modern humans don’t have much greater raw intelligence than the Romans,
The Flynn Effect might make this statement false.
The diseases I carry but have immunity to might soon leave me as the only living person in the Empire. Ignoring this:
Demonstrate my knowledge of mathematics to win fame. Demonstrate my superior medical skills to become the Emperor’s personal doctor. Further prove my value to the emperor by pointing out locations of underground gold and silver that can be mined. Get the emperor hooked on the most addictive drug I know of. Go on a vacation outside of the direct reach of the emperor. Let the emperor know that I will only continue to supply him with the drug if he turns over control of the empire to me. Give the drug to my generals to keep their loyalty.
Opium was available, but only as a poppy juice or tea used routinely in Roman medicine with little reports of addiction. The same thing happens in Chinese medicine—it’s introduced around the 900s as a new useful medicine from the Silk Road which is especially useful for settling one’s stomach & aiding digestion and only later as time passed did methods change, did the bulbs get scratched to extract the sap which could be eaten and eventually smoked, leading to its final apotheosis when it is chemically processed into heroin and an injectable fine white powder (discussed in McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin).
The theory that Aurelius was addicted stems from his doctor Galen’s well-recorded constant administration of various potions some of which included poppy juice, Aurelius’s recommendation of poppy-using recipes in his Meditations, and general argument based on his Stoic detachment and perspective (McLynn’s Marcus Aurelius: A Life).
To state he was addicted with no qualification is to overstate the case—we’re talking probabilities greater than 5% but probably less than 50-60%, my own belief is.
That’s just a recipe for getting ganked by someone who a). wants to have your kind of influence, and b). mistakenly believes that he could replace you by acquiring your drug supply and/or reverse-engineering your formula.
The Flynn Effect might make this statement false.
The diseases I carry but have immunity to might soon leave me as the only living person in the Empire. Ignoring this:
Demonstrate my knowledge of mathematics to win fame. Demonstrate my superior medical skills to become the Emperor’s personal doctor. Further prove my value to the emperor by pointing out locations of underground gold and silver that can be mined. Get the emperor hooked on the most addictive drug I know of. Go on a vacation outside of the direct reach of the emperor. Let the emperor know that I will only continue to supply him with the drug if he turns over control of the empire to me. Give the drug to my generals to keep their loyalty.
A friend of mine says that most of the emperors and generals were already addicted to some pretty serious drugs.
Could you get a more specific claim?
A cursory search suggests that opium was available and Marcus Aurelius was addicted, but not that addiction was common.
Whoah. Seriously? That throws his legendarily insightful writings on Stoicism into an entirely different light.
Opium was available, but only as a poppy juice or tea used routinely in Roman medicine with little reports of addiction. The same thing happens in Chinese medicine—it’s introduced around the 900s as a new useful medicine from the Silk Road which is especially useful for settling one’s stomach & aiding digestion and only later as time passed did methods change, did the bulbs get scratched to extract the sap which could be eaten and eventually smoked, leading to its final apotheosis when it is chemically processed into heroin and an injectable fine white powder (discussed in McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin).
The theory that Aurelius was addicted stems from his doctor Galen’s well-recorded constant administration of various potions some of which included poppy juice, Aurelius’s recommendation of poppy-using recipes in his Meditations, and general argument based on his Stoic detachment and perspective (McLynn’s Marcus Aurelius: A Life).
To state he was addicted with no qualification is to overstate the case—we’re talking probabilities greater than 5% but probably less than 50-60%, my own belief is.
That’s just a recipe for getting ganked by someone who a). wants to have your kind of influence, and b). mistakenly believes that he could replace you by acquiring your drug supply and/or reverse-engineering your formula.