Currency makes me NUTS, not only because if you read Syme (60+ years ago) you may get one set of comparatives, and each decade thereafter, based on our OWN inflation. But I also remember that the pearl price thingie comes from Suetonius. So you could also say - what, a century later, would he know about comparatives given the current fluctuations, inflation, debasement of the coinage, etc., in the intervening years? I treat that 6 million hs. rather like I do Caesar's battles where ten zillion people died on the barbarian side, and 12 Romans got winged. I wonder if ancient authors just picked these figures out of the air to suggest "a whole lot" or "a few."

But Aulus' post is probably as close to realistic as we can get - thank you!

Cal, I enjoyed your note on the guy who couldn't get Brutus' mother's name, right, but Sempronia is always one that makes me have to think - she was a Sempronia Tuditani or something like that - and was she not the mother of DECIMUS Brutus? And someone really trashed her reputation as a woman who WOULD be talking all the time and pretending to intellectual pretentions, or am I confusing her with someone else?