10.8.19
So we fully hit Greece, as in the Greece that recognizes itself and is the historic period people think about.
Before hitting modern comparisons, two things I noticed in relation to Byzantium. The simplistic one being the appearance of the term “demes” those it has a drastically different meaning. I’m curious if it’s simply the definition that overlaps or if there is some type of evolution into the sport factions.
The second is the parallel of Solon buying debtors out of slavery and Theodora paying off prostitutes’s debts to elevate their class. The two things happened for drastically different reasons, of course. Still, both go to show the life changing ability on an individual level a ruler possessed. I wonder how precisely they tracked the debt. Now we have interest and inflation and dollar vs euro vs yen. Then they barely had coin money for day to day transactions.
Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. Money makes policy.
We had the introduction of specific socio-economic classes. Kind of like our simplified tax brackets rather than a caste system. There was some mobility. I wonder how many people admitted to actually going down in status. I wonder how this convinced the old aristocracy to treat the neauvu (sp.) rich as equals. Was it simply the blunt monetary comparison or did Solon have to get something done on a personal level to shift values? De facto vs de juro segregation.
