually workshops with hundreds of workers/slaves that produced stuff like shields)

And for why we should develop such an industry, well it seems to me that with our fast growing citizenship/people wealthy enough to be a hoplite we would also have larger than normal demand such goods that should theoretically lead to a strong local industry. Plus if I remember the early parts of the quest correctly we should have an an relatively easy access to the necessary resources.
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Cetashwayo said:
Hmm, okay. Provide me sources from the period and I'll think on it.
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If we wanted, through a variety of actions really focusing on our artisans, and perhaps focusing quite heavily on Talent for successive Metic immigrations, to get to the point where we had, I dunno:
- Luxury Overland Trade Route: Metalwork (Epulian League)

That does not seem hugely unreasonable to me? But it's probably a far cry from being INTERNATIONAL ARMS DEALERS.

For that, we'd need to justify much higher productivity in our smithing and armouries than any other middling or large city nearby, so much so that we could outdo them even with shipping cost. There's nothing to suggest that we have those kind of advantages in smelting or smithing right now. The best people at it right now are probably the Keltoi, so maybe we could ask them if they come to visit. :V

Cetashwayo said:
In general I'd ask that if people want to keep proposing x thing or y thing that they come to me in the thread with sources from the period that talk about the use of x thing or y thing. Many interesting parts of the quest were added by players with good ideas, like @Ironanvil1 suggesting Sea Silk as a resource Eretria could cultivate, but at this point the research to answer people's random questions about if they can exploit x resource is actively taking away from my work on the quest itself.
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This is something I entirely support as a rule, speaking for myself. Generally even fifteen minutes with Google and occasionally Google Scholar can do wonders. I've done this for the Quest myself before, when I was checking on our use of manure for fertiliser.
 
Cetashwayo said:
In general I'd ask that if people want to keep proposing x thing or y thing that they come to me in the thread with sources from the period that talk about the use of x thing or y thing. Many interesting parts of the quest were added by players with good ideas, like @Ironanvil1 suggesting Sea Silk as a resource Eretria could cultivate, but at this point the research to answer people's random questions about if they can exploit x resource is actively taking away from my work on the quest itself.
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I have to say, as far as my personal pet cause, it doesn't help that the available sources on what's going on over in Illyria during this period seem to amount to a collective shrug and a "dunno, stuff I guess?"

I'm pretty much having to use Roman-era sources to get an idea of what was there, and even those are extremely thin on the ground. This is about it in terms of sources I could find on the Internet that weren't paywalled and that actually discussed what the exports were aside from metal from the interior.
 
One idea that games like this tend to dispel pretty quickly, I find, is that the internet is this infinite sea of all accumulated human knowledge. The second you're trying to research something specific and obscure, like farming practices or Illyrian customs or whatever, it turns out there are a handful of sources, some of which are dubious, and the best information is in books that are either out of print or very expensive. It's sad Google Books didn't take off because that would've been a big help.

Google Scholar can often be helpful and turn up things you won't find with a usual search, however. Quite often your best bet will be an isolated paragraph in some paper which touches on the topic you're actually interested in.
 
Cetashwayo said:
In general I'd ask that if people want to keep proposing x thing or y thing that they come to me in the thread with sources from the period that talk about the use of x thing or y thing. Many interesting parts of the quest were added by players with good ideas, like @Ironanvil1 suggesting Sea Silk as a resource Eretria could cultivate, but at this point the research to answer people's random questions about if they can exploit x resource is actively taking away from my work on the quest itself.
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Ahh so my idea of us to be the Greeks who figure out a 1001 uses for Hemp is no good?
I mean the Greeks around this time knew it existed but I guess they just considered it a Scythian thing.
 
Ze_Count said:
Ahh so my idea of us to be the Greeks who figure out a 1001 uses for Hemp is no good?
I mean the Greeks around this time knew it existed but I guess they just considered it a Scythian thing.
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No, what @Cetashwayo is saying is that if you can find some sources and do a bit of independent research to back up this idea, how it would occur to the inhabitants of Eretria, where they'd get the hemp from, etc., then maybe it can lead to interesting things! But just firing questions at him all the time about whether it's possible for Eretria to do Y with X is time-consuming and puts all the work on him, and he's already doing a lot of work running the quest and answering general history questions.

Not that I'm saying you or anyone was doing that, just that in aggregate, it gets to be a lot to handle.
 
Cetashwayo said:
Hmm, okay. Provide me sources from the period and I'll think on it.
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Well there is Lysias, one of the ten attic orators who if I don't get my dates wrong was active in exactly this period, and who seems to have owned a shield/arms-manufacture employing a significant number of slaves which he does allude to in for example his speech "Against Eratosthenes" where he complains about over 700 hundred shields getting confiscated from him when he lays out his own grievances and accomplishments. And that number seems a bit high for personal use or even use within athens itself so trade in arms seems to have been a thing in this period.
 
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Erandil said:
Well there is Lysias, one of the ten attic orators who I don't get my dates wrong was active in exactly this period, and who seems to have owned a shield/arms-manufacture employing a significant number of slaves which he does allude to in for example his speech "Against Eratosthenes" where he complains about over 700 hundred shields getting confiscated from him when he lies out his own grievances and accomplishments. And that number seems a bit high for personal use or even use within athens itself.
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Mmm. Yeah, I think that's enough. However, while it's something Eretria can develop, it's not really a source of major trade that the city has with other states.
 
So, at the risk of restarting the train of 'we should do blanks' how well positioned are we for becoming a center of glass making (as in production of raw glass rather than glassware)? I've been doing some quick, barebones reading on Hellenistic Glass production and it seems that primary production of the glass was divorced from it's actual working- usually being shipped as ingots.

The primary requirements for glass making were sand and Natron, which is apparently often found near saline lake beds, which to a layman like me brings to mind Salapia and how it almost certainly retracted to it's current state at some point.

Of course, this would be before the Hellenic glass industry really kicks off with Alexandria and cast glass come into play- and Rhodes hasn't hit its stride a major center of the glass industry yet so primary production of glass as a meaningful trade good might be too premature. I also didn't find anything on notable production of natron in our region of Italy during my quick glance, but Campania was noteworthy for it- so supplementing our limited local supply with trade from the barbaroi there or even as the principle source of supply for a glass making industry wouldn't be out of the question. I could see this going either way, but I wasn't sure if this topic had been broached yet.

Hellenistic glass - Wikipedia
 
It's not an industry the city has really pushed in. It seems to me that glass is a very high-skill thing to produce and doesn't really hit its stride in production until the Hellenistic period, so I'm not sure that it's something that would draw Eretrians.
 
On the subject of weapons manufacture I feel that what's more likely, assuming it isn't already the case, is that Eretria is where the primary arsenal for the Epulian League is located.
 
As I said, being a centre of metalworking for the rest of the Epulian League probably would make sense:
Admiral Skippy said:
If we wanted, through a variety of actions really focusing on our artisans, and perhaps focusing quite heavily on Talent for successive Metic immigrations, to get to the point where we had, I dunno:
- Luxury Overland Trade Route: Metalwork (Epulian League)

That does not seem hugely unreasonable to me? But it's probably a far cry from being INTERNATIONAL ARMS DEALERS.
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But it likely wouldn't even be all weapons.
 
Cetashwayo said:
It's not an industry the city has really pushed in. It seems to me that glass is a very high-skill thing to produce and doesn't really hit its stride in production until the Hellenistic period, so I'm not sure that it's something that would draw Eretrians.
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Fair enough, I suspected that even if we had the necessary parts, it probably wouldn't hit a meaningful stride until a few timeskips. so long as I provoked consideration I'm happy.
 
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